The Brain, A Decoded Enigma

by Dorin Teodor Moisa

ETA 31: Some times aggressivity may fight XS1-type schizophrenia.

The aggressivity is defined as a stronger than average tendency to activate ZAM models. An aggressive person has the tendency to easily activate models that act on the external reality.

Let's see some typical situation in common external reality.

Example 1: People who go to supermarkets have easily noticeable schizophrenic tendencies during shopping. This is understandable. Each product seen will activate at least one model, so, in a short time, the brain is overwhelmed by the multitude of models activated at the simple identification of the entities of the external reality. They need to correlate, in addition, the offer (price, quality..) with their (usually) limited financial resources. The effort of the brain is very big, so that little energy is left to take into account the surrounding people. Those who are in a hurry (have precise models to execute) will perceive the ones overwhelmed by the problem as "sleeping", blocking the flow.

However, as we have seen, schizophrenic tendencies are, up to a point, understandable. The local-schizophrenia given by a main problem which preocupies too much the brain could be fought by the aggressivity of the others (if it existed). When, for instance, the others disturb too much or too often the "sleepy" (as in the supermarket example) the latter will be forced to redirect part of their resources to respond to the many external perturbations. To do this, they need e.g. to build several concept (simplified) models for the products, and this is evolution (everything non- essential is discarded).

Thus, the aggressivity of the others can fight local-schizophrenia as it has been described above. If enough people will be aggressive with those attained by local schizophrenia, the result will be that the shoppers will have more precise ideas and will decide faster. Anyways, an aggressive environment will attenuate to disappearance local-schizophrenia with beneficial effects on everybody.

Example 2: the same type of local (temporary) schizophrenia appears when driving in busy city traffic. Many will be overwhelmed and will react slowly with excessive caution and this will upset the other aggressive drivers. If there are enough aggressive drivers, or if the law favours those drivers, then the "sleepy" will be either self-removed from traffic, or they will join the tendency to aggressive driving. The effect would be an increase in fluency and hopefully fewer accidents.

Connected to this paradox (aggressivity diminishing the number of accidents) the pros could be: the "sleepy" upset the aggressive. The aggressive could thus produce accidents. If the "sleepy" will dissapear, the risk of accident will be decreasing significantly because of less sources of irritation. If the "sleepy" will vanish from traffic the occasions of the aggressive to show aggressivity will decrease. This can be explained by the fact that, if the one in front of me knows that I am aggressive, he will not risk to drive "lazy". Also, if I have an aggressive driver behind me, I will not risk to be aggressed, so I will drive more dynamically, without hesitation. The result is not only more fluency but also the diminishing of the effect of aggressivity.

We have shown how XS1-type schizophrenia could be fought by aggressivity, if the law favoured aggressivity e.g.

Let's see the reverse. A schizophrenic population reacts slowly and based on too short-range models to the permanent perturbation associated with everyday life. The dynamic individuals will be discouraged by an inert society and so they will "contribute" to the general bad status of the society.