Tag: psychology

Context drives electrical excitement in brain

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A new study has shown that:

…after mice formed a memory in a context, the engram cells encoding that memory in a brain region called the hippocampus would temporarily become much more electrically excitable if the mice were placed back in the same context again. ( How returning to a prior context briefly heightens memory recall)

The study is here: Engram Cell Excitability State Determines the Efficacy of Memory Retrieval

I do not believe it is much of a stretch to suppose that something similar happens with humans in virtually any significant context.

Since humans are social animals that respond to signals from other humans and since we often base our understanding of our social contexts on signals from other humans, it follows that strongly-perceived signals coming from others will cause “engram cells…in the hippocampus…to become electrically excitable.”

An “electrically excitable” hippocampus probably corresponds to what we have called a “jangle” in FIML practice. A jangle is the sensation that a psychological response may be or is initiating. It is the subjectively-felt onset in the mind of a “psychological morpheme.”

An instance of FIML practice is properly begun as soon as a significant “electrically excitable” response is first perceived. But before we “get reminded of details of some specific events” (Ibid) that originally produced that response.

Professor Tonegawa’s full statement on this is:

This initial recall could be a general recall of the vacation. But moments later, you may get reminded of details of some specific events or situations that took place during the vacation which you had not been thinking about.

By beginning a FIML query as soon after a jangle is perceived, any unwanted “context” that lies deeper in the brain is not recalled. Instead, the immediate basis of that context (the percepta that initiated the jangle) is isolated and analyzed.

See this for more: Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice.

In Buddhist practice, a jangle is the second skandha. The five skandhas are form, sensation, perception, activity, consciousness. In modern terms, form might be better called “percepta.” In this context, a form/percepta is anything that enters working memory or consciousness.

For Buddhists, FIML can be understood as a mindfulness partnership where partners help each other with the five skandhas. By disrupting the normal or habitual unfolding of the five skandhas at the second skandha, FIML partners learn how to eliminate mistaken or unwanted responses when they first arise as jangles but before they become full blown psychological contexts.

 

Disruption of neurotic response in FIML practice

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

In FIML, a neurotic response is defined as “an emotional response based on a misinterpretation.” The misinterpretation in question can be incipient (just starting) to long-standing (been a habit for years).

The response is disrupted by FIML practice and, thus, tends not to consolidate or reconsolidate, especially after several instances of learning that it is not valid.

A neurotic response is a response based on memory. The following study on fear memories supports the above explanation of FIML practice.

Memories become labile when recalled. In humans and rodents alike, reactivated fear memories can be attenuated by disrupting reconsolidation with extinction training. Using functional brain imaging, we found that, after a conditioned fear memory was formed, reactivation and reconsolidation left a memory trace in the basolateral amygdala that predicted subsequent fear expression and was tightly coupled to activity in the fear circuit of the brain. In contrast, reactivation followed by disrupted reconsolidation suppressed fear, abolished the memory trace, and attenuated fear-circuit connectivity. Thus, as previously demonstrated in rodents, fear memory suppression resulting from behavioral disruption of reconsolidation is amygdala-dependent also in humans, which supports an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism. (Source: Disruption of Reconsolidation Erases a Fear Memory Trace in the Human Amygdala)

FIML practice works by partners consciously and cooperatively disrupting reconsolidation (and initial consolidation) of neurotic memory (and associated behaviors). FIML both extirpates habitual neurotic responses and also prevents the formation of new neurotic responses through conscious disruption of memory consolidation.

FIML probably works as well as it does because humans have “an evolutionarily conserved memory-update mechanism” that favors more truth. Obvious examples of this update mechanism can be seen in many simple mistakes. For instance, if you think the capital of New York State is New York City and someone shows that it is Albany, you will likely correct your mistake immediately with little or no fuss.

Since FIML focuses on small mistakes made between partners, corrections are rarely more difficult than the above example though they may be accompanied by a greater sense of relief. For example, if you thought that maybe your partner was mad at you but then find (through a FIML query) that they are not, your sense of relief may be considerable.

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First posted 10/28/2015

Psychology as “signs of something else”

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When we see a human behavior as a “sign of something else” we begin magnifying it.

When we live in a culture where people normally do this, we tend to think it is right to do this even to ourselves.

People often feel relieved when their “signs of something else” have been analyzed—either professionally or by self-administered questionnaires—to reveal what that “something else” is.

