Psychobiological Model of Volition— Implications for Mental Disorders

摘要

A new psychobiological model of volitive processes and its implications for the etiopathology of mental disorders is proposed. The model is based on five elementary volitive processes. These are the volition to act; the volition to self-instrumentalize; the volition to program intentions, the volition to generate realities; and the volition to permanent existence. Imbalances in information processing in tripartite synapses and their network may be responsible for dysfunctions of self-instrumentalization. It is suggested that the volition to permanent existence unconsciously works in mental disorders, but the volition to intentional programming of realities and the volition to generate realities by communication with subjects and objects in their environment are impaired. In depression, the volition to act is constrained by hyperintentional programs that are non-feasible in the environment. In mania volitive processes are totally oriented on events in the environment without any goal-directed pro-gramming. Dysfunctions of volitive processes in schizophrenia are fun-damentally caused by severe impairments of self-instrumentalization. As shown in tripartite synapses a gap between sensory information pro-cessing in the neuronal network and the inner glial networks causes the inability of schizophrenics to distinguish between the self and the other. In delusions, the destiny for communication becomes staged as pseu-do-communication. Together, the study outlines a new model of volitive processes and deduces dysfunctions responsible for communication pa-thology and abnormal reality experiences of patients with mental disor-ders.