Psychology in the new world physics

We have a reasonably good working knowledge of brain structure as a substrate supporting information processing. This structure–function relationship presupposes that physically describable brain mechanisms explain, questionably, the processing of every kind of psychologically described experience.

There are cases, for instances in which the conscious act of willfully altering the mode by which experiential information is processed itself changes, in systematic ways, the cerebral mechanisms utilized. More recently, neurological literature has coined the term "self-directed neuroplasticity" to serve as a general description of the principle that focused training and effort can systematically alter cerebral function.

At the same time attempts to understand the functional activity of the brain have so far mostly been based on some principles of classical physics that have been challenged by more contemporary quantum-based, uncertainty-bearing new physics.

According to the classical conception of the world, all causal connections between observables, tangibles are explainable in terms of mechanical interactions between material realities. But this restriction on modes of causation is not fully maintained by the currently applied principles of physics, which offer an alternative conceptual foundation for the scientific description and modeling of the causal structure of self-directed neuroplasticity.

Utilizing the conceptual framework of contemporary physics has at least one advantage for neuroscience and neuropsychology - Notions such as "feeling," and "knowing" are intrinsically mentalistic and experiential, cannot be described exclusively in terms of material structure.

Contemporary physics might allow data from the emerging field of self-directed neuroplasticity to be described and understood in a way that is more rationally coherent and ultimately useful than what is permitted by theories in which all causation is required to be fundamentally mechanical.