Once analyzed and categorized, the “something else” itself becomes a sign, or a meta-sign, a diagnosis that explains behavior while directing us to a cure based on whatever that “something else” is.

The DSM reads like a Ptolemaic system of circles and spheres. In it signs are identified, quantified, and classified to indicate what they stand for, what their “something else” is.

Professionals are needed to do this work of course, and though the manual rests on “scientific” tests and other measurements, it changes every few years and very few people are getting better because of it. Moreover there is very little consensus among thoughtful people, including psychologists, about what the classifications of “mental illness” or “personality disorder” actually mean.

This is a sure sign that something is wrong.

I submit that what is wrong is our systems of classification of mental disorder do not describe the actual disorders because these descriptions exist on a different level from the disorders themselves.

It is widely observed that many disorders as currently classified blend into each other, share attributes, are co-morbid. It is also widely known that when disorders are extreme, sufferers can exhibit symptoms of all of them.

This indicates that the human mind is a complex system that becomes disordered by over-emphasizing or under-emphasizing parts of its system.

And this may be why drugs, psychedelics, shock therapy, or shamanic rituals sometimes help. Because they reset the entire system.

If you don’t want to use drugs, can’t get psychedelics, don’t want to undergo shock therapy or shamanic ritual, I suggest you try FIML practice. If you have a good partner, are fairly intelligent, and want to truly optimize your psychology (not just terminate your ambiguous disorder), FIML will probably do this for you. In fact, even if you can get psychedelics, FIML is better.

A disorder is unique to its system and though we can speak of some generalities that may apply to it, these generalities exist at a different level from the disorder itself and cannot provide a cure.

To cure a disorder the disorder must be experienced as it is happening by the sufferer. If too much of the disorder is revealed at once or the sufferer is simply confronted with its classification, more harm than good may result. If small bits of the disorder are revealed over a longish period of time, however, the sufferer will be much more likely to gain beneficial insight into the disorder.

In my view, all people everywhere are deeply disordered and thus all people everywhere would benefit from FIML practice. People who may not benefit from FIML include, among others, those who cannot self-observe, who are severely alcoholic, whose disorder prohibits self-analysis (narcissism, for example) and, sadly, those who cannot find an honest partner.

First posted March 14, 2018

Working memory is key to deep psychological transformation, Part 3

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Part 1

Part 2

A great advantage of analyzing the contents of working memory is working memory does not hold much information and thus each item in it is small.

Most items of psychological import will be psychological morphemes—the smallest units of human psychology—or only slightly larger. This has several important advantages for real-time psychological analysis:

  • data points can be easily identified
  • they can easily be agreed upon by both partners
  • when both partners agree on a data point, a reasonably objective standard is established for what just occurred
  • analyzing these data points is almost painless due to their small size
  • though small, items in the working memory are connected to the rest of the brain/mind and thus often implicate or expose much larger internal psychological systems

The kinds of data points we are talking about are things like word choice, tone, expression, and gesture. Generally, it is not difficult for both partners to agree that one of them used a certain word, or made a certain gesture, or displayed a certain expression.

Once the data point is isolated and agreed upon, it can be discussed and analyzed as described here.

Rather than conceive of our minds as having an Id, it is more accurate to describe them as having interconnected systems or networks that resemble the layouts of brain neurons, maps, or language.

When an item appearing in working memory has surprising connections to larger psychological systems, we can analyze it with our partner (or not) to gain some insight into how our working memory—our being in real-time—is actually acting and perceiving.

When and if the same sort of item appears repeatedly in our working memory, we can be sure that it is connected in many ways to larger mental or psychological systems.

Some items of interest will have just arisen and have no further psychological import if they are queried and analyzed. If they are not queried and analyzed, those same items may plant a seed that will grow from then on.

This is why it is important for partners to do many FIML analyses. Do many analyses of very minor stuff to get used to the practice. (Also, I guarantee some of that “minor stuff” will be very revealing.)

Whether we conceive of working memory as a sketchpad or as a core component of higher cognitive function, most of us are aware that there can be considerable delay between the appearance of a psychological morpheme in working memory and the excitation of the much larger psychological system(s) it is attached to.

Whenever we stay a psychological response of anger, irritation or anything else, we make use of the delay between real-time life and the rumination or behavior that might follow later on.

