Brain Science, Alzheimer’s, Autoimmune Diseases: Does Interoception Forget?
There was a recent article, “Alzheimer’s might not be primarily a brain disease. A new theory suggests it’s an autoimmune condition”, where there was a striking quote, “Because of striking similarities between the fat molecules that make up both the membranes of bacteria and the membranes of brain cells, beta-amyloid cannot tell the difference between invading bacteria and host brain cells, and mistakenly attacks the very brain cells it is supposed to be protecting.”
If Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease, then its occurrence is unlikely to be a mistake. There are several autoimmune diseases, a class of conditions where immune cells attack the body’s cells, where answers like the above are postulated, where difference cannot be told, or that there are triggers by pathogens, genetic dispositions and so on. Ultimately, it is agreed in medical science that the cause of autoimmune diseases is unknown.
Autoimmune diseases occur in the jurisdiction of internal senses or interoception. Interoception is similarly processed in the brain as exteroception. Exteroception are external senses, mostly ways that the external world gets to be interacted with, in the brain.
There is an experience of remembering and forgetting for exteroception. Anything can be remembered or forgotten, according to the rules of memory. There are many ways to remember, fully, in part, slightly and so on. There are also many ways or times that forgetfulness happens.
Forgetting is several things: the quantity of relay in memory may be pre-prioritized, not getting the full access to locations to get what it should. The sequence of the prior experience could be missed. The part of the store that it should have gone may not. The split that should have been possible may not and so on.
But forgetting is very familiar, when describing exteroception or experiential interactions.
The brain — specifically its memory functions, including regulations, control, balance and so on, for limits and extents, does not treat senses differently, internal or external.
All senses have representative stores or packages in memory locations. This is the reason that words, or thoughts — can affect heart rate or breathing, sweating and so on, because certain stores are similarly arrayed and affect may induce or inhibit some.
The same way it is possible to forget, with external senses, is the same way it is possible to forget for internal senses. There are times that some parts of the body feel a certain odd way, after not sleeping, or engaging in something irregular, which could be that the dominance of thing, made another lose the relay the memory gives back to how it should function, making it wobble for a while [forgetting].
If it is the immune system, then this could lead to an autoimmune disease, at least conceptually.
If Alzheimer’s is an autoimmune disease then it is memory problem that leads to another serious memory problem. Seeing autoimmune diseases as a memory problem takes away its opacity, and brings close a way to model the memory functionally, beyond labels.
All internal and external senses, for integration or processing, meet at the thalamus, except for smell, arriving at the olfactory bulb. There are studies for internal senses, meeting for processing or integration at the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS).
It is after sensory processing that relay is made to the cerebral cortex for interpretation.
Sensory processing or integration is theorized to be a collection process into uniformity or a new identity which is what the brain can use. It is what comes to represent everything from everywhere in the brain, which becomes how they are used.
This new identity is thought or its form. If someone smells something and a visceral motion producing sound occurs, they are thought-form based processes, integrated and sent to memory areas for effect of one, along the other. To the brain, the liver, kidney, their functions exist as a form of thought, same for cars, houses, and others.
Interpretation in the cerebral cortex is knowing, feeling and reaction. Knowing is memory, which has stores in large and small packages. Large in arrays, small as resident and transient, then prioritized or pre-prioritized. Large has a principal spot where just one goes. Small stores have unique information, while large stores have similarities.
It is the relay of small to large stores in sequences and with splits that determine whatever is experienced. There are cycles that can disrupt the follow, leading to some small stores not going to large stores, or becoming prioritized within a cycle and so on.
It is how the memory functions that decides remembering and forgetting for representative of internal and external senses, that also leads to problems.
Memory architecture, displayed, even with VR, or video games, or others holds answers to the future for autoimmune diseases as well as Alzheimer’s.