Habituation and repression sorted by 'sniffing' -- a silly savant's percEPTion of the functional and phylogenetic distinKtion beween, habituation, and, repression
I would like people to share my appreciation of the
by mirth ameliorated "blissful ignorance puncturing" philosophical potency
of an appropriately _unattractive_ acronym.
It is formed from the following not entirely metaphorical description:
"_Specific (or selective/synaptic) hibernation_ imploring (or inducing) type
situation(s)".
---------------------------------
The slightly ambiguous wording might require some convoluted clarification:
When non-seasonal hence relatively irregularly occurring
situations in the lifetime of animals (and during the
phylogeny of fauna) consist of some inescapable adversity (i.e. an irritant
or distressor that may be from physical to psychosocial in character) what
is required (was in phylogeny naturally selected _for_) is that the
individual supress (in order to cope and survive)
their instinctive but, whence in such a situation, futile and self-defeating
inclination to respond in a flight or fight, or behaviorally distressed,
and/or inflammatory, fashion.
This supression (or repression) would, in the case of neural animals, have
to involve some highly precise
(specific or selective) means of depressing (blocking) synaptic
conductance (transmission/translation) of distress or flight or fight
motivating action
potentials or a negative neural or hormonal
feedback that prevents an inflammation response.
By "_specific_ (alt. selective or synaptic)
Hibernation" [a capital H may flag the faintly foreign sense in which the
word is used] I refer to a local self-regulatory response (or automatic
self-inhibitory function plausibly even as local in its effect as an LTD
change to a portion of a dendritic tree) that is akin to the _general_
metabolism dampening and globally (totally) behavior canceling inhibitory
self-regulation that "hibernation" - or
aestivation for that matter - ordinarily refers to.
------------------------
SHITS thus stands for the kind of adverse environmental influences (or
combinations of influences) in face of which an individual would be
prompted to focus attention in a maladaptively aversive and/or distressful
manner (or in a manner of a maladaptive local or
global inflammation in response to some inescapable chronic cause of
irritation, or a sudden injury, of some bodily tissue) WERE IT NOT FOR the
evolved preexistence (within its brain or nervous system) of the inhibitory
means (both intra and inter neuronal such seem to exist) of repression.
The word "repression" is here meant to imply a basic, selectively
consciousness preventing (unconsiousness making) inhibitory 'defense
mechanism'.
[BTW, it is EPTly understood (can be assumed on science-aligned grounds)
that an
essential component of Consciousness [i.e. "consciousness" as it is EPTly
understood and defined] is selectively canceled out by repression.
Specifically, the synergistic synaptic inflow
and contribution (to the rapid and phasic type pattern detection and
signaling work done by "specific type" neurons) by 'energizing' signals
(action potentials) from relevant RAT (reticular activating type)
neurons - is being blocked or muffled or stopped from being fired-off in the
first place, by repression.]
N.B.
Not any self-defeating response [or ditto "focus of actention" -- by which I
mean anything from a simple orienting reflex or even just a reflex involving
a by neural/neurohormonal signals activated muscle or muscle-group to some
most sophisticated mental-behavioural preoccupation] is potentially caused
by a SHITS!
Likewise potentially self-defeating (most likely mal-adaptive) responses are
also threaten to be provoked by primarily and as if "in themselves"
_non-distressful_, novel and/or repeated, insignificant causes of sensory
stimulation.
Such patterns/causes of stimulation of course also frequently
occur and have amounted to a naturally selective ('naturally pruning' or
'genophenotyping') pressure throughout phylogeny of fauna;
This particular relatively mild and merely potentially threatening adversely
naturally selective challenge (or ATSEP), has obviously been met by the
emergence of genophenotypes capable of carrying out
self-regulatory inhibitory functions (including that a neuron's
firing is passively extinguished as an effect of mere tiring) that are
suitably referred to by the umbrella-term "habituation".
-------------------
We have evolved to handle ending up in a SHITS (or meeting the challenge of
SHITS type adversity) by automatically attempting to prevent ourselves from
paying self-defeating _actention_ to it.
"Actention" is a pragmatic, and by the Principle of Tolerance justified, EPT
amalgam of (brainy) "attention" and (muscular) "action".
An individual who is in (or ends up in) a "SHITS" is by definition
vitally dependent on possessing an unconscious capacity to abort - by
precise "gating" (or "filtering") of pain specific neural signals - its own
likewise inbuilt tendency to try to free
itself by fleeing or fighting or (possibly thereafter, if not at first)
feeling/being/behaving distressed -- responses that in such situations are
futile and self-defeating.
==============
P.S.
As if being in a SHITS is not enough of a challenge (and selective pressure
in phylogeny), an individual who is in a SHITS will inevitably get
thoroughly conditioned by
it.
So it is as if any SHITS normally gets as if stuck, leaves a residue, or
conditions, the brain or nervous system (freshly conEPTualized as the
"Actention Selection
System") of individual's who is in it.
IOW, what a SHITS as if "put" in the Actention Selection System (the
individual nervous system that is having to deal with being in one) is a
corresponding kind of insidious, chronically co-motivating, unconsciously
remembered "SHITS type stressor specific" states of long term potentiation
(LTP).
And, since the core of this kind of learning, that occurs (the memories
being stored) during a SHITS (whether it is drawn-out or quick), needs a
better
name, I have called it CURSES.
Believe it or not, I actually prefer to refer to and approximately define
this kind of memories by this gently allusive acronymic concEPT.
%-}
