Day-31:Pavlovian Conditioning, and Emotional Memory Automatic Response

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PAVLOVIAN OR CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Is in a previous blog I opened up and explained the basic point of Operant Conditioning as used and defined in Behavioral Science. Another equally important Behavioral Phenomenon is Pavlovian or Classical Conditioning. This is what I would call the very most basic way to acquire a relationship, using the history of past relationships to respond differentially to the environment. SO what do I mean? What separates Pavlovian Conditioning from Operant Conditioning (at least in one important way) is that the behavior is more restricted to one automatic/reactive response in Pavlovian Conditioning. In Operant Conditioning you are “free” to be as creative as you want to achieve the Contingency of the Reward or to avoid the Punishment (see previous blog entitled for further explanation). Classical Conditioning requires some Innate or alternatively previously learned behavioral response to be effective at creating the NEW conditioned Response. I should say BORROWED and not New.

            So lets take an example, if every time a bright light is flashed in your eyes and your eyes dilate, then this is a biological or physical response that can be conditioned, to lets say a SOUND. If I as an experimenter play this Sound for a minute up to the presentation of a Bright Light in your eyes, your physical body will now respond or expect this light to occur again. In this particular case it may take several Presentations of the Sound and Light before the response is adequate enough that the eyes will actually dilate with the presentation of the SOUND.

Here is a technical Lay out of the “Learned Response” (it seems more like an expectation is formed)

Acquisition Stage:

SOUNDDDDDD Then LIGHT!!!! MY Eyes DILATE, then Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.

Acquired:

            SOUND, My Eyes DILATE!!!!!!

            So a more practical everyday example of this would be how we may HATE certain foods after ONE bad experience. This could be because of an association with food poisoning or something else rather unpleasant (vomiting? Or maybe it really tasted bad). Something really cool I learned in my Learning class last spring was how we can essentially destabilize a memory that had a bad experienced conditioned to it through remembering the memory and then not reacting and so later you can reface this memory or actual situation with essentially a NEW response or NOT reacting and permanently reduce the reaction.

            So lets walk this in more detail. Lets take the food example…

Lets say you ate some bad Ham. You feel sick, so sick that next time you see ham or smell it you feel sick. There are many factors here, did the ham smell? How sick were you? Commonsense, the stronger the sensations/experiences the quicker and stronger are the responses acquired to things in that moment that was associated with the sickness, namely the ham. This can include, the sight, the smell. Ok, so this is learned. Now consider how to remove this. If you were to now eat, ham, and well stop yourself from having all these responses, wanting to vomit, feeling sick, and just do it! Well you should be fine and have now learned the ham was not bad this time. This is like a position of will. Um, ok, so here is something I can only guess as to why it occurs. Well it seems this erasure of conditioning occurs BEST when you firstly eat the ham and then WAIT for some moments/time, within MAX 6 hours, then you have to keep eating the HAM without REACTIONS,  then the INITIAL experience of a singular moment allowed “access” to the MEMORY, thus destabilizing it and allowing it to be erased, moments later. (this is what understood from my class, and this is the paper we referred to) THERE IS A PODCAST I recommend all to listen to. This essentially says, im not kidding, there is a DRUG that essentially does the work of erasing the EMOTIONAL RESPONSE. The podcast is little playful, but the most interesting part is how through recollecting a memory without the emotional response and DIY overcome the emotional AUTOMATICITY that requires removal. SO essentially the relationship of this emotion to the memory is removed. One very important point though, you will still remember the events of the memory, only the emotional connection is, shall we say, released. This podcast fails to capture that.This was shown in both rats and humans. And was done in investigating FEARS. Though I can imagine other responses can be reduced.

EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS        

        So I am actually looking at in my personal research how, emotions (and feelings) play their role in being a force that is allowed to influence our decisions because we see them as this abstract mental thing that has more power than us here as physical being, perfectly capable of self-directing, and so can disregard emotions if they are not aligned with what this moments requires from us, according to what is best for all. It seems key to realize that these views of emotions being important or necessary is a claim made in the mind and not in the physical here. Emotions are actually occurring at the physical and so can be stopped and so any value or perceived power they have over self is an abstract thought, so not real. Which is why at Desteni we propose breathing and equalizing oneself to the physical as this is what is real, and where REAL power exists. Which in Clinical Psycholgy, humans have not realized that HAPPINESS is NOT INDICATIVE of HEALTH, but actual measurable actions like acts of SELF-DECEPTION, SELF-SABOTAGE, SELF-FORGETFULNESS, SELF-IGNORANCE, SELF-DISHONESTY, and others… and how these indicate POOR Mental Health and ARE ALL ACCEPTED AS ACCEPTABLE WAYS TO FEEEL HAPPY. So our mental health system is itself Self-Deceptive, in believing HAPPINESS, just an emotional Experience, will mean ANYTHING OF VALUE or say what the person is REALLY participating in that is HARMING our society. Ignorance should be itself questioned as a point of Mental Health. If you are ignorant of horrors of this world what does this say about you, are you avoiding something you fear, what do you fear? etc… So suffice to say POSITIVE ILLUSIONS are a Huge Topic that requires being faced by Everyone, as this is what society, particularly those in the Western “Developed” Countries seem to use as an Escape to REAL HEALTH, and STRENGTH and VITALITY, found in the physical and only really seen in Honesty. Why is our Mental Health System not Starting from Honesty????????

THE VIDEO IS COOL PERSPECTIVE ON POSITIVE ILLUSIONS

 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing a mental health system that cares only for profit and control and so have set up entertainment to control through the drug called Happiness where humans are sedated, with their televisions, and ipods, and so stop caring for LIFE, and the PHYSICAL, and so why does the mental health care system take LIFE and the PHYSICAL into consideration?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing the money system decide our experience of ourselves, through our collective unspoken submission to a drug of HAPPINESS where we essentially chase our desires, and purposely find ways to Delude ourselves in the mind like religion, or meditation, or positive thinking, whose goal is personal satis-faction, creathing more factions, and ignoring the things which makes us equal, the physical and life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing a system based in self-interest where we so BODLY claim HAPPINESS is the answer, KEY and PURPOSE to LIFE where it is where we separate ourselves from LIFE, and the PHYSICAL, into our Delusion, and Positve Illusions, which now has a whole movement in psychology called Postive psychology that says Positive Illusions are good as they keep us happy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see as humanity the commonsense that in participating in one polarity, HAPPINESS you start ignoring and SUPPRESSING the Opposite Polarity known as BAD EMOTIONS, sadness, anger, and so we start DULLING ourselves to LIFE and see how there may be some use to CARING and STANDING in FACE of RESISTANCE to understand the POWER we have given away to the NEGATIVE and not see that there is in fact no GOOD or LIGHT or BAD or NEGATIVE but simply the physical here, that has always been here, and supporting us for all this time, being the point of Stability and Support that even allowed us to remain in Delusion as long as we did so that we can realize WE ARE THE ONES GIVING UP THE GREAT EXPERIENCE OF BEING A CREATOR EQUAL TO THE PHYSICAL, and not one else is doing this to us but ourselves.

I commit myself to walk one with the physical, with the physical in each moment, and be with the breath in each moment of in-breath and out-breath, and start slowly but surely becoming equal to the physical breath by breath, moment by moment, and so become equal to the power of this reality, and start creating this world as a real place where the physical is realized for what it is, our point of Self, separation that we seek in our pursuits of sensations yet always miss the simplicity as we are “stuck” in the mind not willing to give breathing a chance in realizing breathing is not mind and so is a way of realizing ourselves as physical beings not mind-based but physical-based, in harmony with this planet and human, animal, plant World that true Majesty is found and real experiences are found not of polarity but physicality as part of an equation that we can manipulate, change, and recreate in self-honesty for ourselves in the starting point of Everyone.

TO BE CONTINUED……