When we analyze a negative psychological morpheme very soon after it appears in working memory, we always change it and almost always change it to something much better. This happens if only because the weight our full minds can put on something like that is typically much greater than anything our partner intended or was in their mind.

But this also happens very often because we are simply wrong.

Consistent FIML analysis will show this is true. When we clear many mistakenly stimulated psychological morphemes of the same type, we will become convinced (almost painlessly) that our minds have been malfunctioning or misperceiving in that area. Once we are convinced of our mistake, that malfunction will all but disappear as if it had never been.

Working memory is key to deep psychological transformation, Part 2

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Part 1

Part 3

In science, working memory is generally thought of as either:

  • “…the sketchpad of your mind; it’s the contents of your conscious thoughts.”   (Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory)
  • Or “…a core component of higher cognitive functions like planning or language or intelligence.”   (Christos Constantinidis, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest School of Medicine) [Source for both]

Obviously, both versions are valuable and probably both are roughly true. Some “contents” of working memory are indeed sketchpad-like—a crack in the sidewalk or a passing bird—while others clearly are “core components of higher cognitive functions” and, I would add, long-term memory including all psychological factors.

Our psychology—be it “natured” or nurtured—functions in real-life in real-time because we remember it. It bears on us because it is in our minds, because it colors our minds, shades our thoughts and actions.

Working memory is key to understanding human psychology because it shows us how we really are functioning, thinking, acting, feeling in real-time.

Working memory is also fleeting. If you want to use working memory to understand your real-life psychology, you have to be able to analyze it in real-time. This means you have to capture its contents and examine them as near to their appearance in working memory as possible.

You can do this alone with good effect, but when you do it alone you are prone to self-referential bias and other mistakes. When you do it with another person, they can help you avoid self-referential mistakes as well as other less serious ones.

This is how FIML practice works and why it is done the way it is. FIML analyzes data discovered in the working memory.

So how do you do that? You do that by immediately noticing when something significant about the other person’s speech or behavior enters in your mind or arises in your working memory. Generally, that something will have psychological impact on you, though you might just be curious or notice it for other reasons.

Whether working memory is an independent sketchpad or a component of higher functions, analyzing whatever you feel like analyzing in it is valuable. Sometimes even very little things can have great psychological import.

Analyses of working memory through FIML practice are most productive when they entail what I have called “psychological morphemes.”

Psychological morphemes are the smallest units of human psychology. Metaphorically, they are a word or a letter as compared to a phrase, a paragraph, or even a book. They are the building blocks of larger psychological structures and also may occur as unique isolates.

Whenever a psychological morpheme appears in working memory, it is always interesting. Psychological morphemes almost always signal the onset of a larger psychological interpretation, one either stored in long-term memory or one arising just now.

By working with any and all psychological morphemes as they appear in your and your partner’s working memories and by working with them repeatedly, both partners will come to understand that some of these psychological morphemes have deep roots in their cognitive systems while others do not.

For example, a fleeting expression or tone you observe in your partner may cause you to feel jealous or disrespected. Do FIML immediately and find out what it was.

It’s either true or false or in-between. If you have a good and honest relationship with your partner, most of the time you will find a negative psychological morpheme that appeared in your working memory was false and that it is part of a psychological habit of yours that has deep roots in other cognitive functions.

A great benefit of FIML is repeated analyses of mistaken psychological morphemes leads to their extirpation, sometimes quickly sometimes more gradually. A second benefit of FIML is it makes all communications between partners much clearer and more satisfying. A third advantage is most of these gains lead to better understanding and competency with all people.

Part 3

Working memory is key to deep psychological transformation, Part 1

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Part 2

Part 3

Working memory is the part of you that organizes and executes action in real-time. All real-time actions—save stupor or deep sleep—require working memory.

Working memory is where your life meets the world, where your existential rubber meets the real-time road.

Working memory is the spear point of the mind as it does life. For this reason, it is the single best key to understanding human psychology. And through this understanding to change it for the better.

Working memory shows you how you really think, feel, or perceive. Properly observed, it does not lie. Working memory happens too quickly to lie.

If you can observe your working memory as it performs—in a flash—a significant psychological act, you will have an accurate handle on the deep memories that comprise your psycho-spiritual makeup.

Working memory is quick. It’s “contents” or “the items it entertains” come and go quickly. Its “contents” can be perceptions, memories, judgement, sensations, words, emotions, almost anything.

