Neurodegeneration as Thermodynamic Failure: A Unified Framework for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and Huntington's Disease

We introduce a unified field-theoretic framework that identifies neurodegeneration as a fundamental failure of thermodynamic stability. The core of this theory is the I-field, a scalar field representing the local density of accumulated entropy. This field accumulates wherever neural tissue dissipates energy, propagates along axonal pathways, and modulates ionic conductances through a conformal suppression mechanism. Its evolution is governed by a single master equation:$$\gamma\,\partial_t\mathcal{I} - D\,\nabla^2\mathcal{I} + m^2\,\mathcal{I} + \lambda\,\mathcal{I}^3 = \kappa\,P_\text{diss}$$ We demonstrate that the four primary neurodegenerative pathologies represent specific and predictable failure modes of this dynamics. Alzheimer’s disease emerges as a failure of metabolic clearance. Parkinson’s disease is characterized by a blockade of spatial transport. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis results from the hyper-production of entropy, and Huntington’s disease is driven by the collapse of the field’s structural self-regulation. By analyzing these field dynamics, we derive a dimensionless collapse index, $\Phi$, which quantifies the thermodynamic distance between a healthy state and the point of no return. When this index exceeds unity, the functional attractor of the neural substrate vanishes, making clinical collapse a thermodynamic necessity. Unlike traditional models, this framework avoids reliance on empirical rate functions or fitted parameters. It provides a first-principles bridge between non-equilibrium thermodynamics and neural electrophysiology. This approach yields falsifiable predictions regarding representational drift rates and spatial field signatures, offering a new physical foundation for the early diagnosis and thermodynamic classification of neurodegenerative disease.