How is it possible to map the human mind to explore order from disorder? This question is different from mapping the brain, for cells and synapses, in what is called connectomics.
What is unknown about how the brain works is specifically how the mind works. This means that in seeking answers, the components of the mind and their mechanisms are supposed to be a priority.
For example, cells are components of the brain because if an individual is thinking about something, neurons are not changing shape or becoming something else. Synapses can also be classified as components of the brain because synapses are not necessarily different because they are serving one function differently from the next. Several of the images of wires in the brain show similarities in a lot of connections, while functions are different. This means that it is possible, at least conceptually, to categorize cells and synapses as the brain.
So, if there would be any map, it should be for the mind, which is directly the basis of mental order and disorder, albeit there are several secondary basis. How can the human mind be mapped? What is the human mind? What is the relationship, in the cranium, between the human mind and the brain?
A.D.H.D. and connectomics
There is a recent [April 13, 2025] feature in The New York Times Magazine, Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong?, stating that, “How do you tell a normally rambunctious kid from a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [A.D.H.D.]? The tool that clinicians use to make that distinction is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., which provides a checklist of symptoms to use in diagnosing patients, including nine potential symptoms for inattention and nine for hyperactivity/impulsivity.”
“To qualify for the diagnosis, a child must display six symptoms from either category, of sufficient severity and level of impairment, for at least six months, starting before age 12, and those symptoms must be present in two different settings (like home and school). That seems pretty scientific — six symptoms, two settings, six months, age 12 — and it reflects a longstanding effort by many in the field to portray A.D.H.D. as a straightforward medical condition with clear diagnostic boundaries.”
“Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 11.4 percent of American children had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D., a record high. That figure includes 15.5 percent of American adolescents, 21 percent of 14-year-old boys, and 23 percent of 17-year-old boys. Seven million American children have received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, up from six million in 2016 and two million in the mid-1990s.”
“The preferred treatment for A.D.H.D. remains stimulant medications, including Ritalin and Adderall, and the market for those stimulants has expanded rapidly in recent years, in step with the growth of the diagnosis. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. increased in the United States by 58 percent. Although the prescription rate is highest among boys ages 10 to 14, the real growth market today for stimulant medication is adults. In 2012, Americans in their 30s were issued five million prescriptions for stimulants to treat A.D.H.D.; a decade later, that figure had more than tripled, rising to 18 million.”
The most important research, for now, towards making progress against A.D.H.D., would be to identify the human mind, then place its state across ages, to use it to determine variations of actions and behaviors, towards identification, categorization, and management of types of A.D.H.D.
Mapping the brain will not tell the story, but to map the mind and correlating symptoms with the mechanisms of the mind, the NIH BRAIN Initiative did not explore the mind in its connectome research, making the results not apply to areas of need for solutions, like A.D.H.D., memory, and so forth.
It is theorized that 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.
It is possible to use sets of signals to postulate how A.D.H.D. medications work, their side effects, their limitations and the states of mind across observed [A.D.H.D.] changes. The primary necessity for progress at this time, with all the evidence in neuroscience, is the collection of all the electrical and chemical signals, with their interactions and attributes, in sets, in clusters of neurons.
There is a recent [April 9, 2025] report in The New York Times, An Advance in Brain Research That Was Once Considered Impossible, stating that, “Human thought somehow emerges from this mix of excitation and inhibition. But how that happens has remained a tremendous mystery, largely because scientists have been able to study only a few neurons at a time.”
It is inaccurate to state that mapping neurons hindered how to understand thoughts because what would neurons become to think of a chair, differently from how they would become to think of a book, or a house? Neurons are cells. Their anatomy is almost fixed. They are also a part of the brain, without enough flexibility for the necessary changes. This makes them a non-candidate for the mind for thoughts or to have connectomics answer the unknowns. The human mind presents a path forward against A.D.H.D. and several other mental disorders.
This article was written for WHN by Dave Steyv, 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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