Computer science helps psychiatrist explain mental disorders

USA (SANEPR.com) August 11, 2008 -- Practical theories of the mind based largely on computer science will enable psychiatrists and psychologists of the future to better treat and cure patients with mental disorders.

This is a prediction of Dr Niall McLaren MD, an innovative psychiatrist based in Australia whose radical theory of mind has been accepted so far by only a few psychiatrists around the world.

Dr McLaren says, “Computer scientists and psychiatrists need to work together to develop practical theories about how the mind works so that they can better treat and cure patients.”

He has explained his own theory in a book published in 2007 titled “Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive Neurosciences” and has lectured on the subject this year at several universities in the United States.

Dr McLaren says, “Like computer processing, a substantial part of human mental life consists of the silent, rapid manipulation of information.

“Normal mental function falls quite readily into two distinct realms, the phenomenal or experiential, and the psychological or knowledge-based.

“The differences between what we know and what we experience is exclusive: knowledge is acquired gradually and can be conveyed to another person, whereas the phenomenal contents arrive immediately and are wholly private experiences.

“I call the overt, reportable level of the psychological realm the ‘cognitive contents’, and name the silent, unreportable level of the apprehension, storage and manipulation of information as the ‘cognitive analyzer’.

“The great majority of the decisions on which we base our daily lives are fully automated.

“Decisions are made at the level of data manipulation by the neuronal architecture of the brain,” he says. “This manipulation of coded information is rapid and silent, utterly unreportable.

“We make our myriad daily decisions by the complex interaction of a range of data inputs processed according to pre-existing rules coded in the brain.

“While some of these rules are explicit, that is they can be reported, many others, if not most, are implicit,” he says.

“That human behavior is non-random proves that some such organizing principles are operating during the generation of behavior.

“What we see of each other’s behavior is determined in the psychological realm.

Dr McLaren says, “We can clarify the relationships of different types of conscious experiences. There appear to be at least three types: the ordinary senses, the emotions, and those experiences related to cognitive function.

“Their similarities far exceed their differences, and they ought to be considered as but different forms of the same basic process or processes.

“For the ordinary senses, the triggering events are normally external but the triggers of emotions are events in the psychological realm.

“Speech is non-random,” he says. “The organizing principles that generate its regularity consist of information coded in the neurological substrate of the psychological realm. These principals are therefore part of that realm.

“We can call them ‘rules’,” he says. “Some rules are acquired explicitly, other implicitly, but, whatever the case, they function very quickly, silently converting incoming information to the sorts of instructions that allow the speech centers to activate the organs of speech.

“While the data are being processed, a further and simultaneous reprocessing of the same data by more complex ‘programs’ will generate a ‘virtual machine’ which is or gives rise to experiences.

“Critically important beliefs are acquired gradually,” he says. “They are acquired by the same processes, both explicit or implicit, by which one acquires any other belief, attitude or rule.

“Broadly speaking, they consist of a set of propositions about the nature of the world, about one’s physical and mental attributes and their worth, and about the interactions between the two realms.

“Manipulation of information within an immaterial realm amounts to a causally-effective ‘virtual machine’ arising from, but ultimately inseparable from, the physical realm.”

Dr McLaren says, “To understand automated decision-making, we need to go back 55 years to one of the seminal papers of the revolution in information technology, Alan Turing’s paper entitled Computing Machinery and Intelligence.

“A Turing machine consists of an input tape, a memory, a read-write head and an output tape. The input tape is simplified to the point of inanity, such that the data can be in one of only two forms, a one or a zero.

“All the machine has to do is read each datum sequentially, compare it with the memory store and decide whether to leave it as it is or change it,” he says.

“A person’s central nervous system is most definitely of a form that would support a universal computing function.

“The central nervous system meets the requirements of Turing’s machine,” he says. “It consists of receptors that receive energy inputs from the external world and convert them into a flow of digital data in the afferent nerves. The data flows are then manipulated at a series of points on their way back to the brain where further manipulation takes place.”

Dr McLaren says, “We have working models of unconscious decision making in every desktop calculator.

“The brain has sub-functions that do not cease even when the integrated whole we normally call consciousness has been interrupted.

“Decisions are made either immediately before or simultaneously with the conscious experience but quite independently of it.”

Dr McLaren says, “An important point of the universal Turing machine is that, with sufficient memory and computing power, it can generate virtual machines.

“This property of computers has long been exploited,” he says. “Most work on parallel computing, for example, is done on suitably programmed serial computers. Online auction houses like eBay and all internet banks are virtual machines.

“Virtual machines are all independent of their substrate,” he says.

“Everything we know about the structure and function of the nervous system supports the notion that it processes vast data inputs by cascades of stereotyped computation.”

Dr McLaren says, “So my theory is that the mind has two irreducibly mental components, cognition and conscious experience, which together account for the whole of mental life.

“This theory allows us to rely on known principles of physically based data processing in accounting for the ability of the mind to make the near infinite decisions on which daily life is based.

“It states that each person’s explicit and implicit belief states govern his mental life, that humans are sentient, rule-governed creatures.

“This is wholly and irreducibly a mentalist account of human behavior, yet it is firmly based in the physical structure of the brain.”

Dr McLaren says, “Unlike previous psychological theories, it takes account of the structurally defined limits of the central nervous system.”

Although the doctor has been promoting his theory through public speaking, in his book and on his web site at http://futurepsychiatry.com for nearly a year, he says other members of his profession in Australia seem reluctant to accept it.
He says this is because it contradicts the theory of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), which is the governing body of psychiatrists in the two countries.
#end

Photo of Dr Niall McLaren for web or print reproduction at http://www.wbpublicity.com.au/nm/booknm.htm .

Media contact: Dr Niall (Jock) McLaren – phone 61 08 89 455 399, fax 61 08 89 455 866, email jockmcl@octa4.net.au ; or publicist Wal Baker, phone 61 02 94167111, email wal@wb-pr.com .

Dr Niall McLaren
Consultant psychiatrist
Provider No. 0202977F
NORTHERN PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES Pty Ltd, ACN 077 835 557 PO Box 282, Sanderson, NT, Australia, 0813.
Phone: (08) 89 455 399 Fax: (08) 89 455 866
Email: jockmcl@octa4.net.au Web: www.futurepsychiatry.com