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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Neuroscientist. 2014 Mar 12;20(6):652–664. doi: 10.1177/1073858414525995

Figure 2. Control system capacity interacts with dysfunctions to regulate symptoms.

Figure 2

Like the body’s immune system is protective against symptoms of bodily disease, the control system is postulated to be protective against symptoms of mental disease – likely via the flexible hub mechanisms described above. Theoretical probability distributions are shown to indicate any given individual’s likelihood of control system capacity (top) and the severity of a harmful dysfunction in any given mental process (left). The likely levels of experienced symptoms are indicated at different combinations of control system capacity and dysfunctionality. Treatment for each mental disease is postulated to be specific to that disease when harmful dysfunctions are reduced (left), but may be common across diseases when control system capacity is enhanced (top) due to the domain generality of the control system (Chein and Schneider 2005; Duncan 2010).