what's your sense, PK, of how the temporally oscillatory nature of the Liver-Gallbladder node relates to syndromes of limbic/emotional oscillation? It seems both are examples of what TCM would call shaoyang syndrome, with its hot/cold alternation; and that in limbic oscillation this occurs on an emotional level. Perhaps it's just different octaves of the same oscillatory pattern.
That's an interesting question. Here are my thoughts: 1) our neurocentric view of emotions sees them as arising from the limbic system, as you say; but increasingly, we're coming back to an older view in biomedicine that emotions actually begin in the organs, and then are perceived in various brain circuits (such as the limbic structures) as feelings--this relates to the organ-brain axes, where neuroendocrine-immune signals pass between the organs and brain regions, 2) both the liver and limbic system have ultradian (<24 hour), circadian (24 hour), and infradian (>24) rhythms; an interesting questions is: is there entrainment between these rhythms in the liver and limbic system? At this point, it's hard to measure, since we don't have a direct way of measuring liver rhythms, but perhaps with better wearable sensing technology, we might acheive that soon, 3) my intuition is that the organs are mapped to brain regions via vagal connections, etc.--so the hypothalamus is an "upper liver", the amygdala an "upper kidney", the cortex is an "upper small intestine", and so forth. Basically, the brain is an "inverse" of organs below the diaphram, so what happens in an organ is reflected in the corresponding brain regions. Hence, for instance, the association with kidneys-fear in TCM and the amygdala. Mediating between the "lower" metabolic pole and "upper" nerve-sensory pole is the rhythmic system (heart-lungs), 5) regarding Shao Yang: I have a totally different take on the 6 conformations, which I'll save for a future post!
what's your sense, PK, of how the temporally oscillatory nature of the Liver-Gallbladder node relates to syndromes of limbic/emotional oscillation? It seems both are examples of what TCM would call shaoyang syndrome, with its hot/cold alternation; and that in limbic oscillation this occurs on an emotional level. Perhaps it's just different octaves of the same oscillatory pattern.
That's an interesting question. Here are my thoughts: 1) our neurocentric view of emotions sees them as arising from the limbic system, as you say; but increasingly, we're coming back to an older view in biomedicine that emotions actually begin in the organs, and then are perceived in various brain circuits (such as the limbic structures) as feelings--this relates to the organ-brain axes, where neuroendocrine-immune signals pass between the organs and brain regions, 2) both the liver and limbic system have ultradian (<24 hour), circadian (24 hour), and infradian (>24) rhythms; an interesting questions is: is there entrainment between these rhythms in the liver and limbic system? At this point, it's hard to measure, since we don't have a direct way of measuring liver rhythms, but perhaps with better wearable sensing technology, we might acheive that soon, 3) my intuition is that the organs are mapped to brain regions via vagal connections, etc.--so the hypothalamus is an "upper liver", the amygdala an "upper kidney", the cortex is an "upper small intestine", and so forth. Basically, the brain is an "inverse" of organs below the diaphram, so what happens in an organ is reflected in the corresponding brain regions. Hence, for instance, the association with kidneys-fear in TCM and the amygdala. Mediating between the "lower" metabolic pole and "upper" nerve-sensory pole is the rhythmic system (heart-lungs), 5) regarding Shao Yang: I have a totally different take on the 6 conformations, which I'll save for a future post!