This paper introduces the Structural Cognitive Topology Assessment (SCTA) within the broader Paton System cognitive branch as a continuity-oriented interpretive framework for understanding recursive cognition, somatic burden, interruption sensitivity, masking, cyber-psychological vulnerability, and therapeutic stabilization. Rather than interpreting cognition through flat scalar intelligence metrics or strictly modular architectures, the framework proposes that cognition may be more accurately understood as a dynamic continuity-maintenance topology operating under recursive energetic load, environmental pressure, incomplete visibility, and admissibility constraints. The paper develops a unified continuity-oriented interpretation integrating: Recursive Layer Integration Density (RLID) recursive saturation, cognitive transduction and transduction tax, persistence locking mechanisms (PLM), structural hyper-accommodation, sensory amplification, autonomic burden, cyber-psychological trust topology, and bottom-up therapeutic stabilization. The framework additionally introduces mathematical admissibility interpretations for cognitive continuation under recursive pressure while remaining fully interpretive and compatibility-focused. Importantly, the paper does not replace neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, or accepted clinical science. Instead, it provides a structural continuity-oriented interpretive framework for understanding how differing cognitive architectures preserve continuity under recursive complexity and sustained environmental pressure. The paper further explores: interruption survivability, continuity inheritance, trauma reconstruction under incomplete visibility, allostatic burden, masking-related autonomic exhaustion, cognitive load asymmetry, and the limitations of purely top-down therapeutic modalities for highly recursive cognitive systems. The SCTA framework is explicitly neuro-affirming and rejects hierarchical interpretations of human worth or intelligence. Different minds are interpreted as differing continuity architectures operating under differing energetic and ecological constraints.
Andrew John Paton (Tue,) studied this question.