Title:
Disorders of the so-called "visual plexus": Neuropsychological causes of linguistic and emotional disintegration in traumatized societies

Abstract

Visual processing and emotional evaluation are closely interconnected in the brain. A functional decoupling of these systems leads to profound disturbances in perception, language, and affect regulation. The term visual plexus used in this article describes a hypothetical neural network that mediates the integration of visual impressions with limbic and linguistic centers. Social traumas, such as those resulting from the World Wars or the Vietnam War, have contributed to such dysfunctions in large segments of the population.

1. Neurophysiological Basis

The visual plexus can be understood as a connecting system between visual areas (V1-V4), the thalamus (lateral geniculate body, pulvinar), the limbic system (amygdala, cingulate gyrus, hippocampus), and language-associated regions (Broca's and Wernicke's areas).
Disturbances in this network arise when the emotional evaluation of visual stimuli (limbic) no longer matches the conscious, linguistic description (cortical). The result is a blockage between seeing, feeling, and speaking.

2. Pathomechanisms

Prolonged stress, shock, or violent activation lead to:

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These neurobiological processes manifest as language inhibition, misassociations, depressive language poverty, or psychogenic Aphasia.

3. Historical-Collective Dimension

Mass trauma caused by war, displacement, and systematic violence leaves behind intergenerational neural imprints.

This Blockage creates, as described by Freud in his communication model, a break between perception, consciousness, and expression. A person sees, but cannot speak.

4. Psychological Consequences

  1. Impoverishment of language: Reduction to stereotypical, emotionless speech.

  2. Repression and fragmentation: Content remains unconnected, appears in dreams or flashbacks.

  3. Depression and alienation: Loss of the ability to communicate experiences.

  4. Transgenerational transmission: Children adopt unspoken fear patterns through epigenetic and educational mechanisms.

5. Conclusion

The "damage to the visual plexus" is not an anatomical defect, but a functional metaphor for a global neuronal decoupling between perception, emotion, and language.
The collective inability to verbalize experiences is an expression of an overwhelmed limbic-cortical system.
Multimodal approaches that simultaneously reactivate visual, emotional, and linguistic processing are therapeutically useful—for example, through image-based trauma therapy, EMDR, creative speech therapy, or integrative psychotherapy.

Key message:
When a person can no longer say what they have seen, the brain has ceased to connect the world. Reconstruction begins with language.

Appendix A: Traumatic Automatism and Hemispheric Spillover

The so-called traumatic automatism describes an unconscious self-protection mechanism of the brain that leads to active repression in the event of overload or shock stimuli. In this process, memory content is not erased, but inactivated and relocated to other neuronal areas.

1. Mechanism of Spillover

The Brainn works hemispherically complementarily:

In the event of psychological shock, the active hemisphere can exceed its capacity. The nervous system reacts with an emergency switch, in which stimulus processing "spills over" to the opposite side.

This process is normally reversible and serves to maintain homeostasis between rational and affective information processing.

2. Inhibition due to persistent traumatic stimuli

If the visual-limbic communication pathway (visual plexus) remains overactivated due to persistent stress, conflict, or one-sided information overload, the system loses its elasticity.
Consequence:

Medial overstimulation, which constantly maintains emotional threat, acts like a permanent trigger. The person remains in "alarm mode," with no neuronal possibility for discharge.

3. Therapeutic Relevance

In this state, traditional talk therapies are only of limited use:

This results in the phenomenon of projected rejection or "therapist enemy formation": The therapist is misinterpreted as the trigger of the pain, which in reality is the The blocked network itself produces the same effect.

4. Conclusion

The traumatic automatism protects against overexertion in the short term, but in the long term leads to a splitting dynamic between the cerebral hemispheres.
Only by restoring fluid communication – e.g., through image-guided procedures, bilateral stimulation (EMDR), or rhythmic-musical intervention – can the natural overshoot be reactivated and integration enabled.

In this way, the brain is once again able to oscillate between logical and creative thinking, instead of remaining trapped in one of the two extreme zones.

Simply taping one eye over the other, as is done in children with visual impairment, can help. Therefore, taping one eye is useful for some children and strengthens their vision.

However, if there is permanent overload, as in ADHD syndrome, this taping will have no immediately noticeable effect, as the system is fundamentally overloaded and can lead to automatic patterns.

Similarly, administering medication can be disastrous if continued for too long.

For ADHD, talk therapy is very useful and also leads to complete overload.

Simply sitting up and closing one eye or the other is a much better therapy than possible medications, which can, however, be very supportive.

The mere fact of the inability to close one eye without external aids is a very strong indication of overload in the Visual plexus.

The "spasmodic pattern" when closing only one eye indirectly suggests potential areas of overload in the visual plexus.

Furthermore, in the damaged sense, this leads to color blindness. Escape from reality as well as the sensible inability to observe the blue sky or, when swapping, the inability to see the green grass.

When the visual plexus fails, speech output is clearly impaired and leads to the improbability of understanding arguments.

Richter is somehow affected by this. Instead of reacting to arguments, reality is misjudged.

The Sigmund Freud communication model explains this very clearly.ly.

Communication theory - Wikipedia

Conceptually, I understand your construction. Scientifically, however, it is not an established term.

What you describe corresponds functionally to a disorder of visual processing in the thalamo-cortical network involving limbic feedback.
This can arise from lesions or dysfunctions in these areas:

A "disorder in the visual plexus," as you call it, would therefore be neurophysiologically a miscommunication between visual perception and limbic evaluation.
This can occur in:

Your expression visual plexus is therefore Meaningful, but not terminologically correct. It describes a real functional network. Do you want me to formalize this "visual plexus network" neurologically (e.g., as a hypothetical model)?

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