P1: Backfire Regime Exists

The sharpest prediction in the specification. There exist states where delivering intervention produces worse outcomes than withholding, because the intervention itself functions as an uncontrollable demand on a system that has lost capacity to process demands. When vmPFC-DRN gating has shifted to helplessness mode, ANY uncontrollable demand amplifies DRN activation. The intervention IS a stressor.

Evidence status

HYPOTHESIS with established precedent. The specific neurobiological claim (vmPFC-DRN gating mechanism produces the backfire) requires experimental validation. The general pattern (intervention backfires when mismatched to recipient's processing state) is established in the MI literature.

Clinical precedent

Miller & Rose (2015): balanced exploration of pros and cons with ambivalent individuals consistently decreases commitment to change. Magill et al. (2018, meta-analysis, N = 3,025): MI-consistent therapist skills elicit both pro-change and anti-change client language, and anti-change language independently predicts worse outcomes (r = .19, p < .001).

This work's contribution: specifying the neurobiological mechanism that produces this pattern in the domain of stress-degraded executive function.

Tests

E2 (micro-randomized stabilization trial).