The Intelligent Body and its Discontents

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Abstract
The traditional view is that mind is intelligent and the body is stupid. Recent research suggests that the whole body, and not just the brain, acts as a complex parallel processing system. If the whole body is intelligent, then intelligent processes normally attributed to psychology may occur in the non-brain body. This article shows how self-organizing learning error in a brain-body system creates the potential for a new type of pathology, network pathology, that is distributed across over the whole body. The intelligent body concept is illustrated with four examples: chemical sensitivity, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome and obesity. Network pathology develops when normally adaptive self-organizational processes malfunction so that control system parameters are altered in a way that creates suboptimal self-regulation. Subtle therapies are needed, in addition to the conventional robust therapies to correct network pathology.

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