The nerves of the brain may be activated or inhibited.

Ideas come to mind, or are put to the back of the mind.

Attention is activation of what is relevant and inhibition of what is not relevant.

Inhibition may be more biologically costly than activation. The hard work of doing nothing. The hard work of not doing something.

The ego, or adult, is the continuous process of balancing instinctual activations with injunctive inhibitions.

Activation, both motor and sensory, is contained within reverberatory buffer circuits.

The more nerves that are in phase with each other, the more likely are associated brain waves.

Reverberant sensory activations are compared with stored memories by the hippocampi.

Reverberatory buffer circuits can become overloaded, to manage which we sleep.

Motor activation is mediated by sequences of nerves that pass from the cerebral cortex through the thalami, the spinal cord and the muscles, and can be inhibited at those points.

Gender differences have been observed in the anatomy of motor inhibition.

Some of what purports to be entertainment is a contrivance to activate gender differences in inhibition.

Sensory activation can be inhibited, that is gated, before it reaches the cerebral cortex, specifically at the sense organs, the spinal cord, the brainstem, and the thalami.

The more sensory inhibition, then the more likely that successive responses will be determined by the prevailing activations and inhibitions, which escalates moods of excitement and depression: hence the importance of verbal challenges of someone who is overexcited, and of time and space for someone who is melancholy to hear himself or herself speak assertively about perceived inhibitors. Memories give trajectories that predict the consequences of one’s actions, but these memories have to be updated by sensory activations.

The more that activations are distributed through memory circuits by reflection and by sleep, then the less likely they are to be reactivated by sensory stimuli, unexpectedly.

The placebo effect may reflect activation of memories of responses to recognised treatments, which memories then activate those responses.

Activation is accompanied by arousal. Arousal is mediated through a diffuse network of nerves that is difficult to inhibit, hence the expression ‘hardwired’.

Activation may be preceded by arousal, illustrated by the readiness potential, and by the contingent negative variation.

Arousal is orchestrated by the thalami (chambers), in particular by the reticular nuclei, and the diffuse network of nerves is called the reticular formation. Thalamic activity is enhanced when distraction is expected. Accidents are less likely if one orchestrates in the same ways as one’s thalami; input or output, visceral or somatic: multitasking is risky.
Beneath each thalamus is a hypothalamus, which contains nerves that control sleep, appetite, hormones and body temperature.
Multiple sensory stimuli, including vibration, converge on the brainstem and compete for transmission to the brain through their different degrees of associated arousal, which competition can be used to control pain, and to alter body image.
Hypnosis is a misnomer for control of sensory input through control of concomitant arousal. Hypnosis is focused relaxation.
Reduction in the activity of the reticular formation is the final common pathway of prayer, relaxation, meditation, yoga, and hypnosis, and is the initial pathway of stress inoculation.
Rhythmic sounds reveal states of arousal, through reactive body movements.
Mirror neurones reduce risks and biological costs through the enablement of arousal without action.

Arousal fluctuates several times in the day and night, and can be processed and then distributed by 4-6 hourly periods of repose and reflection.
Oblique thinking occurs because different thoughts are accompanied by the same level of arousal.
Arousal is distributed to both visceral and somatic circuits, attention to which makes psychosomatic responses less likely: if smooth muscle is driving peristalsis, don’t close sphincters by activation of striated muscles through real or imagined activity.
The more that one inhibits an instinctual activation, the more likely that the residual arousal will activate the nerves to one’s body, and the more prone one will be to unexpected lapses of concentration, and to sudden, uncharacteristic actions: there is limited gain control.
Description of orgasms by men and women have not been distinguishable. Comparison of scans of orgasms of men and women have found that the same regions are activated. Thus, penis envy appears to be situational. When scans can distinguish between cortical layers, sexual drive may be found to increase linearly with discrepancy between the activations of layers that perceive and the activations of layers that remember.
The activations of eating that lead to obesity may be to offset sexual arousal, and the arousals of anger and of defiance. The inhibitions of eating which lead to anorexia nervosa afford some control over hormone release, and thus over sexual arousal. The management of eating disorders should be like a family meal.
The distribution of arousal to the pelvic viscera necessitates exploration of sexual feelings in a family setting in the management of pathological gambling.
High levels of arousal persist because of the lack of cognitive maps, that is cerebral circuitry, to contain the arousal, and then channel it into goals.
States of high arousal that are not contained and channelled into goals, escalate into the use of weaponry, and the misuse of machinery, such as the motor car and the vacuum cleaner. Nest-building and preening have been observed in the frustrated black-headed gull.
Comorbidity of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder with other conditions suggests that the presentations may actually be variations in the activity of the reticular formation within those conditions.

Depression may be due to loss of activation, as in bereavement, or to excessive inhibition, as in unequal relationships. Excessive inhibition requires exploration of the distribution of perceived inhibitors, and then the disinhibiting opportunity to hear oneself talk assertively about the perceived inhibitors. At the next moment of perceived inhibition, one closes one’s hands, pronates one’s forearms, draws back one’s shoulders, fixes one’s eyes unwaveringly on the inhibitor’s eyes, and enunciates: “I do not recognise that characterisation of me.”

