Tag: Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML)

How the hippocampus distinguishes true and false memories

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In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists show for the first time that electrical signals in the human hippocampus differ immediately before recollection of true and false memories. They also found that low-frequency activity in the hippocampus decreases as a function of contextual similarity between a falsely recalled word and the target word.

“Whereas prior studies established the role of the hippocampus in event memory, we did not know that electrical signals generated in this region would distinguish the imminent recall of true from false memories,” says psychology professor Michael Jacob Kahana, director of the Computational Memory Lab and the study’s senior author. He says this shows that the hippocampus stores information about an item with the context in which it was presented.

…“Individuals suffering from stress-related psychopathology, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, often experience memory intrusions of their traumatic experiences under contexts that are safe and dissimilar to the traumatic incident. Targeted interventions that disrupt retrieval of intrusive memories could spawn novel therapies for such clinical conditions,” the researchers write.

source

Besides being interesting in itself, this finding also confirms the value of FIML practice. Ongoing FIML practice is designed to act as ‘Targeted interventions that disrupt retrieval of intrusive memories.’ FIML finds and corrects intrusive memories as well as mistaken interpretations and associations. Since FIML is meant to be used often, over time it clears the mind of most, if not all, habitual mistakes in listening, seeing and thinking while also removing new mistakes as they are just forming. There is abundant science showing that interrupting or disrupting erroneous or neurotic responses has great curative efficacy. And also it optimizes our use of mental and psychological energy. Here is just one example: Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice. ABN

No language in the world allows it

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I am reasonably sure that no language in the world allows the kind of query that FIML practice is based on.

The reason for this probably lies in the origins of human language and culture, a developmental period during which languages were much simpler and were used mainly to indicate real things in the world or give commands.

At later stages of development, language became a tool of whatever hierarchy prevailed in the moment. To this day, Confucianism is still a rule book for hierarchies.

That said, languages are always potentially very supple, so there is no need for humans today to be restricted by archaic forms of speech and thought.

And that said, it is important to understand that your psychology has been deeply conditioned by the archaic and hierarchical cores of your language.

I bring this up because this side of human psychology makes it difficult for people to do FIML practice correctly.

To the speaker, the basic FIML query will instinctively feel like nagging, being petty, being whiny. To the hearer, this basic query will instinctively feel like a challenge, an insult, an affront.

These basic instincts must not be allowed to block FIML inquiries. Personally, I believe FIML has not been discovered before because no one ever went beyond these basic instinctive reactions.

So, expect to feel affronted and expect to feel like a petty nag, at least for a while. With practice, these feelings will go away. At the same time, the importance of the information gained through FIML queries will become increasingly obvious.

Once the hierarchical cultural and linguistic instincts that have developed in us, and upon which our psychologies depend, have been overcome, a new use of language will become possible.

This new language is capable of sufficient micro subtlety to allow us to objectively observe how our minds and psychologies actually function in real-time real-life situations.

No theory of psychology and no amount of introspection will take you to the actual data of how you function. Only FIML practice can do that. FIML will open your mind to levels of metacognition and analysis never experienced before.

Reduction of neurosis through immediate feedback

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A recent study has found that persecutory delusions can be reduced by simulating fear-inducing situations in virtual reality.

…patients who fully tested out their fears in virtual reality by lowering their defences showed very substantial reductions in their paranoid delusions. After the virtual reality therapy session, over 50% of these patients no longer had severe paranoia at the end of the testing day. (Oxford study finds virtual reality can help treat severe paranoia)

The crux of what happened is patients faced and “fully tested out their fears.”

The virtual reality environment allowed them to “lower their defenses” enough to see that their initial fears were wrong. That they were mistakes.

Few people suffer full-blown persecutory delusions on the scale of the patients in this experiment, but I would maintain that all people everywhere suffer from “mistaken interpretations” that manifest as neuroses or delusions.

The virtual reality in the Oxford study allows for patients to face their “mistakes” (their exaggerated fears) and this is what reduces their paranoia.

