Andrew Gallimore’s "Reality Switch Technologies" Helped me invent Psychedelic posture therapy - An excerpt from chapter 8

Chapter 8: How Our Brains Model Reality

“1. The brain uses its world model to predict the sensory information it will receive in the following moment. The brain is constantly trying to predict what will happen next, based upon what it thinks is happening now. 2. Any sensory information that is correctly predicted is extinguished (filtered out). Only the sensory information that the brain fails to predict - surprising information - is absorbed and processed.” -Andrew Gallimore

“Penfield gets to work. Holding an electrode that looks like an electric toothbrush with a wire dangling from one end, he begins probing Mary’s brain… ‘What do you feel now?’ Mary says she feels a tingling on her left hand.” -Sandra & Matthew Blakeslee

The Penfield mentioned in the second quote above was a brain surgeon whose work serves as a fundamental basis of our modern understanding of body schema models in the brain and how they interact with the workings of our body.

The first quote by Andrew Gallimore refers to how our brain processes sensory information by comparing incoming data to models of reality contained in the brain.

These two concepts of body schema and models of reality are foundational to the Posturedelic Hypothesis.

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One of my all-time favorite movies is “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Picture this: King Arthur and his knights are approaching Camelot, and with awe and reverence, they each gasp and exclaim, “Camelot!” But then there's Patsy, King Arthur's coconut-banging servant, who playfully breaks the fourth wall and scoffs, “It's only a model.”

Just like those knights in the film who didn't encounter the real Camelot, we, too, live in a world of models – models of reality, not reality itself.

You’ve Never Directly Experienced Reality

Now, I know that might sound a bit perplexing at first. You're probably thinking, “Wait, I'm seeing these words on this page, hearing sounds, and feeling things – how can this not be real?”

I’m not about to go on a woo-woo metaphysical rant. The key word here is “directly.” 

In essence, what we perceive as our reality isn't an unfiltered stream of sensory data that's instantaneously wired into our consciousness. Instead, it's data that's been meticulously sifted through, molded, and even tampered with by our brains long before it reaches our conscious awareness. Your brain is like the ultimate reality simulator, constantly creating various models of different aspects of reality and seamlessly blending them into your experience.

It’s an incredibly convincing simulation of reality with real-world consequences, but it is a simulation of reality based on models nonetheless. As good as your brain is at simulating reality, even it can’t make you aware of all the sensory data coming in all the time.

In fact, a significant chunk of this raw data gets thrown into the cosmic trash can as your brain filters, massages, and reshapes it. It might seem wasteful, but it's all part of your brain's grand scheme to be as energy-efficient as possible while maintaining your focus and sanity.

How is this Useful?

So, why the filtration frenzy, you ask? Well, it's because your brain is inherently lazy, but also protective. It wants to minimize energy expenditure while juggling its myriad tasks. Processing the sheer volume of raw sensory data in your conscious awareness would not only be energetically taxing but also immensely distracting. Imagine trying to drive a car while everything in your field of view was as vivid as whatever you’re looking at directly – it'd be chaos! Your brain needs to prioritize what's crucial for your survival and what's not.

So, here's the trick your brain pulls off: it assumes its predictions are spot on. It operates under the hypothesis that its models of reality are gospel truth, which makes the whole process incredibly efficient. Anything that matches the models predicted will effectively become integrated with your conscious experience. But the sensory data itself isn’t what you experience. Instead, the data from the matching models is what your brain plugs into your consciousness.

Anything that doesn't match the models is flagged as a prediction error and has a chance of capturing your attention.

But, of course, it’s not just that simple. Even after a prediction error is detected, your brain isn't in a hurry to throw it into your conscious awareness. Your brain may go on to tweak, massage, and manipulate this error as it reaches your conscious awareness, struggling to make it fit in with the rest of the models that were determined to be good. Once it has found a way to create models that it can use the next time you encounter this new part of your reality framework, that same data will no longer be flagged as a prediction error.

This is happening all the time, and it’s all happening so fast that we don’t even know it’s going on!

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What do Models have to do with Pain?

Let’s revisit the idea that the brain uses past models to predict the next instant’s sensory information.

My professional and personal experience suggests to me that this mechanism plays a role in what is called nociplastic pain. Nociplastic means pain that originates from errant signals in the brain rather than pain that originates as a result of soft tissue or nerve damage, which is known as nociceptive pain. Another kind of pain, known as psychogenic pain, will be covered in the next section.

