What drives pseudogap physics in high-Tc cuprates? A view from the (resistance) bridge

Taking into account the evolution of the in-plane resistivity with temperature and doping, a candidate proposal for the (hole-doped) cuprate phase diagram is constructed. Many features of the phase diagram are viewed as a consequence of an anisotropic interaction that intensifies with decreasing doping from the heavily overdoped side. At a critical doping pc, that coincides with the development of the normal state pseudogap, the interaction becomes sufficiently strong that all electronic states near the zone boundary are effectively incoherent even at T = 0.