Ever feel your heart drop into your anal cavity as you set foot in the dentist’s office?
Or the eye doctor?
Or a church?
This “associative learning” can span feelings as mild as the above annoyance all the way to the after-war torture of PTSD. While some don’t mind (or have the wherewithal to attempt) doing the inner work to re-associate our miserable memories into better new ones, it can be a hellish venture if your brain’s gone into a deep case of denial about what’s happened in your life and you can spend your days frustrated, angry, and confused about what actually happened and why you feel like you feel. So what’s the scientific answer for expediting a resolution for non-freakery?
It might just be mind control – via optogenics.
I touched on this Eternal Sunshine-esque optogenic idea back in a habit-hacking post I wrote a while ago. The idea is a literal “light bulb” idea in that you can shine a light onto certain neurons in the brain to activate emotional responses. And similar to my previous post, habits are being hacked here – but on a more internal level. The aim’s not to get you to clean your house or stop overeating (although by redressing the anxiety, maybe those bad habits would alleviate on their own?). What this particular application shows is how when a light’s shined over the “happy” neurons in GMO mice, they can be convinced a formerly awful sitch is now a bit more “Ode To Joy” and a li’l less “O Fortuna”. Repeated enough, you can alter habits and bad-feeling associations alike until they become happy associations.
Per Time:
First, the researchers administered a protein, called channelrhodopsin, into mice nerve cells that were activated during and immediately after those experiences (the positive and the negative). The protein reacts to a specific blue wavelength of laser light—and the scientists discovered that when that light was administered to the the part of the mouse’s nerve cells that fired up after those good or bad experiences, the emotion associated with the memory was relived as though it were happening all over again, even absent the stimulus that created it in the first place.
Relive good feelings by beaming light at my brain?
Could optogenetics be the new mental fapping? Getting high on light?
I know how I’m spending my Friday nights once this hits the market…
No such luck for me, ’cause right now it’s only being tested at the GMO mice level. That’s exactly one species I’m not and a one genetic-modification I don’t have. But it’s still a major right-diretch step that I’d like to see refined for human use – especially veterans. I’ve seen friends come back from war and their whole aura’s been morphed into a black hole. So whenever I meet a soldier with that permanent furrowed brow of anguish that remains even when they smile, I wonder “What were you like before?” It’d be nice if giving them back what should’ve never been taken away could be expedited. For me, I’ve got some bad memories of my own – nothing like war – but the comparative context isn’t always enough to un-depress myself. Sure, it’d be convenient if changing dark associations (like the ones I have with the place I have to live in) was as simple as flicking on a light.
But, I suppose part of the appeal in giving pharmaceuticals the finger for back pain and anxiety alike, is how I’ve made a new habit outta my path to self mastery – and earning my own feels is part of that. That’s just me though – the inner demons suck, but they don’t usher in Black Hawk Down memories of carnage. So I can’t dare compare to what other people need or don’t need. I will, however, say that some war vets who have seen and reluctantly delivered bloody horror have found solace in that same “internal work” I have to do to retain any shred of sanity:
“It was the difference between heaven and hell.”
In sum: optogenetics sounds like a great and promising technology.
But for this bish here, the whole point for me in not drinking or nomming down benzos is that I can finally control my own emotional response. To anything. (Doesn’t mean I’m good at it – but it can be done). When I man those puppet strings myself, I can overcome any bad assoche to any person, place, or thing. There’s no self-validation when something else is doling out my feels for me. But I’m open to building up that self-mastery. So if ever I should want some encouragement with that…
… I’ll take a dose of Alan Watts over these noggin watts.