What is the neurophysiology of impaired judgement?

[seep]

Scenario A: Seep is at work. Seep has to call a stranger who is far more educated than Seep, and Seep has to try to talk this stranger into entering into a partnership with the company that employs Seep. Seep is intimidated.

Scenario B: Same as A, except Seep is under the influence of 2 mg alprazolam. Seep is less intimidated, but the fear is significant enough to cause Seep discomfort and make him prepare his pitch beforehand.

Scenario C: Same as B, but add 30 mg Adderall to the alprazolam. Still intimidated, less discomfort, more (but faster) premeditation.

Scenario D: Same as A, except Seep is under the influence of 250 mg of 40% 100 mg ethanol. Seep is ready to call that motherfucker and tell him he better sign on with Seep's company or he's a little pussyboy (the educated stranger, not Seep). Seep's boss instructs Seep to take a cab home after smelling the booze on me.

Thread-Relevant Scenario: 2 mg alprazolam taken at 10 am, 2 grams phenibut taken orally at noon, call placed circa 3 pm. As in D, zero intimidation, zero premeditation, and only an after-the-fact realization that I did not even think about what I was doing before doing it. In fact, I don't even remember being conscious of the fact that contacting new people usually provokes aversive stimuli.

5 hours after eating the Xanax makes it all but worn-off. The effect is entirely phenibut.

Which brings me to my title question, or more specifically: is the suspension of conscious agency mediated by GABA-B activity?

 

[pofacedhoe]

drugs aside you can dull the concious mind through mild hypnotism techniques- you can put yourself in a trance by focussing on how relaxed you are-after you had the alprazolam did all your mental focus go on how relaxing the effect was? if so you could have put yourself in a suggestive state.

its always better to avoid total concious mind as it is not the cleverest bit of the brain, a little conscious thought with a lot of instinct, and intuition often proves great

 

[/navarone/]

LOL, i'm sorry your boss busted you. That's a bit embarassing.

Did all this happen on the the same day?

Anyway I truly think that the blame cannot be put all on GABA-B. You might want to consider some unconscious reaction that got you into thinking that the stranger was just as confident as you where under the effect of those drugs.
I can very much relate that to alcohol as well. People normally (when sober) keep a certain proximity barrier around them (especially in a professional context) which is somehow a bit 'illogical' and show some discomfort and timidity on their side as well.
Maybe the your intentions where not ackward at all but your impression and the way you adressed to that person was not of the best considering your impulsive state of mind.

 

[seep]

^No not all on the same day. It's my habit to try out different mixtures to help myself work. The best thus far has been high-dose oxycodone, but these days I only take opiates on the sabbath.

Rum is a distant but effective 2nd. Phenibut continues to prove effective at 2 grams. I may try low-dose GHB in situ if the positive results continue.

I think there's more than GABA-B action to phenibut. I can't smoke more than 2 puffs of a cigarette on it so maybe NAChR action as well.

What I'm really lacking is an understanding of how an anxiety-prone person's brain activates an aversive cognitive feeling-state when it comes across something it perceives as hazardous, and how this can be deactivated. The noxious stimulus can have biographical underpinnings (as at work) or it can be natural: the suite of emotions is much the same, and is deactivated by ethanol.

Example: I bike into the Everglades often. It is full of alligators. I guess it's perfectly human to keep a distance from them. Sober I do. On benzos I do (keep the distance). On rum, however, I pay very little heed to my proximity to gators. I mean, I don't go up and kick the reptile, but I don't give it a wide berth either: I just walk by it as if it were a tree.

*Just to be clear, alligators aren't Lions-and-Tigers-and-Bears- dangerous. They pose only a very minor threat to adult hikers. So then a person savvy to the Glades can file gators away as mere hazards.

drugs aside you can dull the concious mind through mild hypnotism techniques . . . you could have put yourself in a suggestive state. its always better to avoid total concious mind as it is not the cleverest bit of the brain, a little conscious thought with a lot of instinct, and intuition often proves great

Well, more or less exactly what's in bold. The getting-there is the problem.

I had a discussion about this very thing today with someone. To be one's own snake-charmer. I always fall into the Cartesian paradox of willing myself to not be willful. I have to be a whiner here: a lot of work went into making me hyper-prone to anxiety--most of it before adolescence. A lot of Jerzy Kosinski type trauma, sans Nazis.