Working memory is obviously linked to long-term memory though how it is linked is not entirely clear to science.

Phone numbers, remembered or not, typically come up in this context. But the connection between working and long-term memory is much more than just that.

Long-term memories—your psychology or life experiences—deeply color working memory. And this coloring changes in different contexts.

When we access long-term “psychological” (aren’t they all?) memories, they are huge; they are large systems of associations and neurons. This is why overemphasizing long-term memories and that aspect of psychology does not provide full insight into the workings of the mind.

For that we need the spear-point—working memory—to show us precisely where the contact points really are, precisely how we engage with the real world.

I bet most readers have no idea how to analyze their working-memories, how to accurately access them for psychological insight.

Part 2

Double-bind, no-win as key to figuring out real-world narcissism

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I believe I am well-suited to providing a key to figuring out if you are being tormented by a narcissist or are caught up in a narcissistic social structure, family or otherwise.

My qualifications are I was uniquely incapable of figuring this stuff out for many years. Being uniquely incapable qualifies me because I really know what it’s like to be abused by narcs for long periods of time, decades of time. I was also a serial fool, falling for more than one narc, more than one narc situation.

Cut to the chase: The key to figuring out narcissists and narcissistic situations is the double-bind, the no-win. Narcs put you in double-binds and enjoy watching you squirm. That’s how you can identify them.

I was raised in a narcissistic home. As Scapegoat, I accepted the program since that was all I knew. As a kid I had no clue.

Looking back, I do remember the frustration of being trapped in no-win situations. But at the time, I had no concept that these situations had been created or managed by one or more of my narc family members.

The key to understanding why narcs use double-binds is understanding that at their core narcs are very simple. Narcs want narcissistic supply. If you don’t give them supply, they will get mad at you. If you do give them supply, they will act like they like you.

Like or don’t like. That is the core of a narc’s social psychology. It is two-polar.

If you are a Golden Child (GC), the narc will like you till they don’t. If you are a Scapegoat (SG), the narc will probably always hate you though they do enjoy watching you suffer and may appear to like you when you do.

A GC’s ‘s life is dedicated to avoiding narc anger while feeding the narc with supply. An SG’s life is filled with being caught in some kind of double-bind. The best an SG can do is not be noticed.

GC’s have it worse than SG’s because a GC is raised to be especially shallow. Very hard for them to get beyond that.

The presence of a GC and SG in the typical narcissistic family structure is a result of the narcissistic parent’s or parents’ need to either like or hate. So they like one child and hate the other. It really is that simple.

So, if you think you are dealing with a narcissist, the way to tell is they will put you in double-bind, no-win situations. No matter what you do, you will be wrong. You may not notice what’s happening at first, but you probably will feel it. You will feel frustrated, nervous, anxious, sad, or have a nagging sense that something’s not right. Once you are sure of what you are seeing, get the fuck out of there. It’s almost impossible to fix a narc.

If you are in a GC or similar position with a narc (even as an adult), it will be harder for you to see what is happening, but you may be able to see other people being trapped in double-binds.

One more point—narcs are very good good at impression management and torturing select people. It can be very hard to see what they are doing because most of what they do may be done behind your back. A full-on narcissist is a very simple (two-polar) but vicious individual. There is no point in hating them, let alone challenging or trying to fix them. Their simple two-polar nature makes it almost impossible for them to change.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics

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Functional Interpersonal Meta Linguistics (FIML) is the use of language to understand interpersonal communication.

More precisely, it is the use of language to completely understand real-world, real-time interpersonal communication events.

FIML disables psychological presupposition and framing whether emotional, psychological, intellectual, or other. This happens because FIML only uses data agreed upon by both partners.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is sometimes described as a “brain orgasm.” It is a feeling of profound clarity and may be accompanied by tingling sensations, pleasant light-headedness, or a sense that the blood and nerves are flushed with a clean feeling.

ASMR is often associated with tactile or sensory perceptions, but a successful FIML event can also produce ASMR sensations.

The pleasure of a successful FIML event comes from a state of psychological disarray resolving into everything being in the right place, all the pieces coming together as they should.

Once experienced during FIML practice, ASMR acts as an additional reward to having resolved a state of confusing communication into something wonderful. It is a pleasure to figure something out with FIML and also it is an even greater pleasure to have that accompanied by an ASMR brain orgasm.

