I recently heard a well-regarded neuropsychiatrist disavow any pretense of connecting his evaluation to the actual organic function of the brain or body. This was surprising for a—as far as I know— organic-focused subspecialty of a branch of medicine that routinely prescribes pharmaceuticals to achieve organic changes in the brain and body.
I think you're being extremely reductive about what neuropsychiatry actually entails.
A lot of prescribing of psychiatric drugs seems to be trial and error as much as anything.
I can't disclose the contents of the interview, this is under NDA till published. But, gosh, was that bad.
I thought neurosurgeon would know something about thinking process, and stuff like that. The guy in a state of a total despair. When I was bashing him with questions about the purpose of a brain and all that stuff, he was almost crying.
He ended up telling me that he hopes that someone will find quantum entanglement in the brain, and everything will be fine after that. After he sent me to this from PBS Science.
The NPR show This American Life had a segment years ago on the mind, “Life is a Coin with One Side.”[1] Producer David Kestenbaum provided his take, including that quantum effects can inject randomness but do not provide a complete explanation for thinking process or free will. He recounted the story of a friend who engaged in repetitive behaviors after a concussion, as an illustration that the mind is a machine, which like AI has wonderful emergent capabilities.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/662/where-there-is-a-will/a...