There are a number of intractable conflicts across the world where the sides would just not budge. While efforts to resolve conflicts can be numerous, a point of curiosity is the question of the basis for extremism. How does the mind become so immovable that, regardless of the turn of events, appeal, and so on, some sides would not change their minds?
What does it mean to be extreme? How does the brain place extreme positions that are hardly forgotten or discarded? How can extremism be categorized as a function of the brain? How does it differ from [say] other emotions or from feelings, memory, and regulation of internal senses?
Theoretical Neuroscience
The first assumption is that extremism is a displacement, from regular, of certain functional architectures in the brain. It is theorized that all functions in the brain are set up by electrical and chemical signals, as sets. These sets are available, conceptually, in clusters of neurons. Evidence in neuroscience places neurons and their signals as responsible for functions.
Electrical and chemical signals, in sets, interact to result in functions, and they have some characteristics at the time of interactions to determine the extent of those interactions.
Usually, interactions may adjust the dimensions of the set, but they often revert to position or do not get displaced as much. However, for extremism, there is an angular displacement of the set, which stays put, curving farther to become the default dimension of the set.
Simply, say that for the interpretation of memory, electrical and chemical signals would interact, which may not result in a major or permanent displacement of the set. However, for a strong emotion like extremism, there is a major and permanent displacement, such that it does not change from that position at all, even sometimes without prioritization [of the set] or increased intensity [of electrical signals].
Extremism
It is postulated that the brain is made up of relays and destinations. Relays are paths of travel of summaries of configurations. Destinations are locations where configurations are made and available. Extremism is a destination, whose configuration [of a set of electrical and chemical signals] is at an angular displacement where it deepens its position, while attracting higher intensities of electrical signals, as well as distributing summaries of its configuration to other sets.
What it means to be extreme in a position or ideology is that the ideology is a set that bends into an angle of seeming permanence and dominance. This set, usually a thick set, bears more attributes than regular, resulting in its experiential effects. While extremism is its own set, where some sets send summaries to, towards shaping them, some sets actually become the displacement of extremism, resulting in the default dimensions of that set.
Might Conceptual Brain Science Solve Extremism?
Modeling and displaying extremism could become one area to understand what is going on in the brain towards how to negotiate solutions. For example, one of the first things to consider is if the position relates to the extreme set, or if the position is already in the angular displacement of extremism.
Then, to explore adjacent concessions around the extreme position or elsewhere, mapping parallels within the brain for where to get to for resolutions. Conceptual brain science has prospects in mitigating aspects of extremism, including against AI weapons at war.
There is a recent [August 15, 2025] report in New Scientist, Brain activity can predict whether strangers will become friends, stating that, “People who were friends at the eight-month mark had more similar responses in a portion of the left orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region involved in processing subjective value, than those who were furthest apart in the social network – that is, friends of friends of friends. This effect remained significant even after accounting for similarities in taste based on how much people rated their own enjoyment or interest in the movie clips.”
“Two months into the programme, the neural similarities between friends and non-friends were no different, suggesting people may initially form friendships based on proximity before finding closer friends over time. This was further supported when the researchers looked at how friendships changed between the two surveys. Participants who grew closer over this period had significantly greater similarities in the activity of 42 brain regions than those who drifted apart.”
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize the human mind with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
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