Phase 1 · Understand the Body — Why the disease behaves the way it does.
The One-Line Truth
The whole disease in one chain
Everything on this page exists to explain this line.
Delirium is a sudden break in attention that flips on and off — and you can fix it. Dementia is a slow, steady loss of thinking that doesn't come back. Psychosis is seeing or believing things that aren't real.
Three broken radio stations, one broken dial
Imagine three radio stations broadcasting in your city. The Attention Station (acetylcholine, made in the nucleus basalis deep in your brain) keeps you tuned to what matters — it's the 'on' switch. The Reality Station (dopamine, made in the midbrain) tells you what's signal and what's noise — it's the fact-checker. The Calm Station (serotonin and GABA, made in the brainstem) keeps everything smooth. In delirium, an infection or poison suddenly jams the Attention Station signal while turning up Reality Station noise, so you flip between channels every few seconds — nothing sticks. In dementia, the transmitter building itself is crumbling (neurons dying), so both stations get weaker and weaker over years, and the antenna (your thinking ability) degrades permanently. In psychosis, the Reality Station's frequency gets hijacked — the dopamine signal floods one part of the dial so hard that your brain's main control tower (prefrontal cortex, the dial itself) can't filter or fact-check anymore, so you believe the noise is real, even though Attention Station (focus) and other stations are broadcasting fine.
American Psychiatric Association DSM-5-TR (2022) · American Geriatrics Society Clinical Practice Guideline for Postoperative Delirium (2015, reaffirmed 2023) · National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's and Related Dementias Resources · American Academy of Neurology Practice Guideline Update: Mild Cognitive Impairment (2018) · reviewed 2026-07-07