Dr David McGrath

Spine Physician

MB BS (Hons) FAFOM, RACP, FAFMM
Master of Pain Medicine

Disturbance Environment (Part 3)

In parts 1 & 2 , we discovered that we are immersed in a disturbance medium, with a set of active and innactive entities. Innanimate objects are mosly inactive, while living entities can be either active or dormant. As a strategy for dealing with this disturbance traffic (flux), we can bundle disturbances into one single action (convergence). Each convergent set, corresponds to an emotion. If the environment allows convergent activity, we have an efficient expansion of useful actions. One size fits all.

We made further gains in efficiency, by being part of a social structure. Many eyes and arms, amplify our sensory and behavioural capacity. Each person, can become, either the eyes or arms, as part of a social grouping. We developed, a disturbance system,which could induce in each other, an appropriate action for the collective group. That system, is called language. Language operates under the general emotion of cooperation or consensuality.

In this article, I want to focus on internal and external disturbance pathways. As a multicellular structure, disturbances are passed from one cell to another through the extracellular spaces.
1.Transient disturbances are passed from cell to cell until the chemical or physical disturbance is disseminated, either within us, or exported to the general environment.
2. Persistant or destructive disturbances, need to be controlled, by a negative feedback to the external disturbing agent, or by increasing the threshold for disturbance propogation. Moving away from the disturbance is also available to mobile creatures, like ourselves.

Focusing on the second situation and ignoring the moving away option, we have:
1. An internal closed loop of disturbance, which reflects the disturbance away
2. An external disturbance loop, which abolishes the disturbance
3. A combined, internal external disturbance pathway, which abolishes the disturbance.

In other words, we can have internal and external control loops and a combination.

All of these mechanisms, can independantly combine with emotional convergence, as they are not exclusive. In both social and non social animals, these mechanisms would confer a survival advantage. That being the case, these mechanisms are likely to in place prior to language.

What's the maths ?

Disturbance Control Success	Successful Actions	Unsucessful Actions
Controlled Disturbance Actions	a	b
Uncontrolled Actions	c	d

Cell "a" indicates successful controlled actions patterns
Cell "b" indicates unsuccessful controlled action patterns
Cell "c" indicates successful uncontrolled action patterns
Cell "d" indicates unsuccessful uncontrolled action patterns

The relative success of controlled action patterns is a/(a+b)
The relative succes of uncontrolled action patterns is c/(c+d)
It seems likely, that contolled disturbance control, would be superior.
This line of thinking deserves more analysis, but for the moment, it can be assumed,that internal disturbance control is a characteristic of advanced animals, improving the success of their overall convergent disturbance patterns.
The negative feedback loops are supported by a nervous system and hormones distributed in the blood stream.