I typically suspect nociplastic pain will be present to at least some degree when a pain has persisted for years or decades.

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Now for a Quick Review

If you stub your toe, that is nociceptive pain. If you have a pain that has been around for years, there’s a good chance nociplastic pain plays a role. If you have experienced an emotional trauma and discover that a pain is the direct result of that trauma, it is psychogenic pain. 

Nociceptive pain can become nociplastic. Nociplastic pain can become psychogenic. All three can, and typically do, play a significant role simultaneously in treatment-resistant chronic pain. There is insufficient evidence to prove a biological gender bias at this time, at least as far as I am aware. Finally, there is absolutely nothing “less real” about psychogenic pain as compared to the other two types of pain.

There are other types of pain, such as inflammatory, and neuropathic, and the more you search the internet the more types of pain you’ll find. I find that further breakdown than the three main categories I’ve listed is redundant for classification purposes, even though additional types may have utility in a clinical or educational settings for the purpose of specificity.

I would argue that even psychogenic and nociplastic pain have enough overlap that it's unclear whether the underlying mechanisms have any meaningful difference. They are classified as separate because of the distinct differences in how symptoms come about.

We’re not going to discuss the types of pain too much from here forward. The important thing to know is that nociplastic and psychogenic pain is what we’re typically having the most trouble dealing with in treatment-resistant chronic pain, on top of whatever physical issues are present. They are hard to treat because they are rooted in altered brain structures or processes. This information will become important in Chapter Nine, because you’ll learn how psychedelics can actually change the structure of your brain!

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Body Schema: Where Internal Meets External

The human body is intricately mapped within the brain, with each body part assigned its own model, residing in what scientists aptly call the homunculus, literally translated as “little man.” If you're intrigued by the concept of body schema models, I highly recommend reading "The Body Has a Mind of Its Own" by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee.

What makes body schema models truly fascinating is their ability to trigger physical sensations in corresponding body parts when various regions of the homunculus are stimulated. This phenomenon is well-documented and serves as direct evidence that the brain can create sensations just as real as those resulting from physical touch. These models not only guide the brain in processing somatosensory data but also dictate how body parts move. 

The exciting part is that body schema models aren't set in stone. They can adapt and change over time with the right stimuli. 

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The Relationship between Body Schema & Posture

One of the many human biological senses that didn’t make the list of five we all learned about in school is proprioception. This is your ability to understand how your extremities, as well as your body as a whole, are oriented in space with respect to your environment. 

Think of reaching for a mug that is out of your line of sight without looking at it. This might seem like a simple task, but it turns out to be insanely complex. Not only does your brain need models for your environment and where the mug lies within it, but you also need models for how your body is currently positioned, and you need to predict how you need to be positioned in order to grab the mug. So you need a model of what the mug looks like so you can shape your hand to grab it without dropping it. 

Body schema models help make your sense of proprioception possible. But they also do so much more! Anything that has to do with how your brain moves your body is dictated mainly by body schema models. In fact, if you didn’t have body schema models, it would be impossible for you to even imagine moving your body. Scientists have shown via advanced brain scans that simply imagining doing an activity activates the exact same parts of the brain as actually doing it. This is just one of the many fascinating things you’ll learn about body schema in “Your Body has a Mind of Its Own.”

Every receptor in your body, from your skin to your organs, is meticulously mapped to specific parts of the brain. As demonstrated by phantom limb phenomena, your brain can create sensations in these areas. Every muscle movement, whether voluntary or involuntary, falls under the brain's control, and body schema models play a significant role. This encompasses dysfunctional and compensatory movement patterns.

These patterns often develop over time as the brain initially responds to dysfunction by adapting. After years of repetition, these altered patterns overshadow the neural networks that once held proper movement models. Body schema maps undergo fundamental, physical changes to the cellular structures that define them as new connections are made and existing connections are reinforced, making it increasingly challenging to reverse them.

As discussed in Chapter Two, dysfunctions and compensations invariably lead to posture deviations. Therefore, it's safe to say that your posture at rest, whether functional or dysfunctional,  is rooted in body schema. Furthermore, body schema models can be influenced by other brain models. They can be either reinforced or disrupted by physical and emotional trauma. These traumas may occur concurrently or one may trigger the other. Body schema can also intersect with the ego in various ways.

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