Avi Peled,
Debra BrandDan Moor drove into the parking lot at University Hospital and pulled into an empty space facing the building. He switched off the engine and sat behind the wheel, staring at the psychiatric wing. Of average height and build, Dan’s sandy colored hair bordered on unruly. He ran his fingers through it now, feelings of anticipation and apprehension making his stomach churn.

Neuromodulation is the next big challenge for Psychiatry. Technology of Neuromodulation isadvancing fast and is being tested on patients. However, the challenge of where and when tostimulate reminds us that we have not fully defined the underlying causes of mental disorders.Moreover, the etiology of mental disorders is essentially still lacking. This book was writtenbearing in mind that before advances in Neuromodulation can be achieved, a reasonable theoryfor guiding modulation needs to be formulated. Such a theory should be based on the availableknowledge accumulated in the field of computational neuroscience.

The project for a scientific psychiatry is an ambitious endeavor. It opts to complete Freud’s original effort to explain the physical (neuronal) roots of mental phenomena. Achievements in biological psychiatry reflect the consensus that psychiatric mental disorders are brain disorders. However, we do not have enough knowledge about the exact processes underlying the different mental disturbances. Without understanding of the specific causes for mental disorders, their diagnosis is descriptive and subjective, thus unreliable and deceptive. Two reasons for our shortcomings in this field. Firstly, not enough is known about how the brain works to enable high mental functions. Secondly, there are no good theoretical frameworks or models that can explain the underlying neurological pathology of mental disorders. In 1895, Sigmund Freud attempted to explain mental phenomena and mental disorders based on neurological brain functions. He wrote in his manuscript titled Project for a Scientific Psychology “The intention [of this project] is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science” Figure 1. By natural science, Freud meant disciplines like biology and physics that deal with matter by using measurement and experimentation.

‘Cerebrum Prinicipia de Morbus Mentis’ means Brain Principles of Mental Disorders. The term ‘Principia’ comes to signify the importance of this document to psychiatry by comparing it to the importance of the ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Prinicipia Mathematica’ to calculus, as written by Issac Newton. Full disclosure, this manuscript was edited with the help of Open-AI restricted to definitions and explanations, not to the basic ideas which are a product of 30 years of work including actual research and thought experiments (see PUBMED Peled A). Brain-related Psychiatry is founded on three principles. Principia I, Brain neural network connectivity, small world organization. Principia II, Brain Hebbian dynamics of internal representations. Principia III, Bayesian Brain Dynamics of global adaptations. Each of these Principia are a chapter in this manuscript. Neuroanalytic Diagnosis and it’s Appendix conclude the manuscript with a proposed novel diagnostic conceptualization to be applied to the clinical assumptions and evaluations.

Psychiatric diagnosis based on the DSM is descriptive. The DSM is a set of descriptions (signs and symptoms) with a title. For example, if the patient is complaining about sadness, helplessness, insomnia, and lack of motivation he recives the DSM title of “Depression.” Unlike psychiatry, in other fields of medicine the diagnosis is etiological meaning that the name of the disease is the cause of the disease. For example, “Appendicitis” involves a location in the body, the Appendix, part of the intestine, and it is infected, as “itis” indicates. Another example, “Mitral Valve Prolapse” indicates valve insufficient closure, in the heart, again a location in the body and its related pathology. “Depression,” “Anxiety” and all other psychiatric diagnosis are not in any way body-locations or pathologies. This is because the aetiology of mental disorders is simply unknown thus psychiatry is stuck with a descriptive diagnostic approach of the DSM.