Brain Science—Mental Health Research Studies Must Get a Whole Lot Better
Nature recently published an editorial, Studies linking diet with health must get a whole lot better, explaining the need for improvement in diet studies. They stated that, “A team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle has created a star-based metric that rates the quality of the evidence for a link between a given behaviour—such as eating red meat or smoking—and a particular health outcome. A five-star score means that the link is clearly established; one star means that either there’s no association between the two factors or that the evidence is too weak to draw a firm conclusion.”
It is common to read about a particular diet with benefits or harm across studies. There are some that say this is good and others say not so. The studies use the scientific method, publish in peer-reviewed journals, disclose conflict, expose their work to the media, but some of the studies are so contradictory, they probably make some people ambivalent, whether to eat something or stop.
It does not mean the studies are wrong but there are broader population variations than several types of diverse sample sizes.
This is not limited to diet studies. Mental health, a major area of health, is pelted with a myriad of studies. There are tons of studies about what affects or benefits mental health. It does not mean that for those it affects or benefits, their experience is dismissed, but that it affects or benefits everyone all the time, falsifies studies.
The brain has constants that make determinations, notwithstanding the external. It could match or not in that instance, but it is the constants that say.
It is true that there are generally bad situations likely to affect most people. It is also true that some things generally have a soothing effect for the mind.
It is often great for society to get better, lessening risks and improving ease, but no external solution [biopolitics, social, economic, and so forth] solved, would eradicate anxiety, depression, mania, sadness, emptiness and so on.
There are advances in this era but people still have anxiety, like in the past, for better or worse. There are those who know nothing or have the experience of what causes panic in a certain place, but panic as much or worse.
External and internal experiences are subject to constants of the brain at every moment.
There are reports of teenagers having issues with their experiences, but sometimes, the problem may not just be what it is, it may include not knowing how constants in the brain decide, to better position against properties that expose to societal, trendy or environmental pulls.
Constants unique to the brain and what they build for what is experienced are the structures of mental health, ill-health and serious mental illnesses.
There are cells in the brain, having chemical and electrical impulses. Chemical impulses are neurotransmitters, but neurotransmitters are among several other molecules in the brain.
Cells and molecules of the brain build or construct what is used to experience the interoception and exteroception.
The device is known in ways that define interactions with it. The device can be in memories, dreams, imagination, thinking, perception, subvocalization, inner speech and so on. It exists in the same form to the mind and is used for different features of the mind.
But how does the brain make the mind?
The necessity of this identification is towards mental health, at least to know what is constant, not what is subjective, on how decision is made per moment, not what varies, and to understand that the mind is also its administration, albeit it can be influenced.
In brain science, all sensory inputs converge in the thalamus, except for smell that does at the olfactory bulb. It is where they are processed or integrated before relay to the cerebral cortex for interpretation.
It is theorized that sensory processing or integration is into a uniform unit or identity which is thought or its form. It is what all senses become to the brain. It is also how the brain creates the mind. It is in the form of thought, as theorized, that the memory regulates all internal functions, for control or limit and extents. It is also in the form of thought that the device exists to mind. Languages, people, places, are all in the form of thought. It is the quantity that becomes used in thinking, memories, imagination and others.
It is theorized that thought is what transports to the cerebral cortex for interpretation. Interpretation is postulated to be knowing, feeling and reaction. Knowing is memory, feeling are destinations including for emotions, before reactions which can be parallel or perpendicular.
Knowing, feeling and reaction are memory apparatus, since what is known to cause fear can, then the feeling of fear and reaction, to flee.
Memory has stores, large and small. Small relays to large in sequences. Small has splits or go-before, to expect or anticipate things. Thought is what is stored in memory and travels in small stores to large stores [containing similarities between unique small stores]. Small stores can be prioritized or pre-prioritized.
Thought is the quantity and memory is properties. These are the two constant of mind, built by brain cells and molecules, at any moment.
If anything benefits or harms mental health, it became thought [quantity] and acquired properties [memory] becoming what is experienced as benefit or otherwise.
Depression, trauma, shame, guilt, emptiness, discrimination, stigma, pain, tears, dissociation, disconnection, sleep, fatigue, empathy delight, hate, love, craving and so on are all properties in memory, which can be acquired per relaying quantity, or not, with external input or not, to decide what is experienced at that time. Several people can have their thoughts acquire similar properties in situations, but it is not so for everyone all the time, in that condition.
The world’s mental health day just passed. Aside from general campaigns to end stigmatization, discrimination, new ways to get help, speaking up, affordability and several other helpful psychosocial approaches, the field has not made much progress because subjectivity is elevated beyond constants, starting from studies, trickling through society.