Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Holistic
Health Model
in diagrams
©2010
Dr Romesh Senewiratne
2
Contents:
Introduction....................................................................................7
Neuropsychology of dance.....................................................................41
Motor homunculus.........................................................................62
Pituitary hormones.......................................................................64
Pineal biochemistry......................................................................68
Pineal secretions..........................................................................71
Holistic psychiatry
INTRODUCTION:
This collection of diagrams was drawn between 1995 and 2010, and is
part of my attempt to create a holistic model of the brain and mind that
incorporates a health, rather than a disease, paradigm.
The model I studied at the University of Queensland in the late 1970s and
early 1980s was focused on disease, and deeply splintered between
neurology and psychology. Medical courses around the world still are.
Diseases of the brain and nervous system, I learned, were termed
neurological diseases, while diseases of the mind were termed
“psychiatric disorders”. Many years working as a family doctor illustrated
the limitations of this model when it comes to understanding and
promoting health, rather than disease.
In 1995, after seven years in general practice, I took some time off
medicine to focus on music and a project to record live bands in
Melbourne. I had set up a recording company with two of my band
members in 1994, and planned to establish an organization called Groove
On, with the objective of promoting Melbourne’s thriving youth musical
scene. The organization was intended to foster a cooperative rather than
a competitive environment for sharing music. I was on top of the world,
enthusiastic and highly “goal directed”. In psychiatric terms, I was
suffering from “hypomania”.
The diagrams in this book chart the evolution of my ideas about the
relationship between the mind and body (including the brain). These ideas
started crystallising in 1995, with an insight, gained after an afternoon
spent painting with my then two-year-old daughter, that communication,
curiosity and play are instincts that can be used therapeutically for the
promotion of physical and mental health. For example, promoting
curiosity and self-directed learning can be used to prevent and perhaps
remedy dementia, while promotion of communication, curiosity and play
can also be of value in the treatment of depression and melancholia. In
addition, promoting curiosity and the instinctual drive for exploration can
be used to promote physical activity – walking in particular. Play, to use
the term broadly, can include ‘playing’ music and musical instruments,
which provide broad health benefits.
I remain particularly interested in how what we see and hear affect our
health. This includes both negative and positive influences in our health
and sanity – what we see and hear can create delusions, and lead us in
directions that are not conducive to health. At the same time there has
been inordinate focus on what we consume as it relates to our health,
rather than what we see, hear or do. Recent research in the
neurosciences has demonstrated that the brain continues to form new
connections throughout life. It seems reasonable to suppose that focusing
our attention on what is beautiful, truthful, gentle, graceful and
harmonious, can promote health, while an excessive focus on what is
ugly, dishonest, violent, clumsy and discordant has opposite effects
(though discordant sounds have their place in music).
Every action prepares the brain for more action along the same lines.
Pathways that are used a lot become habituated – they conduct electricity
faster and more efficiently. Also, neurotransmitters stored in vesicles at
the tips of axons (the outgoing or efferent nerve processes) are better
able to release the chemical messengers that carry signals to the next
cell. This is the mainstream view of brain organization, one that I will use
to build a more complex model of how the brain, mind and body work
together to promote health, and how we can facilitate these healing
mechanisms by paying attention to what we look at and listen to.
how it functions. This is obviously the case in babies and young children,
but it remains the case when we get older.
Modern neuroscience has indicated that the nerve cells (neurons) in the
brain and nervous system are losing and forming new connections
throughout life. Though there is a gradual reduction in the number of
neurons in the brain from the third year of life, the surviving cells have
the potential to connect with other nerve cells through increasingly
complex, branching axons and dendrons. This means we can be
developing our brains, and improving them, throughout life.
Diagram 1 (1998):
Lateral and ventral views of the brain showing the four outer lobes of the
cortex and the cerebellum:
12
For example, looking for a ‘part of the brain’ responsible for creativity,
wisdom, music or emotions is likely to be, at best, over-simplistic.
Memory, too, cannot be localised in this way, though certain structures,
such as the hippocampus, mammillary bodies and the hypothalamus are
18
http://www.scribd.com/doc/76085344/The-Brain-s-Processing-of-Music-by-Dr-Romesh-Senewiratne
32
For more detail, and explanation of these diagrams, please see The
Brain’s Processing on Music, published on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/76085344/The-Brain-s-Processing-of-Music-by-Dr-Romesh-Senewiratne
33
Diagram 34 (2000) Some basic principles for music therapy that can be
used for self-therapy. From Music and the Brain (2000).
46
Diagram 42 (2010): The left thalamus showing the location of the lateral
and medial geniculate nuclei. The medial geniculate nucleus (MGN)
receives auditory information and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)
receives visual information. From the MGN the data is transmitted to the
auditory cortex in the temporal lobes before being transmitted to other
parts of the brain. In the visual system, data is transferred from the LGN
to the visual cortex in the occipital lobes (at the back of the brain).
Functionally, then, the thalamus works in intimate detail with the cortex.
The localisation in function that is evident in the cortex also applies to the
thalamus, although the structure also enables integration of sensory
inputs, and selective attention and concentration on salient aspects of our
environment. Deciding what is salient, though, is likely to have more to
do with cortical function (especially that of the frontal lobes) and activity
in the limbic system than the thalamus.
54
Diagram 46
Naming the parts of the basal ganglia and decisions about which
structures to include in the term are subject to disagreement by experts.
Some classify the layer of homogenous cells deep to the insula and
superficial to the putamen (the claustrum) as a part of the basal ganglia.
Others regard the claustrum as a deep, extra layer of the insula. The
input nuclei of the basal ganglia are the caudate nucleus and putamen.
These receive outputs from the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes of the
cortex. The frontal lobe inputs include pathways related to voluntary
movements and are implicated in Parkinson’s Disease and drug-induced
Parkinsonism.
58
Pineal
Mammillary body
Pituitary gland
Paraventricular
Anterior nucleus
hypothalamic
Preoptic nucleus Dorsomedial nucleus
nucleus
Posterior nucleus
Ventromedial nucleus
Suprachiasmatic nucleus
Diagram 94: Influence of the auditory system on the brain and mind
104
Diagram 95: Influence of the visual system on the brain and mind
105
Holistic Psychiatry
Diagram 103: Progression from delusion to sanity
113