The Chicken Coop Theory of arousal: a neuromodulatory framework for teaching consciousness architecture, clinical pharmacology, and state-space pathology
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The Chicken Coop Theory formalizes arousal as a position in a six-dimensional neuromodulatory state space rather than a switch controlled by any single system. Histaminergic latching, cholinergic warming, noradrenergic startling, dopaminergic dispensing, serotonergic nesting, and orexinergic anchoring are each grounded in a functional invariant, and six canonical clinical syndromes are derived as displacements within that space. The framework supports forward reasoning from pharmacological mechanism to phenomenology, and it is explicitly falsifiable.
Author: Felipe Heemann
Institution: Universidade de São Paulo
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7171243372