Oscillations in Biological Systems: Psychopathological Associations

Oscillations in Biological Systems: Psychopathological Associations

Introduction

The sum of unconnected causes tends toward a gaussian distribution as a limit and that the sum of random causes is manifested as cyclical series. In contrast to the classical thermodynamic systems in which stability is maintained through energy conservation, and energy loss leads to instability and disorganization, biological systems are dissipative nonlinear, far-from-equilibrium structures in which stability is the result of energy dissipation. The fundamental source of energy in living systems is ATP which, in one of its major modes, is generated by glucose glycolysis through the biochemical oscillations of phosphofructokinase according to the nonlinear kinetics of nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems. At the molecular level this energy is transmitted by the vibrational deformation of antisymmetric solitons [1-10].

Given that living systems are inserted in a geophysical state determined by the parameters of the rotation of the earth and the consequent alternation of light and dark occurring in different cycles through yearly seasonal variations, the critical importance of circadian oscillations, the key role played by the light-dependent enzyme N-acetyltransferase in controlling circadian cycles through serotonin-melatonin transformations, and the importance of maintaining a complex pattern of reciprocal balances between the multiplicity of interlocking circadian, ultradian, and circannual oscillations immediately follows [11-20]. At all levels of biological organization, stability as a result of reciprocal oscillations of key components is apparent; in hormonal systems such as LHRH-LHtestosterone where the oscillatory solution corresponds to stability or in the pituitary thyrotropin-thyroxin-intermediary enzyme interaction in which stability hinges on the steady-state solution. It is apparent in the regulation of the REM phase of sleep determined by the reciprocal interactions of the pontine reticular giant cells’ excitation and the inhibitory functions of raphe neurons and locus ceruleus, a system that conforms to predator-prey relationship defined by the Lotka-Voltera equation, and which at the chemical level is subtended by a corresponding reciprocity in cholinergicmonoaminergic balances.

At several levels biological oscillations influence, in regular periodicities, lateralized hemispheric functions. This is seen in the oscillatory biochemical kinetics of 5 hydroxytryptophan altering hemispheric serotonin concentration toward larger or smaller asymmetric gradients through lithium or cocaine interactions; it is seen in the periodic 90 to 100 minute maxim/minima of verbal/ spatial cognitive efficiency taking place with 180° phase opposition; it is seen in the corresponding changes in cognitive activity of sleep: superior verbal after slow sleep awakening and superior spatial after REM-sleep awakening [21-30]. The oscillation-laterality interaction also appears curiously in the unusual relations existing between lateral nasal airflow, ipsilateral sympathetic-contralateral parasympathetic, and contralateral EEG power associations [31-50]. In psychopathology the recurring periodic or aperiodic syndromes where mood, motility, sleep, and sexual functions are all simultaneously perturbed in a dichotomy of abnormal excitation or inhibition, are the manifestations of alterations in the complex balances of oscillatory phenomena and consequent hemispheric functional organization of biological systems whose far-fromequilibrium stability has been dislocated.

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