Excessive inhibition is more likely if the personality is pronoid rather than paranoid.
An inhibited disposition can be detected by a predictable delay between the intimation that a stimulus has been perceived and a verbal response to that stimulus.
Inhibition in relation to important others may present as fatigue.
Therapeutic disinhibition of a patient is more difficult if the inhibition is presynaptic (repression) compared with postsynaptic (suppression).
Inhibition may spread to the nerves that control sleep and appetite, which requires a medical consultation.

Hibernation occurs in animals when food, water, heat and light are in short supply: adaptive inhibition keeps demand in line with supply. Adaptive inhibition may be a therapeutic perspective of value in managing depression in general and winter and summer depression in particular.

Lack of inhibition of personal responses during communication indicates self-activation, which protects against depression, for example, seemingly incautious sorties into the social media, and reciprocal stimulation using mobile ‘phones.

Male losses during adolescence have been poorly understood, with lethal consequences.

Crocodiles shed tears so as to lubricate and sterilise their food.

Lachrymosity is an ancestral feeding activation, both the joyous lubrication and feeding of the feeder, and the sad feeding of oneself after loss of the feeder through predation.

Blushing conditions partnership and group membership.

Hyperventilation follows bated breath, which is an ancestral inhibitory response to the presence of a predator.

Migraine is a protective activation, to prevent damage to the eyes by the dryness of excessive inhibition. Eyes should be kept moist through the use of eye drops every 4-6 hours, and through lachrymosity, by a willingness to feel sad and to avoid driven reactions to loss and adversity.

The time of onset of chronic pain and of recurrent pain is best understood if one considers what else requires inhibition at that time, for example anger, passion, and reverie.

Migraine lateralises because of anatomical asymmetries.

Lateralised headaches have followed the use of mobile ‘phones, perhaps due to activation of muscle spindles by magnetic fields from internal hardware and from radio frequency signals.

Obsessional tidiness derives from the instincts of potential prey to conceal urine and faeces, consistent with obsessional disorders being more common in those who have been preyed upon. Repetitions are driven by high levels of arousal which lack cognitive maps, that is cerebral circuitry, to contain the arousal, which requires the subject to explore his or her habitat and workplace for perceived hostility.

Phonolocation is the use of laryngeal sounds to locate oneself in the world. Throat clearances and coughs signal one’s attentive presence, and any response indicates the likelihood of immediate contact with the responder.

Theory of mind derives from the use of sensory imagination in exchanges between prey and predators, where imagination means the combination of perceptions, such as rate of change of gaze, and memories, based on past experience. Theory of mind is facilitated by mirror neurones.

Schizophrenia follows fear of abandonment in the habitat, so that the instinctual activations of childhood are inhibited in favour of situational activations. The hormonal changes of adolescence intensify the inhibited activations, so that one person becomes two people.

Lack of exploration of one’s habitat and of the neighbouring territory indicates fear of predation. Invertebrate and vertebrate prey assess the risk of predation by listening to predators’ vocalisations.


To be or not to be, that is the question: to be means that activations are in excess of inhibitions, while not to be means that inhibitions are in excess of activations.
Any ecological unit of humans can be described at any moment by the distribution of activations and inhibitions within and between the individual humans who comprise that ecological unit.

Humans can be parasites or hosts, depending on the place and on the time: for example, a parasite at work, a host at home.
A human in parasitic mode is looking for somewhere to be. Activations are in excess of inhibitions, for example pseudo-conversation.
A human in parasitic mode who is angry makes the host angry, so as not to be alone.
A human in parasitic mode who has received bad news relays the bad news to the host as quickly as possible, so as not to be alone.
A human in parasitic mode causes disruption in hosts so as to improve his or her own concentration: the responses of the hosts activate the mental processes of the human in parasitic mode from outside, activation from inside having been problematic.
A human in parasitic mode causes disruption in hosts, so as to insinuate his or her own ideas subliminally.
A human in parasitic mode resolves ambivalence by making a host into one part of the ambivalence.
A human in parasitic mode can redistribute resources: the tragedy of the commons.
A human in parasitic mode mimics the verbalisations of the intended host.
Humans in parasitic mode, seducers and salespersons use ellipsis to provoke curiosity, and thus engagement. For seducers, ellipsis is the conversational equivalent of the sartorial flash.

Hosts make spaces where parasites can be, through inhibition of their own activations, so that inhibitions are in excess of activations: incentives include sexual promise, financial promise, the pecking order, and the superiority of products to be provided.

Reciprocal parasitism means mutuality, sometimes referred to as love.
Parasitic invasion can be defended if the intended host mimics the human in parasitic mode, which results in a Nash equilibrium.
Uxorial and husbandly wisdom determine that one’s partner does not go to work as a potential parasite, or as a potential host.
Divorce defines human parasites and human hosts.

Persistent, unacknowledged parasitic behaviour drives the host to anxiety, obsessionality, alexithymia (without words for feelings), inebriety, disorderliness, and embroilment with children; the host may die: the selfish chromosome.
A persistent parasitic human who leaves his or her host has a reduced expectation of life thereafter.
The number of people with whom one can comfortably maintain stable relationships is a function of human parasitic behaviour, because of the biological costs of hosting a human who is in parasitic mode.

Not to be in childhood is dangerous for later life. Autism is a defence against schizophrenia. It is better to be in one’s own world than not to be in someone else’s world. The avoidance of emptiness.
Autism persists, in spite of reduced reproductive fitness.