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How "selective Hibernation" can be seen to codetermine behaviour and the content of consciousness. (To replace the previous incorrectetly dated post)

Peter F nospamtrap_fellin_nospamtrap at one.net.au
Mon Sep 11 02:45:01 EST 2000


With a careful-to-be science aligned and Tolerance Principled flexibility of
mind, the
word
"hibernation" can be _broadly_ redefined and viewed as:
a more or
less precisely local (or, conversely, global) metabolism dampening
function to the
point of an adaptive *cancelling* of futile behavioural responses in face of
a
corresponding kind (i.e., "Hibernation-imploring type") of adverse
environmental (or life-situational) challenge (or IOW "Hibernation Imploring
Type Situation").

Thus, "Hibernatory" self-regulation (in this broad
sense) can be seen to occur NOT JUST in animals that regularly end up in
some Specific _seasonal_ Hibernation Imploring Type Situations - such as
long harsh winters (the most conventionally associated meaning of
"hibernation") or draughts.

In this way, the expression "_Hibernatory_ coping" (with a capital H) can
represent a broad spectrum of Naturally Selected functions. That is,
functions that originally have arisen in mutant individuals and turned out
to consistently enough promote their coping (primarily) and reproductive
survival (ultimately) in response to the adverse "selective pressure" from
what might be called "Specific (or quite easily specifiable) Hibernation
Imploring Type Situations".

And, of course, "Specific Hibernation-Imploring Type Challenges" have
frequently occurred in
phylogenetic time as well as (by the same token) in past and current and
future individual life-times. Either way, this type of evolutionary
challenge (SHITC for short) has frequently been faced and successfully met
by individual phenotypes in their respective life-times.

Because of the insidious, dynamic and hence forthwith at least potentially
co-motivational, microstructural changes to interneurons that detect and
initiate a Hibernatory response to SHITC - subsequent to an individual
having "been in" one or more "Specific HITC" (so to speak) - SHITC can be
understood and
defined as inevitably becoming brain translated and stored in the form of,
and to the effect of,
"Conditioned-in, Chronically Kept Hibernated, Hence Unconsciously Remembered
Stressors (of SHITC-type) Effecting Symptoms" (CURSES, alt. CCKHHURSES, for
short).

SHITC-detecting neurons might release, or directly stimulate the release of,
"Endoopiates" (loosely and pragmatically put) -
perhaps in conjunction with GABA or in cooperation with
GABA-ergic
neurons (since this is the most common inhibitory neurotransmitter) and in
'coctail-like combination' with neurotransmitters/modulators such as
dopamine
and noradrenalin, to cause "eustress" [so called by H. Selye] and also to
motivate addictive "rerouted" [Janov] behaviour - or IOW "focuses of
actention" that are at least in part _subconsciously_ motivated by
"CURSES-type memories" - behaviours that therefore tend to be more or less
"symbolic" or "transferred"  i.e. "symbolic"/"transferred" in relation to
the characteristics of one or more originally "gated/Hibernated" experiences
of SHITC.

The normal process of learning both covert (mental) and/or overt (motor)
behaviours involve both positive and negative
reinforcement within the individual's total life-situational context,
including the instinctive and frequently conditioned-in reflexive
sub/pre-conscious "actention focusing" AWAY FROM "SHITC" and/or from
"CURSES". Thusly aquired personalities and repertoires of behaviour, may in
addition also be seen to be upheld, organized and
implemented according to the general principle of "lateral inhibition" (or
"center/surround excitation/inhibition) in context of an "as if mutual
competition between incompatible actention modules".

Behaviour aquired in a life-time context that contains SHITC and with the
insidiously biasing influences from CURSES can be labelled "AEVASIVE".

"AEVASIVE", a new tailor-made concept, is short for Ambi-advantageously
Evolved Vital
Actention Selection (System) Incorporating {amongst else} Various
Endoopiates. The concept implies (and its full definition introduces) a
general-most subprinciple of Natural Selection whereby, as a most general
rule, "ambi-advantageously" mutationally adapted new generations of
individuals are the ones most likely to succeed  in "the struggle of
survival" against the logically corresponding *realistic background* of
Hibernation-imploring type adverse evolutionary challenges (or pressures)
frequently coinciding or overlapping with "Opportunity type" evolutionary
challenges (or pressures)]

This highly specifik (or discrete) functional _aspect-meaning_ of
"Hibernatory
coping" is what can be used to explain human behaviour in a rather new -
complementary and quite revealing - way.

As a unifying concept, "Hibernation" is of course closely related to the
notion of
"gating" (or blocking) of painfully affective consciousness-"energizing"
information.

By the way, this kind of neural information can be seen to be generated by
the "nonspecific [sub]system" [key ref., A. R. Luria, The Working Brain,
chapt. 2] of
the brain - a subsystem characterized by
*relatively* slowly transmitting, tonically firing, and
diffusely distributed/wired, ('reticular activating type';) neurons.

The proposed pragmatically stretched meaning of "Hibernation" likewise ties
in with the notion that a brain
"filters(-out)" specific sensory,
perceptual (or even cognitive) patterns of neural information -- i.e.
patterns of
neural information generated by corresponding, functionally and structurally
contrasting, "specific" neurons
(or "specific" sub system of neurons).

Only a somewhat 'fuzzy line' need to be drawn between adaptive
discrete/selective cancelling of behavioural reactions to repeating
irrelevant (or ultimately nonsignificant) stimuli - i.e., approximately,
what is conventionally labelled "Habituation" - and "Hibernation".

The meaning of "Hibernation" does, in
this 'stretched' sense, also cover internal "repression" both of slowly and
rapidly "traumatic" (~overwhelming)
experiences, and of (by such life-time challenges "conditioned-in") dynamic
"residues" (of SHITC) that tend to be a subconscious source of behaviour
co-motivation, and a more or less chronic insidious/ominous *neurally
accumulated potential* for maladaptive distress/distressful behaviour.

Since the "selectively Hibernatory" coping function is naturally
superimposed on the
process of individual development (including learning), and influences an
individual's ongoing 'choice' of behaviour (or 'behaviour selection'),
"discrete Hibernatory coping" appear to be relevant to just about
all of what human psychology entails.

One can discover (or infuse) a rich and surprisingly deep (yet clear enough)
meaning to the
"broad-spectrum" notions of "Hibernatory coping" and "Specific,
Hibernation-Imploring Type, Situations"!

This can be achieved by flexibly analysing their functional and behavioural
implications from both a phylogenetic (evolution-theoretical) perspective as
well as from a perspective of known relevant facts and principles of how
brains work. (Above I have hinted at some of these.)

The most characteristic result, of me doing this, has been the emergence of
the rather unprecedented concept "AEVASIVE" (and a few auxilliary and/or
complementary other 'concEPTs' and concept-definitions).

You can find-out rather precisely how I did it, and what they are, at

http://web.one.net.au/~fellin/main.htm
[The "home" of an inevitably imperfect (yet hardly inEPT ;-) Encompassing
Philosophical Thesis.]








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