Give it a shot. Two people who care about each other. It’s not that hard to do and will change your life.

In praise of psychologists

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Psychologists work with many people while also having large bodies of information collected by other psychologists. This allows them to see patterns that individuals working alone cannot see on their own.

I am a lone worker on the edge of the field of psychology. I see things very much from a linguistic or psycho-linguistic point of view. I am not well-trained in any of those fields but I am fairly well self-educated in them. I think my perspective has allowed me to see something no one else, to my knowledge, has seen. And that is the need for a practice like FIML.

That said, I have been intellectually limited by my poor ability to see the patterns in human behavior that so many psychologists can see.

My main example of this comes from my long quest to understand my self and the family I grew up in. This quest led me to gradually understand the narcissism of my parents and vaguely grasp how this affected me and my siblings.

I learned the concept of narcissism from psychology but had trouble applying it to my family. The dynamics of two parents and four children confused me. I have read a fair amount about the dynamics of narcissistic households, but never fully grasped how that applied to me and my family.

My FIML partner has explained it to me many times, even including naming which of my siblings was the Golden Child (one of my sisters) and who was the Scapegoat (me), but I never was able to grasp the logical simplicity of the whole-family narcissistic dynamic.

Until I read The Narcissistic Family Structure. I saw that short essay for the first time the day before yesterday and after reading it felt like all the pieces had at last fallen into place.

I felt deeply relieved, even liberated, to read that post. My dad was the overt narcissist as described, my mom was his narcissistic enabler, one of my sisters was the Golden Child and I was the Scapegoat. It was clear as a bell. My other sibs were the “other children.”

The structure is fairly simple once you see it. I bet it’s one of several basic default dynamics that can occur in any small hierarchical group, including the nuclear family.

Only the work of many psychologists over many decades could have produced such an elegant description. After reading it, in addition to feeling relieved of a burden and happy to see the whole puzzle fitted together, I also felt a kind of unemotional thought compassion or existential compassion for my family.

My Golden Child sister, who has grown into a narc herself and who can be exceptionally underhanded, is truly not to blame. She had it even worse than me. I was isolated and demeaned, but my situation also forced me to see that something was wrong. My sister has never figured her role out because her role rewarded her for being underhanded while preventing her from seeing anything else.

My dad died at a fairly young age. After that, my mom flared into full-blown overt narcissism for a few years, but then quieted down. Without his support, she didn’t have enough fuel. About fifteen years after my dad died she even cam to me on her own and provided me with an extensive apology and revision of my/our past. She admitted everything without my prompting and without either of us having any understanding of narcissistic family dynamics. I respect her immensely for that.

I hope that any psychologists reading this will note that my mom really did turn around. She really had been a narcissist with malicious traits and she really did apologize for all of it extensively and over a period of several years.

I also want to thank the profession of psychology for having been able to accumulate enough knowledge to abstract out the basic structure of narcissistic families. I could not have done that on my own.

My FIML partner was crucial to my finally seeing the light. She held to her explanation for almost ten years before I at last got the point. I love it when people do that—stick to their guns for years for your benefit. It’s quite rare and very beautiful.

It may be that as the Scapegoat it was hard for me to see the forest for the trees. I know it was very hard to see my dad critically or to stop idolizing my Golden Child sister. As a Scapegoat child, I learned to accept the drama as presented. My dad was perfect and my sister was beyond awesome.

I write this stuff on the off-chance that someone will benefit from it, much as I did from the post linked above. I think it’s also part of being a former Scapegoat—you spend all your time trying to figure people out.

You could explain FIML as the mind of a Scapegoat forever wondering what is going on.

And also, FIML does transcend one individual’s psychology to reveal a method of finding the deeply unique patterns that make up the intricate structures of all individuals.

The Narcissistic Family Structure

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NM: I can’t believe [recently-deceased spouse] NF would have spoken against me…

There are five “roles” within a Narcissistic Family structure:

  • The head parent/spouse – Will be an overt N with a virtual God-complex within the home, or a covert N who controls the family using an overt N spouse as a shield. Usually a Malignant Narcissist who may take extreme measures to maintain the status quo.
  • The secondary parent/spouse – A weaker-willed enabler/codependent of the overt N, or the overt N thug and scapegoat of a covert N who will set up the secondary as the public head of the family. The Overt N may also be a Malignant Narcissist, though not as consistently malicious as the Head N.
  • The Golden Child – A common term referring to the preferred child within a family. Anointed as such by the head of The Family.
  • The Scapegoat – The child who bears the brunt of any family turmoil. Will often have the most expectations placed upon him/her.
  • Other children – In families with more than two children, the non-GC/SG children can usually move up and down the spectrum between GC/SG. If a GC(less likely) or SG separates from The Family, one of the other children will be placed in that role.

