The Subjective Activational Baseline

[turboswami]

Emotional Regulation strategies act along a fluid baseline, personalized and dynamic, which governs the degree of overall emotional activation to a situation . Each regulatory strategy modulates the degree of reaction to an activating situation, and its overall effectiveness is depend upon the positive or negative degree of this baseline level. Yet

Comments

[goal100to95to90]

i have a question regarding the part stating that a monk would have certain wavelenghts...
these emotional regulation strategies and baseline levels....are they something that can be altered (ie. by living a certain lifestyle) or are they more innate (and therefore are the REASON we chose/gravitate towards certain lifestyles, a monk for example)

[turboswami]

The emotional regulation model of James Gross describes a set of strategies for avoiding full limbic reaction to an arousing situation. Avoiding that situation is the most obvious and effective strategy, yet cognitive reappraisal (or thinking differently) about what is happening in that situation is also a potential strategy. Actual supression of emotion, after the situation has aroused you, is the least effective and most unhealthy of all the strategies

[peauty]

Layman's terms please. Sounds very interesting but also a jumble of nonsense. I see the overall concept but I would like to hear an explanation that doesn't require me to do research in approx. 15 different areas

Sardonny.

[confliction]

Yay! Earthquake!

[igferatu]

As much as I'm inclined to enjoy and be fascinated with deja vu experiences, I have to admit that they are probably best explained as a mini-seizure. Not that that has to be all they are but since they are "firmly associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy", it makes sense that memory recognition can misfire just like a twitch

[turboswami]

What is interesting are those unique instances of deja vu when the specifics of time and location in the first instance of seeing something can be recalled during the second...

For instance, I can remember the day I woke up and thought "Why the hell would I dream of seeing the back of my friend Brian's green jeep, and him hitting the brakes as he approached a bridge? What a fucking retarded dream!"

It wasn't until nearly a year later, on our return trip from MSU for Christmas break, that that particular dream took place, the overwhelming deja vu experience being felt by me, driving alone in the car behind him.

[igferatu]

It would be great to be able to monitor that kind of encephalotopology in real time. An iPhone app that reminds you to take your take your meds or seek medical help if your terrain dynamics looks too much like a person in danger for too long or too often. Objective sanity on tap. It could make a helluva social networking app too - connect with people who feel exactly like you feel right now...or seek out complementarity to harmonize with different others.

So much to be learned and experimented with. Too bad civilization can't afford to do great things anymore.

[turboswami]

Hmm. Yea, the terrain dynamics idea was just a view of the standard EEG signal that, with adequate resolution and filtering processes, would show our the activity of the cortex as something energetically vibrant in a way we could relate with - like ripples on the surface of a pond. Typically, I suppose you could think of our state of mind as rain on the pond; millions of interacting frequencies all overlapping and creating a sort of surface noise. Brainwave synchrony, as seen in meditation for instance, could be thought of as a calming of our pond's surface, smooth and relaxed frequencies rippling in sync

neuronal activation

[whatheavensaid]

thank you for this

it is all so fluidly manifested!

Re: neuronal activation

[turboswami]

Yes, I love the idea of neuronal activation as ripples extending outwards from a contact point. I hope that fMRI resolution and processing time will some day increase to the point where we can actually SEE that ripple of charge as it travels, activating our thoughts, emotions, and memories.