Uncertainty and stress: Why it causes diseases and how it is mastered by the brain

“The ‘states that agents believe they should occupy’ are represented in regions like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (Barron et al., 2015; Bechara et al., 2000; Gottfried et al., 2003; O'Doherty et al., 2003; Roesch and Olson, 2004).”

“This represents a problem of causal inference for the brain, analogous in many respects to our everyday reasoning about cause and effect, and to scientific methods of causal inference (Hohwy, 2013).”

“In many people – but not in habituators (see below) – the brain demands supplementary cerebral energy from the body stores (Peters and McEwen, 2015).”

“Over the past forty years, many researchers have defined stressful situations – from a bio-psychological perspective – as characterized by ‘no information, no control, uncertainty with a sense of threat’ (Koolhaas et al., 2011; Lyons and Levine, 1994; Monat et al., 1972).”

“, 1999; Zhang and Poo, 2002), and that TrkB receptor production rate displays a bellshaped-dose-response dependency on glucocorticoids (Schaaf et al., 1997; Shi and Mocchetti, 2000).”

“If the brain is in the business of inferring what its body should do next, it has to encode – at some level – probability distributions (Richmond and Wiener, 2007).”

“…(Carhart-Harris, 2018a), exemplified by findings of increased brain complexity/entropy (Schartner et al., 2017) and decreased modular differentiation (Petri et al., 2014), provides an iconic image of dysregulated global brain function under psychedelics, with the 5-HT2AR as the trigger point.”

“There is now a wealth of research in adults demonstrating that individual variability in neurobiological responses to stress is informed through the assessment of factors that shape perceptions and interpretations of stress [10, 179, 180].”

“This extended activation alters brain architecture in regions such as the PFC, amygdala, and hippocampus, which undermines adaptive regulation and coping (Peters et al., 2017).”

“…attentional bias toward threat (Hakamata et al. 2010), increased worry and self-related cognitions, dysfunctional learning about bodily states over time (Van den Bergh et al. 2017), and increased allostatic load leading to increased stress and mental illness (Peters et al. 2017, Sterling 2014).”

“…Castelfranchi, 2009; Stepp, 2009; Shemesh et al., 2010; Stepp and Turvey, 2010; Mossbridge et al., 2012; Dhar et al., 2013; Goel and Mehta, 2013; Bohm et al., 2016; De Berker et al., 2016; Katz and Springer, 2016; Peters et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2017; Gagliano et al., 2018; Katz et al., 2018).”