Continue reading…

The above post very clearly and concisely describes the structure and dynamics of a narcissistic family. Please click on the link and read the entire post. If you recognize this structure, you very probably are in a narcissistic family. ABN

Thoughts hidden by subjective phrases

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After years of clearing up my mind, I noticed that my inner voice sometimes uses short phrases to bring negative trains of thought to an end. It was a habit I was aware of but had never given any thought to.

The phrases are not pretty; e.g. “I hate them all,” “fuck them,” “who cares about assholes like that,” etc.

My guess is this kind of inner speech is not uncommon. I was using it to end various lines of thought that had wandered into painful territory.

Having a clearer mind today or at least believing I did, I decided that when phrases or words like that came up again, I would not let them shut off my thoughts as I had been doing. Rather I would let the thoughts continue, explore what was there.

What I found is a bunch of old memories and emotions that were fairly easy to clean up. They were not so much repressed as not having been visited for many years. The nasty phrases were like labels in an old, unused filing cabinet.

About half the material was out of date and easy to toss. Another one-quarter was pertinent but was stuff I had dealt with in other ways and was thus redundant.

Only about a quarter of the material lying behind those nasty phrases deserved more thought.

In some of the most interesting cases, I realized that I was letting someone off too easy by hiding their behavior inside a neutral memory. They actually had been horrible but I had been too young to understand (narcissists, for example). Analyzing that stuff over again in a more mature mind was a bit of a chore, but the results have been good, even refreshing.

The process is ongoing. It does resemble cleaning an attic or an old filing cabinet. The stuff I found behind those nasty phrases was not all the stuff from my past. It was just stuff where I was blaming someone or feeling angry about something or had been harmed by someone. The bad stuff I’ve done is elsewhere in my mind.

I am struck by several things concerning those phrases and what lay behind them. One is a lot of that material dates back to childhood and early adulthood. It was not so much unconscious as not having been visited for a long time. Though most of it does not have strong emotional valence, some of it is very revealing because it brings together memories that had been disconnected, leading me to understand dramas or aspects of experience I had not understood before even though I had lived them. I also notice that it was just a few words that closed off those “files.” The power of words to command silence in the mind.

I had been dismissing all that material with just a few words whenever I didn’t feel like going there, which was every time. After not going there for many years, it was refreshing to poke around and rearrange those parts of my mind. I am quite sure I freed up some memory space and removed some snags in my thinking by dealing with that stuff. I also see new patterns within my general sense of my past, patterns with better explanatory power, both truer and more concise.

I see our minds as having a structure sort of similar to language or a forest. Trees of ideas, memories, and feelings grow and change. It’s good to remove some of them sometimes, put the space to better use. Buddhist practice is very helpful in endeavors like this. Rather than get all worked up with Freudian passions and delusions, we can simply observe, dismiss, refile, erase, upgrade, or reimagine as needed based on our capacities and understanding of what’s best.

Our bhavanga or “storehouse consciousness” contains memories, pictures, ideas, words., explanations They flow along with us, in many ways are us. When the mind is clear, a lot of that material can be rearranged for the better. There aren’t many rules for that. Just do your best.

The existential beauty (and chemistry) of updating beliefs

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A new study shows that updating beliefs about the world requires and stimulates dopamine release in the brain.

Lead author of the study, Matthew Nour, from University College London and Kings College London has this to say about the findings:

“We found that two key brain areas of the dopamine system (the midbrain and striatum) appear to be more active when a person updates their beliefs about the world, and this activity is related to measures of dopamine function in these regions.” (Source)

Healthy people update beliefs when new evidence is presented. The study may also show that abnormal dopamine functionality is implicated in schizophrenia and paranoid ideation by interfering with normal updating.

The study can be found here: Dopaminergic basis for signaling belief updates, but not surprise, and the link to paranoia.

I like this study because participants were measured while changing minor, short-term beliefs.

