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Stress Relief Through Attention

Effective mind control is possible, because focused attention instantly stills emotions. Attention is a pattern recognition phenomenon of the mind. How do you become aware of the pressure of your shoe on your toe? What happens in the nervous system when you pay attention?

For science, these have been “ghostly” functions of the mind, where nerve cells act with enigmatic intelligence. But this article suggests that the focus of attention is a routine pattern recognition activity.

The prefrontal regions dispatch signals to the focused regions, increasing neuronal activity in those regions. Increased neural firing is perceived by the prefrontal intelligence, making it "aware" of the activity. Combinatorial coding, acknowledged by science with a Nobel Prize, enables the mind to focus such attention.

• Combinatorial coding enables nerve cells to recognize and transmit sensory, emotional and motor control patterns. Combinatorial codes can explain how a gentle touch can relieve pain.
• Attention is known to increase neural activity in the focused area and to subdue it in the surrounding regions.
• Combinatorial coding enables neurons in the focused area to increase firing and to inhibit activity in the neighborhood neurons.
• Ann Graybiel recorded the processes, where attention enables learning. The process of learning is also known to increase cortical activity.
• The attention of the prefrontal regions, (your common sense), can similarly still the neural activity triggered by emotions.
• The focus of your attention on your internal processes, (self awareness), is the key to effective mind control.

Could An Amazing Algorithm Have Stunning Control Over Your Mind?
This is what happens when an engineer researches the mind. Way back in 1989, the writer, an engineer, catalogued how the ELIMINATION approach of an AI Expert System could reveal a way by which the nervous system could store and retrieve astronomically large memories.  That historic insight is central to the six irresistible premises presented in this website. 

Behind the scenes, these premises conceal an eye-opening revelation.  About the incredible speed of intuition.  A physician is aware of thousands of diseases and their related symptoms.  How does he note a symptom and focus on a single disease in less than half a second?  How could he identify Disease X out of 8000 diseases with just a glance?  

First, the total born and learned knowledge available to the doctor could not exist anywhere other than as the stored/retrieved data within the 100 billion neurons in his brain.  The perceptions, sensations, feelings and physical activities of the doctor could only be enabled by the electrical impulses flowing through the axons of those neurons.  The data enabling that process could be stored as digital combinations.

Second, combinatorial decisions of neurons cannot be made by any entity other than the axon hillock, which decides the axonal output of each neuron.  The hillock receives hundreds of inputs from other neurons.  Each hillock makes the pivotal neuronal decision about received inputs within 5 milliseconds.  Axon hillocks could be storing digital combinations.  It could be adding each new incoming digital combination to its memory store.  The hillock could fire impulses, if it matched a stored combination. If not, it could inhibit further impulses.  Using stored digital data to make decisions about incoming messages could make the axon hillocks intelligent.

Third, combinations are reported to enable a powerful coding mode for axon hillocks.  Olfactory combinatorial data is known (Nobel Prize 2004) to store memories for millions of smells.  Each one of 100 billion axon hillocks have around a 1000 links  to other neurons.  The hillocks can mathematically store more combinations than there are stars in the sky. Each new digital combination could be adding a new relationship link.  In this infinite store, specific axon hillocks could be storing all the symptom = disease (S=D) links known to the doctor as digital combinations.

Fourth, instant communication is possible in the nervous system.  Within five steps, information in one hillock can reach all other relevant neurons.  Just 20 Ms for global awareness.  Within the instant the doctor observes a symptom, feedback and feed forward links could inform every S=D link of the presence of the symptom. Only the S=D link of Disease X could be recalling the combination and recognizing the symptom.

Fifth, on not recognizing the symptom, all other S=D hillocks could be instantly inhibiting their impulses. The S=D links of Disease X could be continuing to fire. Those firing S=D link would be recalling past complaints, treatments and signs of Disease X, confirming the diagnosis.  This could be enabling axon hillocks to identify Disease X out of 8000 in milliseconds.  Eliminating improbable (unrecognized) prospects to arrive at a possible (recognized in the past) solution powers the powerful inductive logic of the mind!

Worldwide interest in this website acknowledges its rationale. Not metaphysical theories, but processing of digital memories in axon hillocks could be explaining innumerable mysteries of the mind.  Over three decades, this website has been assembling more and more evidence of the manipulation of emotional and physical behaviors by narrowly focused digital pattern recognition.  It has also received over 2 million page views from over 150 countries.

Stress Relief Through Attention
What Is Combinatorial Coding?
The Nobel Prize was awarded in 2004 for the concept that the olfactory system recognizes combinations. This article suggests that, it is not the olfactory network alone, but all nerve cells, which recognize combinations. On recognition, they fire or become inhibited. The coding enables nerve cells to recognize patterns; for visual signals to coordinate with sound signals; for emotional signals to trigger motor responses. On this basis, the human mind becomes a powerful pattern recognition entity, with its unique ability to focus attention.

Stress Relief Through Attention
How Does A Gentle Touch Relieve Pain?
Combinatorial coding powers the variations in human response to pain. Pain sensory neurons report pain to the cortex. When such a neuron fires, you feel a prick of pain on the skin. Let us assume that a reporting pain sensory neuron has three inputs - P, SP and T. P reports actual pain caused by damage to skin cells. SP reports pain signals from neighboring pain reporting cells. T reports touch signals from surrounding cells. Consider the possible interpretations of pain sent by the reporting system to the mind:

• P - Fire to report pain.
• SP - Fire to report sympathetic pain.
• P + T - Fire to ignore touch and report pain.
• SP + T - Inhibit - suppress sympathetic pain to report touch.

Based on its evaluation of its combinatorial inputs, the pain reporting neuron can report pain. With the sympathetic pain message, the effect of injury can be exaggerated. The sympathetic pain message can be suppressed to report touch. A gentle touch could relieve pain. So also, focused attention can relieve the “hurt” effect of pain. Combinatorial codes can enable neurons to make sophisticated interpretations of the world.

Stress Relief Through Attention
Does Attention Increase Neural Activity?
Maunsell studied neural signals in the visual area of the cortex of monkeys, when viewing a swarm of dots on a screen. In this cortical region, specific neurons fired for specific dots. When the animal focused on just one of the dots, the directed attention caused the neurons that signaled its motion to respond more strongly. At the same time, neural signals related to other dots were attenuated or filtered out. The effect of attention was to highlight a message, through increased neural activity in the observed area, while inhibiting activity in the immediate surroundings.

Stress Relief Through Attention
How Does The Mind Focus Its Attention?
How can mere thoughts cause increased neural firing in a focused area? How can paying attention make you feel your toes? When pressure is applied on the skin, touch sensory receptors in the skin fire impulses, reporting touch to the cortex. The reporting neuron will normally be inhibited (barely, ticking over), to prevent an overload of sensory data to the cortex. When you focus your on a subject, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been noted to become active. Such activity has been observed in the ACC, when a subject solves recognition conflicts in the “Stroop Task.” In this task, a subject is required to name the color of the ink for the word “RED,” written in blue. Here color recognition conflicts with word recognition. ACC is believed to evaluate and settle such conflicts.

This region and the working memory are believed to assist in the process of attention. ACC works to inhibit irrelevant messages, while the working memory keeps the relevant message in recirculating loops. When your mind focuses on your toe, ACC inhibits unrelated neural inputs and the working memory emphasizes the focused image.  Combinatorial recognition by the reporting neuron enables the awareness of the pressure of the shoe on your toe. This ability to focus the attention of the mind is your primary tool for effective mind control.

Stress Relief Through Attention -
What Is The Most Critical Input For Learning Anything?
When you focus your attention on any task, the basal ganglia, a brain organ, learns the process, converting it into your inbuilt knowledge. The organ is believed to “automate thinking and acting, turning focally conscious activities into quick, reliable, unthinking habit.” Ann Graybiel recorded neural activity in the basal ganglia of a monkey, while it learned to associate the sound of a click with the availability of a sip of juice. With the start of activity in the throughput lines of the region, “spidery arms that eavesdropped” on the flow fired in rhythm, and learned the activity. Later, the region mirrored the firing rhythms, converting it into knowledge of the system.

In their research using PET scans on subjects playing video games, scientists discovered that cortical activity increases significantly when you first begin to learn a skill. Such activity decreases when you master the pursuit. Attention increases cortical activity, converting the activity into the knowledge of your mind.

Stress Relief Through Attention
How Can You Enable Your PFR To Take Charge?
You can take charge of your mind by focusing attention. Your prefrontal regions (PFR) is your highest level intelligence. A historic assembly of other intelligences, including the reptilian brain, the olfactory system and the amygdala compete with your PFR for the control of your mind. Massive inherited codes operate an intuitive decision making process, which constantly switches controls between the intelligences. Normally, you will lose control to any lower level intelligence, which is agitated. Even a ringing phone will take immediate control of your system.

Your inherited codes have a deep wisdom. For a normal person, neither PFR, or any of the animal intelligences will be permitted to take inappropriate, unsafe, or impractical steps. The system will also not undertake any activity, which it does not consider worthwhile. Other than such hereditary rules, emotional agitation will also prevent PFR from taking charge. This website suggests Mind Control Tips for you to achieve a calm frame of mind, when self awareness can take charge of attention and begin to control your mind.

Stress Relief Through Attention -
How Can Your PFR Retain Control?
Whenever you ask a question to your mind, PFR takes charge. The ideal questions are “What am I thinking?” and “What do I feel?” These questions make you self aware. Your mind will respond to these questions. You will know. That knowledge has the power to inhibit troubling signals sent by lower level intelligences. Normally, raw emotions exist only for 300-400 milliseconds, before the system converts them into drives. In half a second, you will become angry. But, attention changes the game. When you pay attention to your thoughts as they occur, they become familiar. When you pay attention to your feelings, PFR learns to recognize them even as they arise. Recognition can still the negative streams of thought.

The secret is to focus your span of attention to that half second hijack of your mind. With practice, PFR will become familiar with the signs of the onset of an emotion. Recognition stills the emotional take over. Gradually, with familiarity, your PFR level of consciousness will take calm and composed charge, overcoming the troubling interruptions of animal intelligences. Across centuries, sages have advised the sensible management of attention as the golden key to a good life.

This page was last updated on 06-Sep-2014.

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