The technique works because patients receive immediate feedback in real-time.

As they perceive in real-time that their delusions are not justified, they are reduced dramatically.

In FIML practice, a similar result is achieved through the FIML query and response with a caring partner.

All people are riddled with “mistaken interpretations” that wrongly define their sense of who they are and what is going on around them.

A basic tenet of FIML is that immediate truthful feedback reduces and eventually extirpates these mistakes.

FIML allows people to “lower their defenses” by focusing on micro-units of communication as they arise in real-time.

The study is here: Virtual reality in the treatment of persecutory delusions: randomised controlled experimental study testing how to reduce delusional conviction.

I believe the findings of this study lend support to the theory of FIML practice:

FIML practice eliminates neuroses because it shows individuals, through real data, that their (neurotic) interpretation(s) of their partner are mistaken.

UPDATE: The mistaken interpretations extirpated from individuals psychologies during FIML practice could be compared to mutations in individual human genomes. All individual humans carry several hundred unique mutations which occurred during gestation or that came from their parents gametes. These mutations are costly as they reduce our mental and physical efficiency, sometimes very considerably. If we could remove or correct them, we would all function better. Psychologically, as we develop and learn language and behavior we all incorporate many hundreds of errors unique to ourselves. FIML practice is designed to find these errors in thought, language, communication, and psychology and remove them. In many ways, these psycho-communicative errors are even more serious than genetic mutations. ABN

Public semiotics: how they are used and controlled

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Public semiotics are semiotics known to many people, semiotics that many people within a society or culture will respond to in similar ways.

Some examples of public semiotics are conventions in literature, film, news, customs, clothing, language use, courtship styles, and so on.

In film and literature, most viewers recognize the semiotic difference between first- and third-person narratives as well as typical plot-lines such as “the individual against the group,” “the individual who overcomes a tragedy,” or simply “good versus bad.”

Viewers responses are controlled by these narratives through expectation, emotion, and habit. Due to their short lengths, most popular films rely very heavily on a single strong emotion for narrative effect, while serious literature generally deals with more complex themes.

A recent scholarly study of US politics came to some conclusions about public semiotics and our perceptions of them that are not likely to surprise readers of this site.

The study and an interview with one of its authors can be found here: Scholar Behind Viral ‘Oligarchy’ Study Tells You What It Means.

In the interview co-author Gilens has this to say about the study:

I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests. (Source: same as above. This source has the study as well as the interview.)

What this study says about public semiotics is the public does not control them. Rather, the public is controlled by them.

Interestingly, the study left out some of the main ways that public semiotics are controlled by elites. Public semiotics are not just controlled by interest groups and lobbies influencing legislation, they are also greatly controlled by:

  • elite control of the media
  • elite control of which topics the media covers
  • elite control of presidential debates by the Democratic and Republican parties through the Commission on Presidential Debates
  • elite control of members of congress by the parties they “represent”

In the linked interview, which is well-worth reading, Gilens mentions non-business lobbying groups, but does not say who they are.

If we do not understand that our public semiotics come from somewhere—that many of them are created and maintained by special interest groups—we will fail to understand how we are manipulated by them.

As this study shows, voting for a very limited selection of candidates who rarely, if ever, fulfill their very limited campaign promises is an exercise in public hypnosis. It is a complex semiotic that fosters the illusion of participation where there is none.

I do not think any of this will change. But I do think it is important for individuals, and especially FIML partners, to understand where the semiotics that jostle around in their heads are coming from. As individuals, we can have great control over what we believe, value, do, and understand about human life, and need not be controlled by the self-serving agendas of others.

It is important to understand that much of what is construed as “public life” is actually a complex mix of semiotics consciously controlled by people who work to create and maintain illusions of plots and themes in the world in much the same ways that plots and themes are created and maintained in film.

