Temperament in healthy individuals and mental illness have been conjectured to lie along a continuum of neurobehavioral regulation. This continuum is frequently regarded in dimensional terms, with temperament and mental illness lying at opposite poles along various dimensional descriptors. However, temperament and mental illness are quintessentially dynamical phenomena, and as such there is value in examining what insights can be arrived at through the lens of our current understanding of dynamical systems. The formal study of dynamical systems has led to the development of a host of markers which serve to characterize and classify dynamical systems and which could be used to study temperament and mental illness. The most useful markers for temperament and mental illness apply to time series data and include geometrical markers such as (strange) attractors and repellors and analytical markers such as fluctuation spectroscopy, scaling, entropy, recurrence time. Temperament and mental illness, however, possess fundamental characteristics that present considerable challenges for current dynamical systems approaches: transience, contextuality and emergence. This review discusses the need for time series data and the implications of these three characteristics on the formal study of the continuum and presents a dynamical systems model based upon Whitehead’s Process Theory and the neurochemical Functional Ensemble of Temperament model. The continuum can be understood as second or higher order dynamical phases in a multiscale landscape of superposed dynamical systems. Markers are sought to distinguish the order parameters associated with these phases and the control parameters which describe transitions among these dynamics.
Neuropsychobiology

中文翻译：

---

从气质到精神疾病的连续体：动态视角。

据推测，健康个体的气质和精神疾病与神经行为调节的连续统一体有关。这种连续统一体经常被视为维度术语，气质和精神疾病沿着各种维度描述符位于相反的两极。然而，气质和精神疾病是典型的动态现象，因此通过我们目前对动态系统的理解来检验可以得出哪些见解是有价值的。对动力系统的正式研究导致了大量标记的发展，这些标记可用于表征和分类动力系统，并可用于研究气质和精神疾病。气质和精神疾病最有用的标记适用于时间序列数据，包括几何标记，例如（奇怪的）吸引子和排斥子，以及分析标记，例如波动光谱、标度、熵、复发时间。然而，气质和精神疾病具有基本特征，这些特征对当前的动态系统方法提出了相当大的挑战：瞬态、情境性和出现。这篇综述讨论了时间序列数据的必要性以及这三个特征对连续统正式研究的影响，并提出了一个基于怀特黑德过程理论和气质模型的神经化学功能集合的动力系统模型。连续体可以理解为叠加动力系统的多尺度景观中的二阶或更高阶动力阶段。寻求标记来区分与这些阶段相关联的顺序参数和描述这些动态之间转变的控制参数。
神经心理生物学