Considering PTSD (in terms of thermodynamic computation)

Neuroscientists are learning to consider perceptual error and decisional error as functional outcomes of Bayesian priors. In terms of clinical practice, we can use this knowledge to guide patients with PTSD toward healthier outcomes.

In the United States, approximately 6% of adults will experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at some point in their lives. This translates to roughly 13 million adults who have PTSD in a given year.

According to the National Institutes of Health, PTSD can develop after exposure to a potentially traumatic event that is beyond a typical stressor. Events that may lead to PTSD include, but are not limited to, violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, combat, and other forms of violence. Exposure to events like these is common - about one half of all U.S. adults will experience at least one traumatic event in their lives, but most do not develop PTSD. People who experience PTSD may have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories of the event(s), experience sleep problems, feel detached or numb, or may be easily startled. In severe forms, PTSD can significantly impair a person's ability to function at work, at home, and socially.

According to the American Psychological Association, the standard of care for treating PTSD may include pharmacological interventions, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and psychotherapy, which may include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for example. In addition, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is a proven treatment for PTSD which is thought to improve healing by inducing neural plasticity.

Yet in clinical practice, there is no clear link between the efficacy of pharmaceutical interventions and the efficacy of psychotherapy or EMDR. How is the information processing aspect of psychotherapy related to the neuroplasticity mechanisms of EMDR and the neurophysiological processes that are affected by treatment with SSRIs?

Our improved understanding of thermodynamic computation may help us to forge a direct link between neuroscience and psychology: a long awaited goal for both fields.

Thermodynamic computation is a new approach to neurocomputation that leverages the principles of thermodynamics - particularly the natural tendency of biophysical systems to dissipate energy efficiently and continually reach equilibrium - to understand how the brain processes information. This approach specifically accounts for time and energy requirements when considering perceptual accuracy, cognitive flexibility, and decision-making capability - and it provides practitioners and patients with the training and tools to improve these aspects of neurocomputation, especially in the context of PTSD.

Our improved understanding of thermodynamic computation may help us to concretely forge a direct link between neuroscience and psychology.

In the view of thermodynamic computation, the fatigue and disorientation associated with PTSD is caused by an information processing error - specifically, that error involves improperly making an association between a context, event or person and the risk of catastrophic energy dissipation.

Associating contexts, events and people with potential outcomes for survival is a powerful tool for making our way in the world. But when a traumatic event occurs, and a person is unable to make sense of the event with others who experienced it, the person may unconsciously seek out associations that help to predict a similar event. In this case, innocuous stimuli may trigger the expectation of a bad outcome (a Type I error). If the person stays on edge for a long time, constantly making these predictions, the person may grow fatigued at the effort. In this case, even a dangerous indicator may go unnoticed or uncommented, as it does not rise above the noise (a Type II error).

The goal of therapy in this framework is to help the individual engage in healthy neurocomputation: perception, predictive modeling, and decision-making. The process may involve training the patient to consciously attend to triggering events and to engage in self-care, in order to reduce the risk of Type I errors and Type II errors.

Thermodynamic computation is a useful framework for understanding how we perceive the world, understand the world, and act within the world - and how our prior information can weigh heavily on these processes. The overall goal of this systematic approach is for the individual to grow stronger and more capable of interacting with the world, with less propensity to make errors by incorrectly weighting prior information.

Conifold Counseling addresses the time and energy constraints of information processing, with a respect for the individual as having both intrinsic limitations and the ability to improve that intrinsic capacity with gradual effort and training. The goal here is to ensure the neurophysiological and neuropsychological aspects of computation are addressed in the course of developing a care plan.