Nathan Azopardi

People Are My Rockpools

My approach to understanding human behaviour begins with a simple principle: you cannot fully understand a creature by removing it from the rockpool in which it lives.

A rockpool is an interacting ecosystem. The water, temperature, tide, light, shelter and other creatures all influence behaviour. Remove one creature to study it in isolation, and you change the very conditions that explain its behaviour.

People are no different. We cannot fully understand someone by separating their behaviour from their physiology, relationships, experiences, environment and history. Even the act of observing or examining someone can change what we are trying to understand.

Observation should widen the person, not reduce them.

This principle has become foundational to my research, Permission Architecture and the development of Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology.

My Research and Approach

My research combines trialectic thinking, autobiographical memory and investigative observation, developed through more than 30 years of independent research, learning and exploration.

I can remember my moments in the rockpools. I can recall detailed experiences, conversations and behavioural interactions from decades earlier, including the surroundings, circumstances and relationships that shaped them. While engaging in present conversations and situations, I can simultaneously revisit these experiences, recognise connections between them and examine how patterns of behaviour emerge across different people, environments and periods of time.

Although I sometimes struggle with names and exact dates, my recall of context, behaviour and interconnected experiences can be extensive. This allows me to return to the rockpools I have observed, remembering not just individuals but the wider environments and interactions in which their behaviour took place.

I also have dysgraphia, which has reinforced my interest in the distinction between intelligence, thought and the ability or speed with which someone can express themselves. My written expression does not always reflect the depth or speed of my thinking. My reasoning, questioning and verbal communication can be strong, precise and direct, even when writing takes considerably longer.

I am particularly cautious of people who speak quickly, loudly and with great certainty, especially when their position is presented as unquestionable expertise. I question what they may have overlooked, what selective knowledge they have assembled to support their explanation and whether their confidence is being mistaken for understanding.

For me, the measure of expertise is not how quickly or confidently someone explains what they know, but whether they remain willing to question what they think they know. When a professional cannot be questioned, their expertise risks becoming a framework they protect rather than knowledge they continue to develop.

This is central to my investigation of authority, education and coercive behaviour. Who is allowed to question? Whose knowledge is recognised? And what happens when the person speaking with authority is no longer willing to learn?

For over 15 years, I have researched burnout in its different forms, exploring relationships between neurological, physiological, psychological and environmental processes.

I also conducted four years of investigative research into coercive behaviour, online grooming, manipulation and exploitation, including cases involving adults and teenagers on platforms such as Discord. This included identifying behavioural patterns and contributing to efforts to reduce the severity and escalation of some particularly serious cases.

These investigations contributed to my development of Permission Architecture, a framework examining how neural, endocrine and environmental processes influence which thoughts, responses and actions become available, restricted or inhibited.

Building Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology

My wider work, Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology (WSNE), brings these investigations together with an exploration of neuroscience's history, questioning what has been overlooked, separated or lost.

This includes revisiting the interdisciplinary scientific and artistic thinking that flourished in Spain before the Spanish Civil War, examining how conflict, institutional authority and the development of scientific doctrines influenced which ideas survived and which were neglected.

By connecting historical research, overlooked scientific contributions and more than 30 years of my own investigations, I am developing WSNE as an approach that brings neuroscience, endocrinology, behaviour, lived experience and other disciplines back into conversation.

My experience of dysgraphia, autobiographical memory and trialectic thinking also informs a central question within this work: why do we so often confuse the ability to express something quickly with the ability to understand it deeply?

The rockpool principle runs throughout this work. Just as a creature cannot be fully understood outside its ecosystem, a neuron, hormone, behaviour or person cannot be adequately understood without considering the wider systems in which they function.