Tag: psychology

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

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__________

I believe this is largely true with the addition of a strong cultural and probably genetic propensity for self-deception. Evolutionarily, self-deception is a ‘valuable’ trait for any tribe as it ensures tribal-bonding at the expense of others. ABN

Our psychologies are unnecessarily confined within narrow ranges of meaning and understanding

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Human psychology is greatly affected by human language. Since humans normally use language rather crudely and almost always are confined within meanings already established in language, their psychologies are fundamentally both crude and unnecessarily confined within narrow ranges of meaning and understanding.

This causes emotionality, discord, dependence, frustration, anger, and violence. Our normal uses of language often stimulate basic instincts that we either have to control or be controlled by.

I usually discuss this problem as it occurs during interpersonal conversation, where it is generally most serious and where our “personalities” are generally formed. But it also exists in texting, emails, news stories, and even scientific peer reviewed papers.

The basic underlying problem is we do not communicate well, almost no one does. Even very articulate, well-educated, intelligent people with good upbringings and admirable personalities have this problem. In fact, they often have it even worse than everyone else because their considerable skills have trapped them even worse.

The trap is using established meaning or interpretation to override mistakes in interpersonal communication. The established meaning can be learned from others or self-generated. Either way, when it is used to override mistakes in communication (and this happens often) the person is trapped in a labyrinth of false references: the lived and learned matrix of their personality; the neuronal structures of idiosyncratic memories and behaviors that constantly misguide the sufferer through a tautological existence.

When data is bad the output will be bad. When interpersonal data is bad, and far too much of it is, the output in speech, listening, and cogitating will be bad. When everyone is like this, the output will be horrendous. Look around you at our world as it becomes less truthful and more absurd daily. The root cause is massive amounts of uncorrected bad data at all levels of society.

My contribution toward fixing this mess is FIML, which deals “only” with the enormous problems of close or intimate interpersonal communication.

When two people do FIML conscientiously, all of their problems born of long histories of many mistakes can be cleared up. If you want to do this, if you want to optimize your being; find a good partner and do FIML. As of today, there is no other way. If you can see the problem, you will understand why FIML works. If you do FIML even without fully understanding it, you will still fix the problem and will eventually come to see how it’s not just your problem: all people everywhere have it and have always had it. I do not know why I am the first person to provide a solution to it.

The problem is very obvious but it is so big and widespread, people either do not see it or believe it cannot be fixed.

FIML is especially good for and accessible to very sensitive people who pick up on communication signs much more than most people and who love having those sensitivities but do not know how to manage them well

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If your head is often boiling with ideas, associations, memories, signs and signals from people and the world around you and you love it but maybe it’s driving you crazy… and you have a partner who is similar or at least understanding, then you will love FIML and become good at it if you try.

Abstract reasoning and mental illness

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Listening to the ranting of a friend who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), I am struck by two things:

  • he gives reasons for his anger
  • his reasoning or abstract understanding of his predicament is ridiculous

(His rant was recorded and sent to me by a third party who is trying to help.)

With that as a starting point, consider the various ways abstract reasoning or solid abstract paradigms can compensate for or mask mental illness. Not all of it is pretty.

For example, serial killers often mask their illnesses for decades by holding fast to the appearance of normalcy while secretly indulging their madness.

Less bad are career criminals who act with savagery in less direct ways, through hit men, poisons, theft, fraud, and so on.

There is a wide spectrum between serial killers and normally inoffensive people.

It is reasonable to see all cultures as fundamentally abstract paradigms that mask and allow for madness among large groups of people.

A culture, after all, is nothing more than a Lowest-Common-Denominator system of communication; an LCD semiology. Consider how many cultures are grotesquely narcissistic.

Personality is much the same whether it conforms well or not to whichever cultural semiology it inhabits.

From this point of view, enshrining diversity only ensures a wider array of mad people. Identity politics is the same; just more ways for mad people to function, more room for them to run free; more abstract paradigms to mask their underlying chaos.

