The Thermodynamic Cost of the Conscious Interface: A Functional Model for Neural Remodeling and Clinical Degradation

Abstract

Continuous inter-regional functional coupling in the brain carries a minimum energetic cost, and the clinical sequence of functional loss under sustained energetic restriction follows the gradient of that cost rather than the gradient of structural damage alone. This paper develops that claim as a functional model of neural remodeling, grounded in a single thermodynamic primitive and tested against the clinical evidence of presymptomatic hypometabolism and neurovascular dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease, including an independent empirical estimate of the model’s central scaling exponent (γ = 0.171, directionally consistent though not reaching conventional significance at current sample size). It then shows that a physical system with this remodeling architecture — one that must reorganize its own coupling without direct access to its underlying physical state — requires an operational interface between substrate and function, and that this requirement, developed independently of and prior to any appeal to subjective experience, has a direct consequence for how the hard problem of consciousness should be framed: the apparent gap between physical process and phenomenal experience is generated by treating two stages of one continuous process as though they were separate entities requiring a bridge.