UPDATE: I wrote and posted this on APRIL 23, 2014. It’s just as true today and far more obvious. Semiotics is the study of how messages are sent and received. Since language and semiotics are loosely hierarchical, control of the top levels or meta-levels of language and semiotics yields control of whole societies. This can be seen in fashion as much as politics. The real-world result is most people are following semiotic illusions behind which the real wheels of governance are being turned by, for the most part, those who control the money—the huge investment funds, central banks, the super rich. The Ukraine War has been a semiotic fantasy, as was covid and the covid government response, as was the 2020 fraudulent election, the manufactured ‘crisis’ at the border, inflation, soon to be CBDC. We are right now living in an algorithmic psyop which strictly controls the ‘information’ we are allowed to see, the topics we are allowed to address. Boiled down, that information is the dominant public semiotics proposed and furthered by the forces mentioned above. This is why if the government said it or MSM said or a choir of HoWo influencers said it, you can be sure it’s not true. ABN

Do you realize how ambiguous you are when you speak?

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And how bad you are at interpreting what others say to you?

If not, you are living in a very muddled world that is probably “anchored” to nothing more than your “feelings,” your “identity,” or some form of extrinsic “belief” or “faith” in your nation, group, religion, career.

Either you are a sort of slave to a public semiotic (religion, ethnicity, career, etc.) or you are a sort of slave to your muddled interior—your volatile emotional sense of “who” you “are.”

The only way I know of to fully comprehend how badly you speak and listen is to do FIML practice.

You may understand in the abstract how wrong and ambiguous speech and listening frequently are, but if you don’t do FIML you won’t be able to see with any specificity  how wrong you are and where and why. If your understanding is only general or abstract, it will function as just another level of ambiguity, another source of mistakes.

Mildly sorry for being so blunt, but it’s true. Only FIML, or something very similar, can give you and your partner real-time access to objectively agreed upon communication mistakes being made between you. And there is no general or abstract substitute for that.

Even a single mistake can have massive consequences. But we all make dozens of mistakes every day.

Is the greatest emotion taking pleasure in correcting our own mistakes?

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Surely it’s in the top few.

In the Buddhist tradition, shame is sometimes called the greatest emotion because shame makes us open to changing for the better.

But shame can also be felt and avoided or hidden or misdirected. Shame here generally means something bothers our conscience.

Correcting our own mistakes often follows shame but not always. Someone may tell us of a mistake that does not make us feel ashamed.

Taking pleasure, even delight, in correcting our own mistakes is very close in time and psychology to actually making the correction.

Whether it is the greatest or not, the emotion that accompanies self-correction is well-worth cultivating.

The human brain can process images very quickly: MIT reserachers

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CAMBRIDGE (CBS) — The human brain is capable of processing images viewed through the eyes for as little as 13 milliseconds, according to research conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientists.

That processing speed figure is significantly faster than the 100 milliseconds reported in earlier research, the MIT News Office reported.

The new MIT study appears in the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. In the research, investigators asked subjects to look for a particular type of image, such as “smiling couple,” as they viewed a series of as many as 12 images, each presented for between 13 and 80 milliseconds

“The fact that you can do that at these high speeds indicates to us that what vision does is find concepts. That’s what the brain is doing all day long — trying to understand what we’re looking at,” Mary Potter, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and senior author of the study, told MIT News.

Rapid-fire processing of images could serve to help direct the eyes to their next target, Potter said. “The job of the eyes is not only to get the information into the brain, but to allow the brain to think about it rapidly enough to know what you should look at next. So in general, we’re calibrating our eyes so they move around just as often as possible consistent with understanding what we’re seeing,” she said.

link

The paper is here: Detecting meaning in RSVP at 13 ms per picture.

FIML works with information rapidly entering the working memory, much of which is visual. Psycholinguistic auditory information can also be received and processed very quickly. Consider tone of voice. FIML helps partners intervene in the processing of immediate interpersonal information in order to understand its deep psychological roots. The FIML technique is fairly easy to do if it is understood that the critical focus is on information that just occurred. ABN

How we process big ideas and the semiotics behind this

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I want to discuss a few big ideas with the intention of showing how our internal or culturally underlying semiotics determine how easy or hard they are to accept.