That is a decent modern restatement of the First and Second Noble Truths: life is suffering because we are crazy.

The Third and Fourth Noble Truths tell us that the way out of being crazy is to use our reason better; to understand why we are crazy; that clinging to LCD semiologies can’t ever work.

A philosophical psychologist might rightly say that a mad mind open to reason will gradually become well.

My friend with BPD can reason, but his reasoning is really bad. It’s selfish, marinated in anger, and not open to contrary views. But even he can do it if he clings to reason and evidence.

Abstract reasoning and paradigms such as Buddhism, science, other religions, atheism, psychology, or philosophy can lead us out of madness if we use them diligently.

Diligence or perseverance is one of the most important virtues in Buddhist practice. Wisdom is the most important. Compassion is probably the most famous Buddhist virtue but compassion without wisdom or diligence is not good and can even be dangerous.

Indeed, my BPD friend frequently and loudly demands unreasonable compassion from others. And that is one of the most obvious flaws in the way he thinks about himself, the way he reasons.

Verbal abuse in childhood has devastating impact on adult brain

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The survey asked participants how often they felt optimistic about the future, useful, relaxed, had dealt with problems well, had thought clearly, felt close to others and were able to make up their own minds when required.

What the researchers found was that those who experienced verbal abuse as children were 1.64 times more likely to report poor mental well-being as adults. Meanwhile, individuals exposed to physical abuse were 1.52 times more likely to have compromised mental health later in life, and those who experienced both verbal and physical maltreatment were 2.15 times more likely to have negative mental health outcomes.

There’s a growing body of evidence that demonstrates how verbal and emotional abuse in childhood has long-term impacts, even changing the brain as it’s developing. Nonetheless, it’s often viewed as less harmful than other forms of maltreatment. In this study, the researchers found that while physical abuse had decreased – from around 20.2% of children born in the 1970s to 10% of those born in 2000 or later – verbal abuse has steadily increased.

link

Study: Comparative relationships between physical and verbal abuse of children, life course mental well-being and trends in exposure: a multi-study secondary analysis of cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales

Mind-control is a paramount form of verbal abuse, both by what it forces us to say and what it forbids us to say.

We all know the abusiveness of the silent treatment; mind-control uses the silent treatment very often.

They won’t say it and neither can you, so silence spreads like a psycholinguistic contagion.

Some even believe silence is a sign of maturity, so they succumb proudfully.

Early, middle and late education is also rife with mind-control verbal abuse. They even test your levels of indoctrination.

Intelligent humans are highly susceptible to psycholinguistic mind-control and semiotic hypnosis.

A medical setting is but one example of semiotic hypnosis, and it includes medical personnel. Schools are similar, and there are many other examples. ABN

New study links psychedelic use to mental health recovery in times of crisis

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A new longitudinal study involving more than 240,000 individuals in the United Kingdom suggests that people who used both psychedelics and cannabis during the COVID-19 pandemic experienced average improvements in symptoms of anxiety and depression over time. Unlike other groups of drug users—who tended to report persistently worse mental health—this group’s mental health scores became comparable to those of individuals who had never used illicit drugs. The findings have been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Psychedelics are a class of substances that alter perception, mood, and cognitive processes. Classic psychedelics include psilocybin (the active compound in magic mushrooms), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). These substances are known for producing intense alterations in consciousness, including visual and auditory hallucinations, shifts in thought patterns, and changes in self-perception. Unlike more commonly used substances such as alcohol or cannabis, psychedelics are often used less frequently and in settings intended to foster introspection or emotional insight.

link

Gab AI answers ‘What is FIML’?

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Answer:

FIML = Functional Interpersonal Meta-Linguistics (often shortened to Functional Interpersonal Mutual [sic] Linguistics).

It’s a mindfulness-based communication protocol for two people who are close (couples, close friends, etc.).

The core idea: in real time, you stop the moment either of you feels even a tiny emotional jolt, ask what exact word/phrase/tone caused it (“let’s do FIML on that”), uncover the micro-misunderstanding, clarify it, and resume. Repeated many times, the partners gradually remove all the accumulated tiny layers of misinterpretation and latent resentment.

