Chaos, brain and divided consciousness.

Abstract

Modern trends in psychology and cognitive neuroscience suggest that applications of nonlinear dynamics, chaos and self-organization seem to be particularly important for research of some fundamental problems regarding mind-brain relationship. Relevant problems among others are formations of memories during alterations of mental states and nature of a barrier that divides mental states, and leads to the process called dissociation. This process is related to a formation of groups of neurons which often synchronize their firing patterns in a unique spatial maner. Central theme of this study is the relationship between level of moving and oscilating mental processes and their neurophysiological substrate. This opens a question about principles of organization of conscious experiences and how these experiences arise in the brain. Chaotic self-organization provides a unique theoretical and experimental tool for deeper understanding of dissociative phenomena and enables to study how dissociative phenomena can be linked to epileptiform discharges which are related to various forms of psychological and somatic manifestations. Organizing principles that constitute human consciousness and other mental phenomena from this point of view may be described by analysis and reconstruction of underlying dynamics of psychological or psychophysiological measures. These nonlinear methods in this study were used for analysis of characteristic changes in EEG and bilateral electrodermal activity (EDA) during reliving of dissociated traumatic and stressful memories and during psychopathological states. Analysis confirms a possible role of chaotic transitions in the processing of dissociated memory. Supportive finding for a possible chaotic process related to dissociation found in this study represent also significant relationship of dissociation, epileptiform discharges measured by typical psychopathological manifestations and characteristic laterality changes in bilateral EDA in patients with schizophrenia and depression. Increased level of psychopathological symptoms indicates close relationship to the right-left EDA asymmetry and asymmetry of information entropy calculated by non-linear recurrence quantification analysis of EDA records. Because epileptiform activity has specific chaotic behaviour and calculated information entropy from EDA records reflects the complexity of the deterministic structure in the system there is a relevant assumption that unilaterally increased complexity may produce interhemispheric disbalance and increased chaoticity which hypothetically may serve as a dynamic source of epileptiform discharges related to trauma induced kindling mechanism. Specific form of chaotic inner organization which cannot be explained only as a consequence of external causality support also psychophysiological data that lead to the so-called self-organizing theory of dreaming by Kahn and Hobson. This study suggests that self-organizing theory of dreaming is particularly important with respect to problem of memory formation and processing during dissociative states characteristic for dreams. Recent data and also findings of this study support the research utility of chaos theory in psychology and neuroscience, and also its conceptual view of dynamic ordering factors and self-organization underlying psychological processes and brain physiology.