Author: Agustin Ibanez1, Georg Northoff2
Affiliation: <sup>1</sup> Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), University of California San Francisco (UCSF), California, US; & Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; Latin American Brain Health (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile; Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), and CONICET, Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Electronic address: agustin.ibanez@gbhi.org.
<sup>2</sup> Mental Health Center, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Zhejiang, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China; Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China; Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics, Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. Electronic address: Georg.Northoff@theroyal.ca.
Conference/Journal: Neurosci Biobehav Rev
Date published: 2023 Dec 15
Other:
Pages: 105510 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105510. , Word Count: 196
The cognitive neuroscience of brain diseases faces challenges in understanding the complex relationship between brain structure and function, the heterogeneity of brain phenotypes, and the lack of dimensional and transnosological explanations. This perspective offers a framework combining the predictive coding theory of allostatic interoceptive overload (PAIO) and the intrinsic neural timescales (INT) theory to provide a more dynamic understanding of brain health in psychiatry and neurology. PAIO integrates allostasis and interoception to assess the interaction between internal patterns and environmental stressors, while INT shows that different brain regions operate on different intrinsic timescales. The allostatic overload can be understood as a failure of INT, which involves a breakdown of proper temporal integration and segregation. This can lead to dimensional disbalances between exteroceptive/interoceptive inputs across brain and whole-body levels (cardiometabolic, cardiovascular, inflammatory, immune). This approach offers new insights, presenting novel perspectives on brain spatiotemporal hierarchies and interactions. By integrating these theories, the paper opens innovative paths for studying brain health dynamics, which can inform future research in brain health and disease.
Keywords: allostatic interoception; brain dynamics; brain health; cognitive neuroscience; intrinsic neural timescales; neurology; predictive coding theory; psychiatry; spatiotemporal hierarchies; transnosological explanations.
PMID: 38104789 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105510