A Framework for Understanding the Pathophysiology of Functional Neurological Disorder, 2020, Hallett et al

[Andy]

The symptoms of functional neurological disorder (FND) are a product of its pathophysiology. The pathophysiology of FND is reflective of dysfunction within and across different brain circuits that, in turn, affects specific constructs.

In this perspective article, we briefly review five constructs that are affected in FND: emotion processing (including salience), agency, attention, interoception, and predictive processing/inference. Examples of underlying neural circuits include salience, multimodal integration, and attention networks. The symptoms of each patient can be described as a combination of dysfunction in several of these networks and related processes.

While we have gained a considerable understanding of FND, there is more work to be done, including determining how pathophysiological abnormalities arise as a consequence of etiologic biopsychosocial factors of FND. To facilitate advances in this underserved and important area, we propose a pathophysiology-focused research agenda to engage government-sponsored funding agencies and foundations.

Paywall, https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...cal-disorder/C37DBE94BB9BDD90CDEBF7640EAF7D0D
Sci hub (PDF), https://sci-hub.tw/10.1017/S1092852920001789

 

[Sean]

...including determining how pathophysiological abnormalities arise as a consequence of etiologic biopsychosocial factors of FND.

Don't you think you should establish the causal direction first?

The utter certainty in this piece is disturbing. This cannot end well.

 

[Snowdrop]

Shame on Cambridge University Press for publishing this kind of drivel.

https://www.cambridge.org/about-us/who-we-are/press-syndicate

I think they need a governance update to bring them out of the 17th century.

 

[rvallee]

While we have gained a considerable understanding of FND, there is more work to be done, including determining how pathophysiological abnormalities arise as a consequence of etiologic biopsychosocial factors of FND.

There has, in fact, not been a considerable understanding of FND. I don't know why people keep pretending otherwise, other than escalation of commitment, because it's clearly not the case. Everything remains a total mystery, in large part because of the obsession for a psychological etiology, an entirely baseless and aimless proposition. It's an advanced delusion to continue to claim that BPS factors are of any relevance here, this has been tried to death. The death of patients, not researchers, but to death nonetheless.

To facilitate advances in this underserved and important area, we propose a pathophysiology-focused research agenda to engage government-sponsored funding agencies and foundations.

This is literally what the patients who have been dismissed to the conversion disorder black hole of confusion have been asking and this is mutually exclusive with the obsessive focus, at the exclusion of all other factors, on psychological etiology. Other than the unnecessary obsession with BPS BS, obviously. Just the pathophysiology, otherwise you are wasting your time. Other than for clinically relevant factors, of course, but so far no discipline seems capable of taking up that task, all thanks to the complete sabotage and confusion of the damned conversion disorder ideology.

GROW. THE. F. UP. You made assumptions. They are wrong. Move on. In fact, move along and leave this to the people willing and able who have been pleading to work on precisely this for decades. There are no etiological "biopsychosocial" factors. GROW UP. Move along. Shoo. Shoo! You are bad at this job. Very, very bad.