PROJECT ZERO MIND PATHWAY MAPPING

 THE PROBLEM

When researching complex systems subjects like cognitive decline, the researchers mind and teams of researchers minds are soon overwhelmed.  Without resorting to modeling via map and systems then heuristics, local minima thinking and bias will take over.  Science methods alone without complex mapping just improve on this by enabling very accurate local minima thinking which can join up with other teams local minima thinking later. Hopefully the bigger picture will emerge, but hundreds of international teams can still be stuck in the same minima and this is one reason why current research is very slow.

Systems theory mapping is now being employed but the uptake by the main research body is still very slow.  An application in this project is given hundreds of contradicting theories, targets and methods covering every facet of the mind how are we to simplify the problem of treatments ?  SENS framework proposes its 7 pillars of ageing underlie most age related diseases including cognitive decline and its result, dementia, so we would seek to try this approach. This map was created by the alzpathway project. All these tools and maps are freely available to employ and expand on.

http://alzpathway.org/AlzPathway.html

The aim is not to blindly adopt a SENS approach. The current methods and targets list for Project Zero mind should resolve if there is a contradiction between traditional systems models for cognitive health and the SENS approach.  See our methods and targets list where it appears SENS can contain the traditional neuroscience biology hierarchy.

http://projectzeromind.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/biological-targets-and-methods-list.html

AIMS

The primary aim of the project is to evaluate treatment, but this involves collaborative model building. First we formalize that Alzheimers is the result of cognitive decline and propose  this is a subset of the SENS 7 pillar breach.  The SENS system framework is then required to prune many targets, which are then compared against the conventional neuroscience systems poles.  The question is whether conventional systems are a subset of SENS. This problem will be amenable to visual representation and from there traditional logic can be applied. By enabling whole picture visualization it is hoped to eliminate bias heuristics from which to implement logical process cause and effect mapping throughout the entire represented system. An example below highlights the role of the immune system in Alzheimers.

https://alzres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13195-017-0252-z

VISUAL CONCEPTS

Some of the first visual methods to be tried will be many to many circular maps with hierarchy pruning. E.g.

Outer ring                              Methods

Middle rings                                    

                                             Targets

                                             Systems target poles

Inner ring                             SENS poles

An example of this is the human connectome project

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/30/13485.full

PROCESSES

Processes for different map versions can implement any change to cause effect aspects on a system.  For multiple users the probability of a casual treatment effect in the map can be tested on the basis of multiple positive or negative experimental outcomes, hopefully reducing wasted time on non functioning treatments.

Another advantage is such mapping tools commonly connect to constantly updating databases such as genomic, immunology, compound safety profiles and protein interactions.

Common processes in the alzpathway tool which created the first map on this page

 http://alzpathway.org/Notation.html