There is a recent announcement by the American Psychiatric Association, Get Ready to Join us in San Francisco for the 2026 APA Annual Meeting, stating that, “Registration for the 2026 APA Annual Meeting is live! We are back in the beautiful city of San Francisco, California, from May 16 – 20. We are gearing up to bring you four and a half days of future-focused education, insightful speakers, engaging networking opportunities, and much more.”
“Not only will you have the opportunity to expand your knowledge while in our numerous sessions, but you’ll also get the opportunity to take advantage of other meeting offerings such as the Mental Health Innovation Zone, the Community Psychiatry Hub, and dance the night away at the APA Foundation Benefit.”
“The 2026 Annual Meeting will also be the first time we feature innovative session formats such as debates, case-based learning, meet-the-expert, and more. We’ll also feature a Biological Psychiatry Hub and a rotating subspecialty track. We continue to pack the meeting with the quality content you and your patients need.”
2026
What is the promise of a new year for the American Psychiatric Association, given the urgency to solve mental disorders, or at least explain what they are in the brain?
More directly, what does it mean that no one knows what the human mind is, or how it works, to use its components, their muster points and relays to explain mental disorders, going into 2026?
What is depression? The question means what it is in the human mind? Then what does it mean that changes happen that result in the experience of depression? Where must the mind be for depression to hold? Even if depression remains unsolved, a description of the condition by the components of the mind and what they do holds some promise of progress, from the current stage, for mental disorders in general as well.
Human Mind
The most important pursuit for the American Psychiatric Association in 2026 is to at least define what exactly the human mind is, within the cranium, by specific components. Then, use the [conceptual] mechanisms to explain various mental disorders.
The objective will ensure that conditions are not just getting described with external observations, but with parallels of the mind. This is what 2026 could mean for the American Psychiatric Association.
This can be used to make explanations for progress.
Conceptual Brain Science
[Conceptually, the human mind is the collection of all the electrical and chemical signals, with their interactions and attributes, in sets, in clusters of neurons, across the central and peripheral nervous systems. Simply, the human mind is the set[s] of signals.
Interactions mean the strike of electrical signals on chemical signals, in sets. Interactions produce functions with common labels like memory, feelings, emotions, and regulation of internal senses. Attributes are the states of respective signals at the time of the interactions. They include common labels like attention, awareness, or less than attention, subjectivity, and intent or control.
In a set, electrical signals split, with some going ahead of others to interact with chemical signals. That split-state is a factor in the difference between intelligence and consciousness. Also, electrical signals, in a set, often have take-off paths, from which they relay to other sets, or arrival paths in which they begin their strike at other sets of [chemical] signals. If the paths have been used before, it is an old sequence. If not, it is a new sequence.
Intelligence often uses new sequences, resulting in the ability to have things be different, in words, or in other experiences. This is different from consciousness, where the sequences are often old.
There are also thick sets that collect whatever is unique in configuration between two or more thin sets. Thick sets do not just associate memories; they associate feelings, emotions, and the regulation of internal senses as well.
There are several other attributes [including minimal volume per configuration in a set of chemical signals] that may explain the difference between consciousness and intelligence, but two important ones are splits and sequences. Splits are at least two, with an initial one going quickly ahead, while the second one follows, in the same direction or another.
Electrical and chemical configurators as the human mind?
Why does therapy work? What are the side effects? Why does a condition relapse and so on? To step forward, it is possible to use electrical signals in the brain to explain all conditions in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision [DSM-5-TR].
No psychiatrist can make an anti-evidence claim against explaining [conceptually] how the mind works by electrical and chemical signals, in sets, in clusters of neurons.
Electrical and chemical signals are instead configurators, postulated to do more than being responsible for communication between neurons, but as the basis for how functions are mechanized. They organize information in the brain and are responsible for transportation. They are the human mind, conceptually. This distinguishes them from the body. There could be a dedicated human mind research lab, by the American Psychiatric Association, to use electrical and chemical configurators to explain mental disorders, starting from January 1, 2026.
There is a recent paper in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, MRI-Derived Markers of Acute and Chronic Inflammatory Processes in the VTA Associated with Depression, stating that, “Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, with inflammation increasingly recognized as a contributing factor. Inflammatory processes can disrupt the brain’s reward circuitry, particularly the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which is central to dopamine-mediated motivation and reward. This study investigates whether MRI-derived markers sensitive to neuroinflammation and microstructure in the VTA are associated with depression diagnosis and symptom severity.”
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who 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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