Most thinking people can accept the possibility of atheism. And most atheists can accept the possibility of there being a God or gods or other realms. Atheists who are staunch physicalists may find it harder to do this, but most of them can.

Most thinking people can accept the theory of evolution.

Most thinking people can and do accept the scientific method. Fewer, but many, people understand the limitations of the scientific method.

The theory of evolution and the scientific method can both be stated briefly and in simple language. They are not hard to understand. The limitations of the scientific method require a bit more thought as do the nuances of evolution, but a crude understanding of either is not hard to achieve. Similarly, physicalism is not hard to state or understand.

The simulation argument (that we are living in a computer simulation) can also be stated briefly and is not hard to understand. Many people now accept this argument and admit that it is possible that we are living in a sim. In fact, some physics departments are actually studying the idea. Here is one example: Scientists plan test to see if the entire universe is a simulation created by futuristic supercomputers.

For most educated people in industrialized regions of the world, it is not difficult to accept or seriously consider any of the above theories or ideas.

All of the above ideas can be very revolutionary if you go from not accepting them to accepting them. They revolutionize our metaphysics, our sense of existential reality, our sense of what kind of a world or universe we are living in.

In contrast, ideas that are socially revolutionary are harder for many people to accept, or even consider.

It can be hard to have a calm discussion about inherent problems in the American capitalist system, for example. Or to have a reasonable discussion about the anomalies of 9/11. These subjects, though fascinating, are difficult for many people because they fundamentally threaten the power-and-money hierarchy upon which their social and psychological beings rest.

FIML is an idea that, like the ideas above, can be stated briefly in simple language. This does not mean it is not revolutionary. And this does not mean that FIML will not be difficult for many people to accept. It can be difficult because FIML practice revolutionizes interpersonal relations. I know that if it is done correctly it will bring about a revolutionary improvement. But viewed from a distance or as a mere idea, I also know that it will appear threatening or trivial to many people.

The sim idea was dismissed as trivial by many people just a few years ago. It has gained much wider acceptance since then. It is a delightful idea and not threatening or dangerous at all. It can renew your sense of who you are and where you are.

FIML practice is much like that. It is delightful and not threatening or trivial at all. It will renew your sense of who you are and how you relate to other people in wonderful ways. Just because an idea looks simple does not mean it does not have deep implications. If a new idea challenges our sense of who we are socially or psychologically, it will be more difficult to accept than if it challenges “only” our metaphysical or existential sense of who and where we are.

first posted DECEMBER 17, 2012

Detail and complexity

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If we look, we can find detail and complexity essentially everywhere.

The following video shows in detail a Giant Texas Katydid adult male breathing, grooming, and just hanging out. It is fascinating to watch.

If only we humans were as careful about what we say and how we listen.

The most important area that humans do not pay enough detailed attention to is interpersonal communication. We have the ability to observe, analyze, and comprehend our communications with much greater detail than most of us ever do.

FIML provides techniques for being as careful about communication as the katydid is about his body. The katydid is complex. So is what you say, hear, and observe. All of the details matter.

FIML practice helps you understand these details and their ramifications in real-time. If you don’t catch important details in real-time, chances are you won’t catch them at all. Sometimes a single missed detail can lead to a cascade of misunderstanding that never gets fixed because the detail has been forgotten.

If the katydid fails to groom properly, he will become sick and die. When we fail to maintain detailed and complex understanding of communicative acts with people we care about, similar outcomes are more likely than not.

Short-term memory is key to psychological understanding

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Short-term memory is where the rubber of human psychology meets the road.

It is the active part of human psychology as it functions in real-time.

New research indicates that the thalamus, which relays almost all sensory information, is central to the operation of short-term memory. Without the thalamus, short-term memory does not occur.

See Maintenance of persistent activity in a frontal thalamocortical loop and New research: short-term memory depends on the thalamus for background.

Short-term memory is a changeable “program” that deals with and responds to the world quickly. It is the main determinant of how “you” are in the moment.

