Source
- Jordan E. Theriault, Yuta Katsumi, Henning M. Reimann et al. (2025), “It’s not the thought that counts: Allostasis at the core of brain function”, Neuron 113(24), LIT-996, read in full in NOTE-761: “The Allostatic Architecture of the Mammalian Brain” and Figures 1–2.
- Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017), LIT-542, read in NOTE-434: Figure 6, the 3 T system from Kleckner et al., 280 participants replicated in 270.
What was actually shown
As reported; the primary studies were not read here.
- Seeds from anatomy. 21 regions: 14 subcortical nuclei important for allostasis (among them the central amygdala, hypothalamic nuclei, PAG, parabrachial nucleus, VTA, raphe, locus coeruleus and the nucleus of the solitary tract) and the 7 cortical regions receiving their monosynaptic projections in non-human tract-tracing: the anterior midcingulate, pregenual and subgenual anterior cingulate, ventral anterior insula, dorsal mid and posterior insula, and hippocampus.
- Intrinsic connectivity reproduces the anatomy. At 7 T (N = 90), replicating 3 T (N = 550), resting-state connectivity “replicated 100% of the monosynaptic cortico-cortical connections, 94% of the monosynaptic subcortico-cortical connections, and 96% of the monosynaptic subcortico-subcortical connections”. The system also takes in regions not seeded, including primary motor cortex and the cerebellum.
- It contains the named networks’ hubs (Fig. 2). Its topography overlaps the central autonomic network, the skeletomotor network, the salience/cingulo-opercular network and a heat-pain signature. k-means clustering of the 21 seed maps yields a “default-mode-like” and a “salience/cingulo-opercular-like” motif, which overlap in the connectome’s “rich club” hubs.
This could have come out otherwise: intrinsic connectivity could have missed many of the tract-traced connections, or the seeds could have formed a system separate from the networks studied for psychological functions.
What this does not say
- Not that the brain’s primary function is allostasis. That is the paper’s synthesis, and the authors write that their goal “was not to claim our ‘allostasis-first’ hypothesis is correct”.
- Not that the default-mode and salience networks do not serve their psychological functions. Overlap of topography is not identity of function. The paper’s stronger claim, that attributing psychological functions to those networks is “destined to fail”, is an inference this account does not hold.
- Not that resting-state activity is mostly interoceptive. The paper asserts it from cited work; this account does not rest on it.
- Not anything about feeling. The anatomy says where regulation is organised, not whether or why its states are felt. It gives QUESTION-059 no case.
- Not the computational reading of the laminar gradient. That predictions flow outwards from limbic cortex is a separate, more speculative claim (C3 in NOTE-434, C3 in NOTE-761).
Connections
- THEORY-045. Its Barrett half says felt affect is the experience of the body’s regulatory state. This account supplies the anatomy that half presupposes: the regulating regions are one connected system. It does not decide THEORY-045’s open “prediction or map” question, and it places limbic cortex and brainstem nuclei in one system, which neither sides with nor against Damasio’s brainstem generation of feeling.
- THEORY-057. If the networks named for emotion, self-reference and salience are the regulatory system under other names, that fits the constructionist claim that psychological categories lack dedicated mechanisms. It is consistent with it, not evidence for it.
- THEORY-090 and THEORY-093. The subcortical seeds overlap the upper-brainstem and interoceptive substrates those accounts name.