Thanks for this, Marc.

A few thoughts to build off this, very brief thread https://twitter.com/fndmarc/status/1352671859213553667

It’s reasonable to ask 1) WHY expert opinion is valuable for something like FND. 2) Also, does that mean we just have to accept everything FND docs say without question?

(answer to the second is no, of course, but the specifics are interesting)

1) First, professional expertise in FND is helpful the same reason anything is helpful: because there are payoffs to learning a ton about one specific thing until you understand it as best you can. So far so obvious.

the same reason expertise in anything is helpful*

Those practitioners also know the diagnostic techniques, have a feel for the array of symptoms people have and how to treat them, and understand research methods. All important stuff.

But let’s say you’re not sure if you believe these FND docs. Maybe you think the disorder’s not real, and they just say it is to justify their jobs.

Is there any way of figuring out if FND is legit or not?

Turns out, yes! And the answer to how is “context.” That’s where the wider field of brain science comes in.

FND research and theory can’t just wildly contradict the leading evidence in other areas of brain science. Or if it did, there’d need to be an explanation.

In other words, we don’t have to take any given FND doc’s word that FND is real and how it behaves.

You can look at the symptoms and their character, know the major systems of the brain, and map one to the other.

And as it turns out, FND actually DID contradict a lot of 20th century brain science, which is prob part of why it was hard to accept.

But in the last 20 years, brain sci inverted a lot of its previous theories.

And now FND, *without having changed the whole time,* is now supported by areas of brain science ranging from predictive coding to threat processing and embodied cognition. It makes a lot of things make sense at once.

Anyway, Marc’s instincts are good.

And happily, we’re both allies with good researchers and also not captive to them.

Humility is a good thing in both doctor and patient.