Short-term memory maintains persistent activity (in the brain/body) by relaying its components through the thalamus in response to real-time conditions.

If we discover a mistake in our short-term memory, it is typically very easy to change. For example, if you realize you forgot to set your clocks ahead, your short-term memory will quickly adjust. You might feel a little dumb for a moment, but usually it is no big deal.

This example shows how our short-term memory is connected to long-term memories, to planning, expectation, and our general sense of the world around us and what we are doing in it.

FIML is an effective form of psychotherapy largely because it focuses on the short-term memory.

By targeting short-term memory loads, FIML helps partners discover how their psychologies are actually functioning in real-time during real-world situations.

Correcting mistakes in short-term memory immediately changes how we function.

Changing the same mistake several times very often removes it entirely from the long-term memory, from the overall functioning of the individual.

first posted MAY 22, 2017

Buddhist mindfulness practice focuses a lot on short-term memory. In this respect, FIML is a kind of shared mindfulness between two people, both keeping themselves and each other honest and on the same page. FIML may feel intense for beginners because this kind of focus with this kind of intention has probably never been engaged in before. With practice, FIML becomes relaxed and pleasant, creating an in-the-zone feeling like you are playing a fun game or doing something important and interesting together. When done regularly, FIML generates a very sturdy kind of mutual self-respect. ABN

Inventing your own communication system

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If you know a system well and change parts of it to make it more efficient, that system will work better.

Evolution works this way “mindlessly” in the sense that we assume today that there is no plan behind evolutionary change. If something works better it tends to replace that which it works better than.

Another “mindless” example is AI systems that invent their own languages:

An artificial intelligence system being developed at Facebook has created its own language. It developed a system of code words to make communication more efficient. The researchers shut the system down as it prompted concerns we could lose control of AI. (Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language)

The linked article mentions other AI system that have similarly invented their own communication systems. These systems work but humans are not able to understand them.

All of this shows that communication systems have their own logic and that they can be made more efficient by pursuing that logic.

This is what FIML does through the use of a few new rules for speaking and listening.

FIML emphasizes and provides techniques for:

  • analysis of real-time communication
  • much greater accuracy in real-time communication
  • much greater mutual understanding, efficiency, and satisfaction

By improving your communication system(s) and removing error from it, FIML greatly enhances psychological well-being.

FIML works with the communication system(s) you already have. FIML does not tell you what to think.

first posted JULY 27, 2017

Rational actor, muddled actor

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The notion in economics that humans are “rational actors” has been widely and rightly criticized. Here is the basic argument against “rational choice theory” in economics as put by Edward J. Nell and Karim Errouaki:

To make rational calculations projectible, the agents may be assumed to have idealized abilities, especially foresight; but then the Inductive Problem is out of reach because the agents of the world do not resemble those of the model. The agents of the model can be abstract, but they cannot be endowed with powers actual agents could not have. This also undermines Methodological Individualism; if behaviour cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of the ‘rational choices of agents’ a social order cannot reliably follow from the choices of agents. (Source)

The problem is even worse when it comes to linguistics. All people much of the time are neither rational speakers nor rational listeners.

Speech arises out of complex mental, emotional, and environmental conditions. As speakers, we are often not aware of many of those conditions. The same is true for listeners. When the muddled aspects of speaking and listening are added together, the problem is made worse.

An even deeper problem is most muddled speech and listening never gets figured out. In place of clear mutual understanding, we normally go with muddled interpretations of what people are saying and how they understand what we have said.

Be mindful of what you say and how you are being understood. Listen carefully to others and notice how you are understanding what they are saying. It’s a very messy process even when topics are concrete and carry little or no emotional valence.

If basing a model of economics on “rational actors” does not work, the situation is far worse for psychology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, and more. The problem is worse because economic behavior is simpler than linguistic behavior, which underlies all of these subjects.

A good model of sociology might say something like this: People are emotionally and mentally muddled and they communicate very badly with each other except in simple situations or on the basis of simple semiotic models they already agree on and have been trained in. Culture, therefore, is little more than the simple semiotic models people use to communicate because they don’t know how to communicate in any other way.

