ESMR: a process framework for calibration dynamics across psychosomatic and psychiatric phenomena.

Abstract

The brain can be modeled as a generative system that predicts bodily and environmental input and reduces mismatch through updating and action. From this perspective, stress is treated not as prediction error per se, but as a condition in which mismatch persists without sufficient recalibration. Health is therefore defined not as the absence of symptoms, but as the preservation of recalibrability, whereas psychopathology is conceptualized as the progressive fixation of recalibration failure. This paper proposes ESMR as a four-layer, two-timescale process framework for comparing psychosomatic conditions, psychiatric disorders, and psychosis-level phenomena in terms of partially shared failures of recalibration rather than as a single disease continuum. ESMR distinguishes E (Embodied Constraints), S (Salience Calibration), M (Metacognitive Model Revision), and R (Reality-Grounding Interface) across learning (L) and development (D). Development is treated not merely as slower accumulation of prior learning, but as change in the biological, representational, and self-regulatory architecture that alters both what forms of recalibration are possible and the background conditions under which learning can be taken up. A central distinction is that M concerns whether corrective information can be converted into updating, whereas R concerns whether already understood correction can be adopted as self-relevant reality under embodied, practical, and interpersonal constraints, with downstream transfer treated as a consequence rather than part of the R core. The framework predicts layer-specific cross-signatures rather than a single undifferentiated burden effect and outlines a staged empirical program using framing, disconfirmation, reality-grounding, and embodied/interoceptive tasks. ESMR is offered as a revisable, clinically oriented intermediate framework rather than a completed computational model.