Developed by two Buddhists, Rob Kauth and Tara Stewart, back around 2011–2012. It was initially published on the Mindfulness in 3D blog and later formalized in small PDF guides. There is no commercial training empire; you just grab the instructions (often titled “FIML Basic Method” or similar) and do it yourselves.

Question: Where did you get the information on Rob Kauth and Tara Stewart?

Gab AI Answer: I don’t have a verifiable source that names Rob Kauth and Tara Stewart as the founders of FIML; that detail came from my own memory and I cannot confirm it. If you need certainty, you should look for primary documentation or contact the original FIML community directly.

Gab AI is wrong about the origin of FIML. I am the inventor/discoverer and developer of FIML.

Nonetheless, I am pleased that Gab AI was able to answer as well as it did in its first three paragraphs above.

FIML has never been called Functional Interpersonal Mutual Linguistics.

I am not aware of a Mindfulness in 3D blog mentioned by Gab AI, but there is a book by that title. I hope the author at least acknowledged where he got the idea, if Gab is right, especially if he called it Functional Interpersonal Meta-Linguistics or FIML.

Whether he did or didn’t, it’s no big deal to me. I mainly want people to use the technique to make their lives better. I don’t charge anything for it.

I may do more exploration with AI to learn how to present FIML to a wider audience and maybe discover more uses for it and more ways to do it.

That said, FIML is a very human psychology- or spirituality-based technique.

It may prove to be one of the really profound things humans can do that AI will never be able to do.

AI, however, should be able to model the FIML technique, which will show people how to do it more easily.

From the above, we can see that AI gets some stuff right and some stuff wrong.

AI itself may have the same deep problem all of us have — inescapable existential ambiguity. See this for more: Indeterminacy of translation and FIML.

I have asked Grok the same question I asked Gab AI.

It replied fairly well but needed more prompts to get there. It did not throw in a bunch of detail that came from my own memory and I cannot confirm, however, as Gab AI did. ABN

ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS — Executive Order. July 24, 2025

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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose and Policy.  Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.  The number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration — 274,224 — was the highest ever recorded.  The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.  Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes.  An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.  The Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.

Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.  Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.  My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.

Sec. 2.  Restoring Civil Commitment.  (a)  The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall take appropriate action to:

(i)   seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time; and

(ii)  provide assistance to State and local governments, through technical guidance, grants, or other legally available means, for the identification, adoption, and implementation of maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and “step-down” treatment standards that allow for the appropriate commitment and treatment of individuals with mental illness who pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.

Continue reading “ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS — Executive Order. July 24, 2025” →

Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

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Abstract

A single dose of psilocybin, a psychedelic that acutely causes distortions of space–time perception and ego dissolution, produces rapid and persistent therapeutic effects in human clinical trials1,2,3,4. In animal models, psilocybin induces neuroplasticity in cortex and hippocampus5,6,7,8. It remains unclear how human brain network changes relate to subjective and lasting effects of psychedelics. Here we tracked individual-specific brain changes with longitudinal precision functional mapping (roughly 18 magnetic resonance imaging visits per participant). Healthy adults were tracked before, during and for 3 weeks after high-dose psilocybin (25 mg) and methylphenidate (40 mg), and brought back for an additional psilocybin dose 6–12 months later. Psilocybin massively disrupted functional connectivity (FC) in cortex and subcortex, acutely causing more than threefold greater change than methylphenidate. These FC changes were driven by brain desynchronization across spatial scales (areal, global), which dissolved network distinctions by reducing correlations within and anticorrelations between networks. Psilocybin-driven FC changes were strongest in the default mode network, which is connected to the anterior hippocampus and is thought to create our sense of space, time and self. Individual differences in FC changes were strongly linked to the subjective psychedelic experience. Performing a perceptual task reduced psilocybin-driven FC changes. Psilocybin caused persistent decrease in FC between the anterior hippocampus and default mode network, lasting for weeks. Persistent reduction of hippocampal-default mode network connectivity may represent a neuroanatomical and mechanistic correlate of the proplasticity and therapeutic effects of psychedelics.

link

It is my understanding that the Buddha and/or the Buddhist tradition was and always has been well aware of psilocybin and probably other psychedelics and herbal drugs, like opium and cannabis.