A model for psychology might say something like this: Most people have profound emotional problems because they cannot communicate with others except in simple situations or on the basis of simple semiotic models they already agree on and have been trained in by experience. This is a disaster in intimate interpersonal relationships, often leading to anger, sadness, alienation, and depression.

A model for history might say: The above two paragraphs describe major historical forces that are as significant as economic and environmental forces. (This is why ‘history’ is so easily rewritten by those in power.)

We won’t fix the world just yet or change the course of history, but as individuals we can do something about this with our best friends and life partners. FIML corrects these problems because FIML exposes communication errors and corrects them while they are happening. If communication errors are not caught while they are happening (at least a good deal of the time), partners will be forced to rely on simple semiotics, simple extrinsic cultural norms, to conduct their emotional lives together, and that is a recipe for disaster.

People are muddled actors when it comes to communication and this is a serious problem when it comes to intimate interpersonal communication. But we can become much more rational and communicate much more clearly with at least one other person by using FIML techniques.

first posted AUGUST 1, 2012

Indeterminacy of translation and FIML

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I betray my poor education by admitting that I had never heard of W. V. Quine’s “indeterminacy of translation” until last week. My ignorance is especially egregious as I have worked as a professional translator for many years.

Maybe I had heard about it but had forgotten. I am being self-reflective because FIML practice is deeply, fundamentally concerned with the “indeterminacy” of translating one person’s thoughts into another person’s head.

Quine’s thesis is not just about translating from one language to another, though there is that. It is much more about the fundamental impossibility of determining what anything means well enough to “translate” it into another context, a next sentence, into another person’s mind, or even “translating” your own speech from the past into the context of your mind today.

If I had known about Quine, I probably never would have thought of FIML because his ideas and the slews of papers written on “indeterminacy of translation” surely would have made me believe that the subject had been worked through.

As it was, I have plodded along in a delightful state of ignorance and, due to that, maybe added something practical to the subject.

In the first place, I wholeheartedly believe that speech is filled with indeterminacy, which I have generally called ambiguity or uncertainty. In the second place, I have confined my FIML-related investigations mainly to interpersonal speech between partners who care about each other. I see no solution to the more general problem of indeterminacy within groups, subcultures, or linguistic communities. Until brain scans get much better, large groups will be forced to resort to hierarchical “determinacy” to exist or function at all.

For individuals, though, there is much we can do. FIML practice does not remove all “indeterminacy.” Rather, it removes much more than most people are aware is possible, even remotely aware is possible. My guess is FIML communication provides a level of detail and resolution that is an order of magnitude or two better than non-FIML.

That is a huge improvement. It is life-changing on many levels and extremely satisfying.

FIML does not fix everything—and philosophical or “artistic” differences between partners are still possible—but it does fix a great deal. By clearing up interpersonal micro-indeterminacy again and again, FIML practice frees partners from the inevitable macro-problems that micro-ambiguity inevitably causes.

Moreover, this freedom, in turn, frees partners from a great deal of subconscious adhesion to the hierarchical “determinacy” of whichever culture they are part of. Rather than trapping themselves in a state of helpless acceptance of predefined hierarchical “meaning,” FIML partners have the capacity to sort through existential semiotics and make of them what they will with far less “indeterminacy,” or ambiguity, than had been possible without FIML practice.

first posted DECEMBER 7, 2014

How to think about the mind?

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It is not linear, though a spoken sentence has conspicuous linear features and can often be profitably analyzed linearly.

It is a network where many parts connect robustly with other parts and where some parts connect only weakly. Unconnected parts can arise but usually they are rapidly incorporated into the network, even if only weakly, even if only to be rejected from it.

The mind in many ways resembles the system of language. Add semiotic codes and the resemblance grows stronger. Add random and not-so-random associations between semiotic and linguistic elements and the resemblance seems even better.

Emotions, except in their most primal form, have to be defined by language, semiotics, or associations to have impact or “meaning.”

