Title : Triple-network dysfunction, ME/CFS, and the NeuroPhysics Treatment Process “A dynamical systems perspective on psychophysical organization and environmental interaction”
Abstract:
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and related post-viral conditions such as Long Covid are associated with complex disturbances involving cognition, autonomic regulation, fatigue perception, emotional processing, sensory integration, and motor function. Increasing evidence from network neuroscience suggests that dysfunction involving the Default Mode Network (DMN), Salience Network (SN), and Central Executive Network (CEN) may contribute to impaired adaptive regulation in these conditions. The dynamic interaction between these large-scale brain networks has become known as the Triple Network Model.
This paper presents a systems-neuroscience perspective of NeuroPhysics Treatment (NPT), a psychophysical treatment approach developed through decades of clinical observation involving posture, movement, environmental interaction, sensory-perceptual processing, and autonomic regulation in individuals with complex neurological and psychophysical disorders. Longstanding clinical observations within a NPT environment suggested that many individuals with ME/CFS were not simply physically deconditioned but appeared to exist within maladaptive psychophysical states characterized by excessive self-referential monitoring, altered effort perception, sensory over-association, autonomic hypervigilance, and compromised environmental engagement.
Contemporary triple-network neuroscience provides a framework through which these observations may be better understood. Within this model, excessive DMN dominance relating to symptom monitoring and predictive concern, combined with maladaptive salience attribution and reduced executive adaptability, may contribute to unstable psychophysical organization and impaired environmental interaction. The anterior cingulate cortex/gyrus (ACC/G), strongly associated with salience regulation, effort appraisal, conflict monitoring, autonomic integration, and behavioral adaptation, may play a particularly important integrative role within these processes.
NPT is discussed as a process that through its purposeful prescription, design and implementation helps enhance network flexibility and psychophysical organization through stable, low-noise, repeatable sensory-motor environments involving controlled movement, postural organization, attentional refinement, reduction of unnecessary muscular tension, and gradual exposure to predictable environmental demands. From this perspective, NPT may assist the individual in progressively reducing maladaptive over-associations between sensory input, threat appraisal, autonomic activation, and defensive behavioral prediction.
The paper further proposes that the interaction between the DMN, SN, and CEN may exhibit properties conceptually analogous to nonlinear dynamical systems, including sensitivity to initial conditions, unstable transitional states, and difficulties maintaining stable long-term synchronization under perturbation. In this regard, the Triple Network Model may bear conceptual similarities to the classical “three-body problem” in physics, where interacting systems continuously influence one another in highly complex and often unpredictable ways.
This framework is not presented as a definitive mechanistic explanation for ME/CFS, but rather as a systems-level perspective intended to stimulate further discussion regarding the relationship between large-scale brain network dynamics, psychophysical organization, environmental interaction, and adaptive behavioral regulation in complex chronic conditions.
Keywords: NeuroPhysics Treatment (NPT), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Triple Network Model, Default Mode Network (DMN), Salience Network (SN), Central Executive Network (CEN), Dynamical Systems Theory, Three-Body Problem Analogy.