Small changes in beliefs manifested in short-term memory lies at the heart of FIML practice.

FIML relies heavily on changing inaccuracies in the short-term memory bank because this data can be isolated and objectively agreed upon by both partners and because this data is by definition fairly small and thus easily changed.

A year of FIML practice may entail a thousand or more small updates in perception, belief, and self-knowledge. Each individual update is typically small, but the aggregate of many updates over longer periods of time creates the basis for very large psychological transformations.

And since these transformations are based on more accurate data, they lead to a more realistic view of the world and the self.

Moreover, by regularly making many small updates in their perceptions of each other and themselves, FIML partners are constantly exercising their dopamine “updating system,” thus strengthening their abilities to function well in any environment.

FIML changes can come quickly, but it is long-term practice that brings the best results.

The above study shows that something very real happens when we update our perceptions. I would maintain that making this happen often with meaningful psychological information through FIML practice leads to very significant and beneficial changes in psychological functioning across many domains.

Study identifies effective ketamine doses for treatment-resistant depression

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A study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators identifies two subanesthetic dosage levels of the anesthetic drug ketamine that appear to provide significant symptom relief to patients with treatment-resistant depression. In the October 2018 issue of Molecular Psychiatry they describe finding that single intravenous doses of 0.5 mg/kg and 1.0 mg/kg were more effective than an active placebo in reducing depression symptoms over a three-day period. Two lower dosage levels that were tested did not provide significant symptom relief, although some improvement was noted with the lowest 0.1 mg/kg dose. (Source)

Neurosis as a semiotic phobia

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Human beings are semiotic entities. We largely live in and react emotionally to semiotics. Virtually everything we think, feel, and believe is built on a foundation of signs and symbols—semiotics.

A recent German study elegantly shows that people with arachnophobia see spiders more quickly than people who do not fear spiders.

The study can be found here: You See What You Fear: Spiders Gain Preferential Access to Conscious Perception in Spider-Phobic Patients. An article about the study is here: Phobias alter perception, German researchers say.

The authors of the study say that there probably is “an evolutionary advantage to preferentially process threatening stimuli, but these effects seem to have become dysfunctional in phobic patients.”

I would argue that “these effects” have also migrated into human semiotics and are similarly dysfunctional. That is, humans perceive some signs and symbols as more threatening than they are. For some of us these signs and symbols can seem so threatening we become “phobic” or neurotic about them.

For example, insecure people may become hypersensitive to signs of rejection. People who have been abused or tortured may perceive signs that seem ordinary to others as serious threats. If the person who tortures you also smiles, you will probably see human smiles as being dangerous when to others they indicate kindness.

Once a semiotic becomes associated with strong emotions, and this can happen in many ways, we will tend to see that semiotic as an emotionally charged sign from then on.

FIML practice is designed to interrupt our emotionally-charged responses to semiotics the moment those responses occur. By doing this repeatedly with the same sign, FIML practice can extirpates the neurotic response to that sign.

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Edit: Extirpating semiotic “phobias” or neuroses should be easier to do in most cases than extirpating phobias based on visual perceptions of things, such as the spiders discussed in the linked study. This is likely due to the more direct connection between emotional or limbic responses and the visual cortex. Complex semiotics are signs and symbols built on top of other signs and symbols, and thus their “architecture” is more fragile than direct visual perception and probably simpler to change in most cases. Human facial expressions probably fall somewhere between complex signs and direct visual perception. A good deal of what we call “psychology” are networks of complex semiotics. When a network becomes “neurotic” it is probably true that it contains erroneous interpretations of some or all of its semiotics. That said, a complex neurosis than involves many semiotic networks may be more difficult to extirpate than a straightforward phobia like arachnophobia.

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First posted 1/9/14

Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis

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In the present study, we prospectively examined the associations of religious involvement in adolescence (including religious service attendance and prayer or meditation) with a wide array of psychological well-being, mental health, health behavior, physical health, and character strength outcomes in young adulthood…. Compared with no attendance, at least weekly attendance of religious services was associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, a number of character strengths, lower probabilities of marijuana use and early sexual initiation, and fewer lifetime sexual partners. Analyses of prayer or meditation yielded similar results. Although decisions about religion are not shaped principally by health, encouraging service attendance and private practices in adolescents who already hold religious beliefs may be meaningful avenues of development and support, possibly leading to better health and well-being. (Source PDF)