Treisman(2003) provides a review of the processreferred to as binding, the process that connects various perceptual eventssuch that they become consciously available. As such, binding involves not onlycontact but also discernment, attention and possibly feeling. Cotterill (2003) examines the importance of actionin the generation of consciousness and its unity. Although binding is broaderthan contact, investigating the relation between binding, the unity ofconsciousness and action may provide an explanation for the participants’experience of “energy”.

Antonioand Hanna Damasio (Damasio andDamasio 2006) have recently reviewed emergingneurological and physiological evidence for Antonio Damasio’s‘as-if-body-loop’. The Damasios focus on the biological scaffolding throughwhich the body becomes present in and to the mind. They observe that “while thebrain does represent, with fidelity, body states that are actually occurring,it can do far more than that: it can also modify the representation of anongoing state, and most dramatically, it can simulate body states before theyoccur or body states that do not occur at all” (Damasio andDamasio 2006, p.16).

Theauthors demonstrate that, just as the body communicates its state to the brain,so the brain also communicates to the body. This loop implies that many of thebody states that are being communicated to the brain by the body were derivedfrom communication from the brain to the body in the first place. “Mentalstates cause brain states, which cause body states; body states are then mappedin the brain and incorporated into the ongoing mental states” (Damasio and Damasio 2006, p.17). Small changes in the brain canresult in large changes in the body and vice versa. The information processingnetwork referred to as the ‘body-loop’ (Damasio and Damasio 2006, p.18) functions to produce optimalcontrolling responses when the body provides the brain with information thatcorrectly represents its current state. Additionally, the informationprocessing network referred to as the ‘as-if-body-loop’ creates models of bodystates similar to those that would result if the body were to actually undergopredicted physiological or emotional responses. “In other words, the brain cansimulate a certain body state as if it were occurring; and because ourperception of any body state is rooted in the body maps of the somatosensingregions, we perceive the body state as actually occurring even if it is not” (Damasio and Damasio 2006, p.18). Mirror neurons, which werepreviously discussed in relation to empathy (see section 5.8), can even, for instance, simulatein the body an action or emotion that is not actually occurring.

Itis reasonable to suggest that a lack of contact may result from a breakdown inthe ‘as-if-body-loop’. This potentially offers an explanation for what theparticipants describe as a lack of “energy”. Part of what the participantsdescribe as a lack of “energy” is a lack of contact with a proprioceptive senseof the capacity to do, the level of ‘physical energy’ that is available to thebody. The participants also describe a pervasive sense that the ‘physicalenergy’ that is available appears to be very limited and unpredictable. If CFSinvolves a general breakdown in contact, then this breakdown in contact wouldbe as likely to affect contact with such a proprioceptive sense of theavailable ‘physical energy’ as with any other aspect of contact. Further, what the‘as-if-body-loop’ implies is that such a breakdown with contact, passed fromthe brain to the body, in body state simulations, could lead to an actualbreakdown of contact with either the proprioceptive sense of the level of‘physical energy’ or, equally, could produce an actual low and unpredictablelevel of ‘physical energy’.

Processesthat sanction action may be involved in how the brain simulates the‘as-if-body-loop’, and also with what the brain does with the feedback derivedfrom the ‘as-if-body-loop’. For instance, an organism may assess what resourcesare necessary for an action in order to create the ‘as-if-body-loop’ for thataction. If the assessment of what is required is unreasonably high or theorganism is making an unreasonably low assessment of the available resourcesthen the organisms’ ability to create the ‘as-if-body-loop’ and the actualactions that they would predict would be impaired. The brain’s assessment ofthe resources that are required and the resources available for performance maybe communicated by the brain to the body to create bodily reality and thencommunicated back to the brain by the body. Consequently, this could be a selfsustaining phenomenon.