Traditionally, one of the philosophical constructs considered sacred by many in the chiropractic profession is that of Above Down Inside Out. This mental construct plays a dual role- on the one hand it, describes how the flow of intelligence (via impulses) starts from the brain, projects down to the spinal cord and flows over the nerves to end at a specific end tissue or organ to regulate its function. On the other hand, the pneumonic is a representation of the chiropractic approach to health and well-being, in that the cause of health comes from inside the patient. On a more subtler level it is used to make the distinction between the biomedical model of "getting the disease" and the vitalistic model of "losing health". Therefore, the term ADIO became a rallying cry for the chiropractic profession and Outside In Below Up was used to describe the biomedical approach (maybe even vilify it to some extent).
Before I get to the irony part, I'd like to bring a conceptual model to the table- The Cone Model. I was first exposed to the Cone Model by John DeMartini and like any model, I prefer to not say whether its true or false, just whether it is more or less useful. The Cone Model represents a proposed universal law, put forth by many philosophers, known as the Law of the One and the Many- This idea suggests that all is one, completely unified, at a high enough level of abstraction and development, and that everything else consists of varying degrees of dichotomy and contradiction. It is also referred to as the law of "similars and differences" or my favourite, the law of Entropy-Syntropy. As a quick attempt at definition and clarity- Entropy is the tendency for disorder, randomness or disorganization to submerge out of order and organization while Syntropy is the tendency for order or organization to emerge out of disorder or chaos. Nature maintains equilibrium between these two governing and directive forces.
So what does this have to do with ADIO-OIBU? Well I wondered if the anti-chiropractic concept of Outside-In-Below-UP could exist somewhere in Chiropractic as a balance to ADIO. And this may have occurred to some of you already, but having gained a tremendous amount of new knowledge and insight into the areas of evolutionary biology, epigenetics and neuroscience for the last year or so, my mind made some new synaptic connections regarding the development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny) of the human nervous system as a representation of OIBU. NO! YOU SAY, BLASPHEMY, YOU SAY! Yes, the very system we claim is the "master system", "the seat of the human experience" and the one system the gods of chiropractic has charged us with the mighty task of being experts and caretakers of.
Let's review what the world of the sciences are thinking with regards to the human brain in 2012 in point form:
- The brain can no longer be considered a fixed structure, with spatially distributed light switches (neurons) and well placed fuseboxes (control centres) that just get turned on and off.
- Disease and disability cannot just be explained through localized lesions to specific centres in the brain (including subluxation). It turns out we cannot explain all that the brain is capable of through localization of function alone.
- The brain is a much more dynamic organ than previously considered. Because of this, it created a much more complex problem which drove more questions such as- How does the brain take all of these individual areas with their individual sensory inputs and merge them into one coherent perception of the world? This became known as the Binding Problem.
- It would seem that some brave evolutionists (despite what wikipedia says)are bringing back the once ridiculed Recapitulation Theory that states- Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny- which, in plain english, means that in developing from embryo to adult, animals (including humans) go through stages resembling the successive stages in evolution of their remote ancestors. Long live Ernst Haeckel (the modern originator of this theory)!
- What this means is that the development of cognitive abilities in a child mirrors the phylogenetic evolution of cognition in the human species. It is built on MOTOR DEVELOPMENT. Human children only achieve self awareness after they have successfully achieved bipedalism and have developed a smooth coordinated gait.
- So in essence, as Golden Brain award winner Daniel Wolpert says, the only reason we have a brain is for complex and adaptable movement ("its why sea squirts eat their own brains", he says). This demoralized the entire Artificial intelligence and technology community because they realized that nothing truly intelligent is going to develop in a bodiless mainframe.
- Now the "Embodiment theory" of cognition is a hot buzz word in Neuroscience and it has spurred on other hot buzz words in the community such as "Default Mode Network" (which is gravity-induced consciousness which ties into posture and alignment...woohoo!!).
- And those HGP (Human Genome Project) people keep revising the number of genes we have downward.....ummmm.
So we have a situation (or theory) where bipedalism evolved initially because it conserved energy, but the awesome exaptation (or unintended (?) byproduct) of that was a larger, more complex and more developed brain because to achieve a habitual bipedal posture we would have to evolve the most coordinated and synchronized motor system of any animal in history. And in order to do that we would have to build the brain from the bottom up.......wait......what?!.....did you say build the brain from the BOTTOM UP?! Yes, I did and in order to do that, we have to gather sensory input from the environment (OUTSIDE) and bring it IN......GASP!!! Did you just say that our brains develops from OUTSIDE-IN-BELOW-UP? Yes.
"And thats why primitive reflexes exist- so that in order to sense our environment, we have to move in our environment?"
Yes.
"And thats why our genes only provide the most very basic scaffolding structure in our brains and that environmental experience provides the stimulation needed for more sophisticated processing?"
Yes.
"And thats the reason we don't remember our early childhood and that mirror self recognition only begins at age 2 is because this sophisticated processing doesn't exist prior to that?"
Yes.
Outside In stimulation leads to Bottom Up vertical integration in the developing brain before horizontal integration and more sophisticated lateral processing occurs. Then.....and only then... can we get Above Down Inside Out regulation. So here's my new Cone Model,
"Well that's ironic."
I know.
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