Neurocybernetic Control Mechanisms of Informational Homeostasis

Abstract

This paper discusses the fact, that to be able to keep its stability in a very variable environment, alongside substantial and energetical exchanges, the human organism must maintain also a permanent informational exchange with the environment it lives in. But the communication functions of the organism are of a very limited volume and cannot transmit all the information offered by the environment. Therefore, the organism is obliged to perform a rigorous selection of information received. A first selection is performed by means of excitability threshold and of the refractory period. A more adequate selection is performed by means of inhibition, habituation, attention, tiredness, and sleep. But those mechanisms control only the signals, reception, because organism receive only some signals from the exterior. Those signals are information carriers. But, in order to be able to discover the information it carries, the nervous system must submit the received signals to some very complicated processings, as the superisa-tion process is. Because the discovered information does not depend only on received signals, but also on the way they were processed; information discovered by the nervous system is not similar to that emitted by the source. Therefore, informational homeostasis is not similar to signal homeostasis.

Along beside signals selecting means, for informational homeostasis preservation, there are also certain affective factors and especially the process of discovering and processing of discovered information. These mechanisms can assure neuropsychical equilibrium under overstressing and substressing informational condition. and their disturbance can lead to certain psychical diseases.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adrian Restian

Joyce Laing works in the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, Playfield House, Cupar, Fife, and is a Consultant Art Therapist to Psychiatric Hospitals and Prisons and Chairwoman of the Scottish Society of Art and Psychology.