Teasing the new Autonomics Poster

A preview

Still working on finalizing the visual design, but I thought I would start to show you some of the updates to the neuro-anatomical maps, and the autonomic meta-model. As you can see from the image, we are now working with autonomic neurological mapping that includes the extensions of the Connection, Movement, and Grounding Systems into the limbs (thanks Sigurd!).

On the conceptual side, Autonomics replaces the antique notion of autonomic balance (ancient history!) and the incomplete notion of hierarchy from Polyvagal Theory (Jacksonian Dissolution, 1958) with a meta-model that understands neuroception as the fulcrum governing the variable recruitment of autonomic systems that either collaborate or de-couple. This trues the model to clinical/ physiological accuracy. It represents the 13 most common autonomic states we have seen in a global sampling of thousands of people from 50 countries internationally.

I was speaking yesterday with a colleague in Canada who was wearing a Healbe self-tracker, which is literally marketed as an autonomic tracking device. It uses electro-dermal sensing (activity in c-tactile fibers, which are autonomic) and galvanic skin response to quantify your autonomic state and stress levels. But because their entire conceptual model is based on an obsolete understanding of the ANS, and autonomic balance, it cannot differentiate between excitement and stress.

What am I saying? This shit matters. One of those states is salutogenic (play/ competition) and one of them is pathogenic (chronic stress). The reason the device cannot differentiate them is because the electro-dermal and galvanic skin responses are identical. But that is obviously not the whole autonomic story. To build autonomic measurement and diagnostic devices without an accurate conceptual model of the ANS means– shocker - they will be fucking wrong. And if you cannot accurately diagnose, you cannot effectively treat.

And since 80% of what is bringing people into primary care is stress-related, and since 100% of stress-related issues are AUTONOMIC, don’t you think we deserve to have a neurophysiologically validated and clinically accurate model of the ANS?

When it is ready, the poster, which depicts the Autonomics Foundation Model, which we believe is likely the first time in this civilization that there has existed an accurate modeling of the Autonomic Nervous System, will live here: