Okay, we've had two episodes talking about these
internal calculators and how What is being weighted?
How do you make decisions and to perform your
actions in life? It's a good way if you can think
about that We map this out starting with sensation
Sensory processing here. So sensation perception
and sensory processing essentially the same thing
we built What leads up to the action? To what
you're doing in life? And this is where things
like your core beliefs, your phenotype, your
personality and so forth are kind of... This
is what's kind of behind the hood, if you will,
if you like that kind of language. This is how
you are created and how you become who you are.
We started with the sensory. We use vision here
because we just have a lot of different episodes
about vision and maybe it was easier to understand
the visual processing. We have these two pathways
from the retina, one to the superior colliculus,
that machine -like structure that's forcing your
head and your eye movements to do what it does.
Pay attention to how often you orient your head
to different things in your environment and how
much your eye gaze moves. What are you looking
at? Do you even know? And then the superior colliculus,
that machine -like structure is very powerful.
We'll speak up to the medial dorsal part of the
thalamus here and then it will go to the frontal
eye fields. Okay, remember this is a distal connection.
And this is also from the thalamus to the frontal
eye fields is where that corollary discharge
is being made and sent. Pretty good episode about
the corollary discharge. It's very underrated.
People don't know we do this. It's a prediction
of the action that you're about to do before
you do it. The brain knows. And then we go to
the parietal and then it'll kind of speak back
down to the thalamus and hit the V2. Okay, that
is immediate eye gaze. That is immediate attention
to the environment. Now if you want to sustain
eye gaze, if you want to concentrate or focus
on something, whatever it is, the parietal can
speak back over. So these are bidirectionals,
frontal eye fields to the thalamus, strong bidirectional
connection. And then if you're orienting to something,
to the environment, the parietal will speak over
to the orbital frontal cortex here. And this
is where kind of your state is being mapped out.
There's a lot of inputs going into this orbital
frontal cortex, but we're just using vision to
kind of modulate our attention. And if we want
to really remember this kind of equation here,
sensory and state will kind of go in to how you're
feeling, how you're going to provide energy to
that task, whatever it is you're doing. So that's
why state is a little bit offset here, okay?
These states, your bodily states, how you feel,
what you're after in life, how much motivation
and so forth. All of this is involved with the
state, okay? And then we mapped out value, okay?
So we'll jump to value, which is the ventral
medial prefrontal cortex. We called it the scoreboard
on the first episode. This is a very powerful
hub, okay, but first let's reverse engineer that
a bit because what goes into value here, you
can see it here, the board's kind of full right
now. Value is the delta of reward minus cost,
okay, so that will determine your value. Reward
is the medial part of the orbital frontal cortex.
Generally speaking, these are just generally
speaking, it's all about noracorrelates. not
necessarily the region but this region these
regions this is like a main function of them
so the medial orbital frontal cortex which is
sometimes called part of the medial prefrontal
cortex okay and then the insula I'm not going
to say too much about that because the insula
we covered it and if you want to know more about
the insula there's many episodes about it So
these would kind of determine the value of this
vitro medial prefrontal cortex, okay? And rodent
models, a lot of good research on rodents, of
course, or mice. Infolembic, you can see it as
infolembic, okay? They have slightly different
brain regions. And then we got to the cost, or,
and then we got to the control, okay? The anterior
cingulate cortex. This is also pretty typically
discussed. in the podcast. It's a very powerful
region and kind of it's conflict monitoring,
monitoring risk reward, error detection. If you're
making errors, how much control do you need over
the environment? How much control do you need
as a person, as a living organism to accomplish
that task, to get what you're trying to accomplish
or do what you have to do? So this is control
and I'm going to tell you, you don't like uncertainty.
So whenever you have uncertainty, the ACC is
kind of working in overdrive. And what we're
going to talk about today is going to be heavily
involved here, okay? And then all of that kind
of leads up to the policy because you're going
to do what you do. This carries out the action
in the dorsal striata. Remember, from the Basal
Ganglia episodes, motivation lives here and you
don't define motivation. Everything mapping out
to the dorsal striatum, all those inputs that's
coming in with these states and values and the
neuromodulators, which is mostly episode two,
is going to determine what the dorsal striatum
does. If you want to or not, it doesn't matter.
If it's healthy or unhealthy, it doesn't matter.
Whatever the inputs coming into the dorsal striatum
is what you're going to do. Remember, it's the
input systems to the basal ganglia, okay? The
go, no -go areas. Okay, so we kind of built up
this policy in determining this is what you do.
Some big takeaways here is when value with that
reward minus cost, reward is higher, you're going
to repeat that task. This is something that you're
going to want to repeat. The brain will want
to repeat that whether you want to or not. If
the cost is high, you're going to want to avoid
that. Remember, because this is kind of the equation
of life. How do you maximize net benefits? That's
what the brain is trying to do. Maximize net
benefits and value while minimizing uncertainty
because uncertainty is costly. Metabolic bank
accounts, remember. How much energy and effort
am I going to have to do to fulfill this task?
To complete this task? And this is where thoughts
get powerful. You can just control your life
over thoughts. I don't want to do that. I don't
have the energy. I can't. What this is trying
to do with the maximizing benefits and value
and minimizing uncertainty is to minimize The
metabolic cost we're trying to minimize metabolic
cost that way the brain can satisfy its main
goal is to Conserve and allocate energy properly
so that the living organism can survive Okay,
so we're going to talk about anxiety okay, we're
going to talk about Because this is a podcast
on autism. We're going to talk about autism and
anxiety and it's going to be easy the That equation
autism and anxiety because we're going to use
socialness. It's going to be easy for you to
follow but said differently Whether it's autism
and socialness or whatever you can put yourself
into any stimuli any stimulus thought or environment
and you can just plug and play this if you like
that kind of figuratively speech you can just
play and play what is weighting your value in
life with the reward that you're doing through
the rewards that you get for doing the actions
that you do and that cost remember when the reward
is high you're going to repeat that when the
cost is high you're going to avoid that that's
why change is hard change is hard So with autism
and anxiety and the socialness, obviously we're
right here. Socialness is very costly, okay?
It's overwhelming sensation. Remember from this
green, the autistic phenotype is getting bombarded
with sensory processing here. You see many episodes
about how inputs coming in to the senses are
flooded versus so -called typicals who generalize
it and just form a gist. of the situation and
then sends that information in. The EI is a big
part of that. So the autistic phenotype is being
bombarded with sensory and that delayed corollary
discharge as well. So it's harder to navigate
and orient to the environment. Remember, the
superior colliculus is in the mesencephalon.
The mesencephalon has three main roles. It's
sensory integration. motor movement, and orienting
the attention of the living organism to the environment.
Send your attention outward. The Autistic Phenotype,
Autism means self, goes inward. Okay, so some
other things with socialness is the confusion,
confusing language. Language is very confusing
and it's not limited to the Autistic Phenotype.
Language is very confusing. You can follow 44Baratos
on X and he can, I promise you, he's going to
convince you that autism is sending back to before
the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11, one through nine.
The autistic phenotype, the way that we communicate
is black and white. Now, there's a lot, it's
a lot easier to kind of understand black and
white versus all that gray area. all of this
meaning and things and the layers of complications,
especially with the English language. Okay, so
the confusing language. And there's difficulty
with speech, okay? The autistic phenotype has
difficult speech processing. Speech and language
are huge. And socialness requires a lot of speech
and language. Simple, right? And then the neuroplasticity.
The more you do these things, the more you're
going to repeat them, whether it's repeating
avoidance or repeating action. We're going to
talk about action. Stress and action are anti
-correlated. Stress and action are anti -correlated.
Anti -anxiety, if you want to control your anxiety,
the ACC here, which is this right here in red,
remember the cingulate wraps around white matter
tracks, so it's very powerful, okay? It's part
of the medial prefrontal cortex. These areas
right here is the medial prefrontal cortex deep
inside near the midline. Anti -anxiety will require
control over the situation. The ACC will exert
power over situations. So the ACC, if you remember
a previous episode with the medial prefrontal
cortex, so the ventral medial is in there as
well, and sometimes the medial orbital frontal
cortex, okay, is in there as well. We mapped
that out. One way that you can think about the
medial prefrontal cortex is adaptive responses.
How much skill sets do you have? How much control
do you have over various situations? That's adaptive
responses. whenever you are navigating the world
with confidence or with ability, I should say,
and you can handle situations. Nothing seems
to kind of upset you and stress you, okay? You
are using these adaptive responses and the prefrontal
cortex will kind of input the action system,
the basal ganglia, and suppress all of these
subcortical powerful limbic areas like the amygdala
here and these other limbic areas like the VTA
with the dopamine and the nucleus accumbens will
be involved but whenever you can exert the prefrontal
cortex especially the medial part and kind of
orchestrate these areas remember the basal ganglia
is go and no go when the input is Coming in from
the prefrontal cortex the better off you're gonna
be instead of these lower powerful emotional
systems leading Okay, so Let's go ahead and erase
this here Because I don't I don't think well
I don't think we'll need it I hate to erase it
though. There's so much on there It's gone It's
gone It was a little offset. Anyways, the cerebellar
the cerebellum and the eyes were were off I don't
know if anybody noticed that but The message
was still conveyed. That's what matters. The
message was still conveyed. Okay So we're going
to stamp this prediction here with various repeats
and Avoids, okay good things and bad things.
Okay So as you do actions, okay, you're learning
remember because this is what this is all about
learning so the equation is You're doing actions
and you're learning how to do them with certainty
Hopefully well, it doesn't matter because you're
you're doing actions and you're learning. Is
it a good thing? With high reward or is it a
bad thing very costly so And then you're learning
to repeat that. Repetition. Humans love repetition.
Remember, we love habits. This is what this is
kind of all about. We love habits because it
automates the response. We don't have to think
about it and it conserves biological energy like
no other. But remember, it doesn't matter if
it's healthy or unhealthy. It doesn't matter
if you want to or you don't want to. Okay? And
then... once you're repeating things that neuroplasticity
really takes charge that's what the autism and
anxiety episode kind of highlighted that was
like the biggest takeaway there as we grow through
the lifespan and these social situations are
complicated from the get -go neuroplasticity
is going to take over we're going to start stepping
these that's complicated that's complicated that's
complicated i don't want to do that plus this
This neurobiology in the central nervous system,
in salts and toxins and so forth, the way it's
shaped, makes this inward anyways. So this is
neuroplasticity. Learning plus repetition equals
neuroplasticity, okay? We've talked about morphology.
So strengthening of connections. The brain doesn't
want to work, it just wants to respond. So when
connections are larger, it's easier for the brain
just to hit that signal more and more. Remember
we drew this out with the OCD and the basal ganglia,
okay? We took a specific cell from the putamen
in the dorsal striatum and we extracted that
specific cell out and then we highlighted a specific
spine remember these are medium spiny neurons
that spines are a little bit larger we we extracted
this specific spine and that spine will receive
a connection and that connection will mean the
same thing every time okay so as it hits and
fires more and where it's coming from upstream
or the afferents It's going to repeat that because
it's going to grow in size and that's called
morphology. Okay, so morphology will happen And
that's the connections, okay, I'll just draw
that out right here. Let's just say these are
connections Information to coming down through
here upstream it gets to the end of this and
then it's going to connect to the different cell
the next cell Okay, and then the little synoptic
cleft here it's about 10 nanometers so it's really
small will send signals but as you repeat things
those connections grow in size the brain doesn't
have to worry about that those signals connecting
and being executed right this is all about those
neural correlates okay then you will repeat this
repeat this repeat this and it doesn't matter
what the outcome is here repeating because the
reward is high or avoiding repeated avoidance
because it's too costly it doesn't matter it
doesn't matter it's going to grow that insights
and you're going to become that this is who you
are Remember we drew out the many columns and
layer two and layer three of the cortex. This
is where these will kind of live and start. Remember
from the many columns signals come in from thalamus
to layer four. Layer four will speak up to layers
two and three to get the information based off
of you. What you do in this situation. it's pulling
from that and then two and three layers two and
three will speak back down to layers five and
six and then orchestrate it's not that it's not
that complicated okay so as you're doing these
things that you want to you don't want to you're
developing yourself okay so how do you change
it because change is hard absolutely this is
going to be a big thing here because we love
sea sauce i love sea sauce right here so Action,
doing things, regardless of this, you're going
to have to wade through and battle this friction
here. If you want to change, you can do it. You're
going to resist it, but this is going to, you're
going to have to take a lot of effort and understand
like this metabolic cost is not likely going
to hurt you. It just feels funky. Okay, so action.
and stress, action and stress, or stress and
anxiety, doesn't matter, are anti -correlated.
That's a seesaw. Anti -correlated just means
it's a seesaw, meaning these can't be both high
at the same time, or they can't both be low at
the same time, okay? So action, stress, Meaning
the more you do things and take control over
your life The more you do things and complete
them and learn that you can do them The better
off you're going to be okay This is how you change
this is how you minimize anxiety and Kind of
reshape your life take control over your life
because remember the medial part of the prefrontal
cortex Okay The medial part is adaptive responses
and it leads the way For adaptive responses not
maladaptive So we can talk about This area right
here this area right here and this area right
here kind of being in control of leading the
way. But all of these inputs are crucial because
they're providing weight and information, equation
to these areas that's going to lead you to this.
So in order to change and suppress anxiety, you're
going to have to expose yourself to it. Now,
how much? Like a little dose response. This amount
of something gives me this response. You're going
to have to just maybe slowly work into it. So
repetition here is going to be crucial because
this is the source of our actions. Repetition,
okay? So you can master it even eventually. This
friction here is going to suppress. It's going
to change. You can. It's no different than a
pro athlete or some sort of kind of expert, some
chess player, some basketball player. It doesn't
matter. They practice to kind of handle this,
take control over things. So if you master it,
you can shine a light on it. And I say that.
kind of purposefully because in the Bible or
any religion probably, light means various things.
It's figuratively and there's kind of literally,
spiritually, okay? The light that you shine on
things you can see clearly. And then your worry
vanishes. So the whole thesis of this part one
and part two and building your policy, building
your life, your beliefs, your phenotype, your
personality is this. Automate healthy things
versus unhealthy things. If you have unhealthy
things in life, if you have things you don't
want to do in life, you're going to have to face
them. Eventually, Whenever you're performing
this and kind of shifting this, shifting these
equations, you can start asking yourself, is
it anxiety now or is it excitement? How do you
know? The question that you need to ask yourself
whenever you're feeling a little anxious because
anxiety and excitement have the same physiological
responses. How do you know? How do you know if
you're anxious or if it's excitement? It's the
same thing in the body. You're just attaching
different meaning of it based off of these networks.
Specifically, these lower subcortical and these
neuromodulators. You can change those. That's
the beauty of this. And then you can start to
build these adaptive responses. This wider range
of skill sets that you can suppress the uncertainty
and take control over the situation because likely
it's meaningful to you or you wouldn't be doing
it. You wouldn't be thinking about it. Where
do you spend your spotlight of attention? Okay,
the more you do things the more control you have
over things and then your policy will be developed
based off of that because you're learning.