Charles Peirce doubted the value of linear logical notation, preferring notation employing two or three dimensions. His existential graphs became the basis of model theory. (Interestingly, his work in this area was ignored until 1964, long after his death.)

While the human mind may be more than just a network, much about it can be explained by thinking of it as an associative network. While many mental associations are not logical, or even rational, in a formal sense, virtually all of them make subjective sense to the mind experiencing them. My associations with snow will be different from yours, but if we cared to we could compare them and come to a better understanding of each other.

A key to grasping how our minds work is to approach the very rich subjective network of mental associations—both logical and not—through the linearity of language, especially short bursts of language spoken in real-world situations.

Grasping our minds in this way probably cannot be done in a laboratory and outcomes will rarely, if ever, repeat themselves even outside of the lab.

Most science is based on repeatability and controls, such as a laboratory setting. Yet, clearly, not all investigations—even very rational, logical ones—can be pursued in those ways.

FIML practice uses the linear “logic” of short bits of real-world conversation to access the large associative network of the mind as it is actually functioning in a real-world situation.

In this sense, FIML practice does something that cannot be done in any other way. No theory can embrace everything you say and no theory can capture the complex interplay of feeling, speech, meaning, biology, and circumstances that actually comprise the most significant moments of our lives.

FIML, thus, is a sort of science of the moment, a shared science that allows two people to analyze their minds as they actually are functioning in the real world.

first posted FEBRUARY 20, 2014

How working memory works and doesn’t work

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A new study on working memory has some intriguing insights into how working memory works and how it doesn’t work.

It’s widely known that when working memory is overtaxed, confusion results, skills decline, while feelings of frustration and anger may arise. The reason for this seems to be:

Feedback (top-down) coupling broke down when the number of objects exceeded cognitive capacity. Thus, impaired behavioral performance coincided with a break-down of Prediction signals. This provides new insights into the neuronal underpinnings of cognitive capacity and how coupling in a distributed working memory network is affected by memory load. (Working Memory Load Modulates Neuronal Coupling)

A well-written article about this study contains the following diagram and explanation:

This article—Overtaxed Working Memory Knocks the Brain Out of Sync—also contains the following passages and quote from one of the study’s authors:

Miller thinks the brain is juggling the items being held in working memory one at a time, in alternation. “That means all the information has to fit into one brain wave,” he said. “When you exceed the capacity of that one brain wave, you’ve reached the limit on working memory.”

…The prefrontal cortex seems to help construct an internal model of the world, sending so-called “top-down,” or feedback, signals that convey this model to lower-level brain areas. Meanwhile, the superficial frontal eye fields and lateral intraparietal area send raw sensory input to the deeper areas in the prefrontal cortex, in the form of bottom-up or feedforward signals. Differences between the top-down model and the bottom-up sensory information allow the brain to figure out what it’s experiencing, and to tweak its internal models accordingly. (Emphasis added)

Working memory works via connections between three brain regions that together form a coherent brain wave.

Notice that “an internal model of the world,” which is a “top-down signal” within the brain wave feedback loop, predicts or interprets “bottom-up” sensory input as it arrives in the brain.

I believe this “top-down signal” within working memory is the reason FIML practice has such enormous psychological value.

By analyzing minute emotional reactions in real-time during normal conversation, FIML practice disrupts the consolidation, or more often the reconsolidation, of “neurotic” responses. (Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice)

FIML optimizes human psychology by helping partners intervene directly into their working memories to access real-world top-down signals as they are happening in real-time. Doing this repeatedly reliably alters the brain’s repository of top-down interpretations, making them much more accurate and up-to-date.

The model of working memory proposed in this study also explains why FIML can be a bit difficult to do. Partners must learn to allow a FIML meta-perspective or “super top-down” signal to quickly commandeer their working memories so that analysis of whatever just happened can proceed rationally and objectively. It does take some time to learn this skill, but it is no harder than many other “automated” skills such bicycling, typing, or playing a musical instrument.

first posted JUNE 7, 2018