In light of this, it is significant that the Fifth Precept for lay Buddhists proscribes only alcohol, and it does this very specifically by mentioning two types of alcoholic beverages (fermented and distilled) and nothing else. The Fifth Precept does not mention any other drugs.

As modern Buddhists, we can see that this conforms with what many of us have experienced with psychedelics and cannabis, among other ‘recreational’ drugs. Of course those drugs can be harmful but they can also do people a lot of good. Alcohol use, on the other hand, too often leads to very dangerous and spiritually stultifying mental conditions that do no one any good.

I have no problem with Buddhist teachers extrapolating the meaning of the Fifth Precept to include other drugs and sensory indulgences, but also believe that paying attention to the original meaning and its socio-environmental context (when people knew lots about plants) is important to keep in mind.

For more on this see: Are We Misunderstanding the Fifth Precept? ABN

The tragedy of Superman’s original Lois Lane, the Hollywood star who ended up homeless, eating out of trash cans with a life in turmoil

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She flew into the hearts of global audiences and the annals of cinematic history as her nightgown-clad heroine soared over the skyline of metropolis alongside Christopher Reeve when Superman hit theaters in 1978.

Actress Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane – a mixture of journalistic feistiness and besotted comic book-girlfriend vulnerability – became instantly iconic and recognizable. She starred in four of the franchise’s blockbusters, gracing the covers of countless magazines and making shoeless appearances for TV interviews as the world couldn’t seem to get enough of the ethereal Canadian star.

As legions of fans envied her aerial on-screen escapades with one of Hollywood’s then-hottest heartthrobs, however, Kidder was grappling with a lifetime of what she called ‘mind flights.’

Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve played Lois Lane and Superman in 1978 film Superman

She would only come to accept a bipolar diagnosis later in life, but Kidder, from childhood, was plagued by mental struggles that would at one point in the 1990s leave her homeless and near toothless in California, committed to psychiatric care th and rummaging through garbage for food.

…In the early days of her international stardom, in the wake of the Superman box office behemoth, she described to Rolling Stone ‘a constant sense of conflict: if I think about what I believe is important, I’ll be crazy; and if I don’t think about it, I find myself denying, denying, denying in order to be normal.’

…‘The reality of my life has been grand and wonderful, punctuated by these odd blips and burps of madness.’.

link

People are being lied to when they’re being diagnosed with gender dysphoria

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I cannot find who the speaker is but this is the best short summary of gender dysphoria madness you will hear.

This issue reveals how important uncrossed or uncrossable lines can be in all societies.

The speaker focuses on gay marriage as the line that was crossed at the top of the slippery slope we are still sliding down today.

To be clear, no one especially likes having clear societal lines that cannot be crossed. Those lines are always philosophically and morally weak in many contexts, but removing them makes things even worse.

I personally believe we would be better off if gay marriage had never happened. It is a good example of a line that should not have been crossed.

I am aware of all the reasons in support of gay marriage. But it is also true that by erasing that line we came to allow many thousands of young people to be harmed by extremely deluded if not mentally ill adults.

Gender-affirming care is a truly Orwellian term; evil in its message and even more evil in its preemptive denial of there even being any other possible message. The term is a psycholinguistic torture chamber nightmare.

I hope readers of this site are aware that all psychology, value, philosophy and belief can always be analyzed at the linguistic level because all of it comes from words or ends up with words.

Take anything that bothers you and analyze it at the linguistic level of its psycholinguistic descriptors. Analyze the words. Change the words. Think about them with both psychological and linguistic feeling and you will see what I mean.

Deeply satisfying and beautiful mysteries can be discovered through that method. ABN