It's hit-or-miss (mostly miss) with the discursive therapies. The right pharmaco-therapies, on the other hand, are consistent. The idea here is: understand the mechanism and you can explore drug therapies in a more rational, less aleatory manner.

 

[Sturnam]

Well, for my understanding of anxiety and fear, you have your basic fear creator; the amygdala.

It connects to the hippocampus, which modulates the fear response along with the PFC as well as several other brain structures.

So it seems like your preferred method is inhibiting the amygdala (or some other structure, not sure) with GABA agonists, as well as general CNS inhibition and euphoria with opiates.

Lastly, I think this:

a little conscious thought with a lot of instinct, and intuition often proves great

is exactly what you DON'T want. Instinct tells you to be afraid of alligators, and the effect you're after is suppressing this.

 

[ebola?]

But what of how psychedelia and getting tweaked impair judgment?

 

[seep]

But what of how psychedelia and getting tweaked impair judgment?

I know. I have a lot of things I want to say here but I have to stop myself. It's not that I'm too lazy to research this subject; it's just that there's too much to research. I'm gonna step back and just look at how action potentials and drug-mediated (damped?) capacitance affect signal transduction to the PFC.

To be sure, many psychedelics and stims exacerbate my tendency to overthink.

Lastly, I think this:

a little conscious thought with a lot of instinct, and intuition often proves great

is exactly what you DON'T want. Instinct tells you to be afraid of alligators, and the effect you're after is suppressing this.

Very astute. You're right, of course, but I think we get into trouble using words like "instinct" and "intuition" to describe phenomenological and behavioral constellations, as these are doubtless electro-chemico-neuro-immuno-endocrino-logical functions. Yes, it is the exact effect I'm trying to supress as I know the gator poses no threat to me.

I need to look through my notes to see what I have on the amigdala.

btw, I am very surprised at what phenibut is doing to me. What is the mechanism it uses to earn its "nootropic" label?

 

[pofacedhoe]

Well, for my understanding of anxiety and fear, you have your basic fear creator; the amygdala.

It connects to the hippocampus, which modulates the fear response along with the PFC as well as several other brain structures.

So it seems like your preferred method is inhibiting the amygdala (or some other structure, not sure) with GABA agonists, as well as general CNS inhibition and euphoria with opiates.

Lastly, I think this:

is exactly what you DON'T want. Instinct tells you to be afraid of alligators, and the effect you're after is suppressing this.

instinct shouldn't lead to fear in telephone calls (something we haven't evolved to fear) where as in aligator you never want to be walking around them fearless (silly move). one is a rational fear the other a learned fear.

the reference you quote was an explanation of the state of mind where things flow sweetly. it relies on not overthinking and having the lower brain do all the hard work. concious mind is left with the solution.

if you had a stressfull time (sounds very much the case) before adolesence this may have set you baseline cortisol far too high. one of my friends mums was brough up in an abusive enviroment and is always wired and suffers from stress based illnesses. she cannot relax, maybe you need the GABA drugs to mellow you to a moderate levels of stress? difficult to say as if you are taking them regularly your gaba system might be out of balance (up and down all the time). as for amygdala overactivation (which seems plausibe) do you ever have feelings of emptiness and fear of abandonment? impuslive behaviour or constantly changing sense of self image/self worth? from what you describe you already indulge in drugs although how frequently? if not then i'm simply describing myself here.

in my point of view i see intuition as knowing you're onto something having not worked it out conciously- maybe you seen a pattern but cant explain it yet as its very complex, instinct is moreso your gut reaction when you feel within seconds if a situation/person/anything is right/wrong/ dangerous/comfortable. its the speed that the decisions come to you that often marks them out as unconcious or more that the prefrontal cortex was not the major involvement in the decision chain. it is quite possible to have amygdala doing more reacting than the prefrontal cortex and put this high speed of process to good use. i for one am very quick to process what people around me are saying

phenibut does however make thinking an easy task

 

[seep]

if you had a stressfull time (sounds very much the case) before adolesence this may have set you baseline cortisol far too high. one of my friends mums was brough up in an abusive enviroment and is always wired and suffers from stress based illnesses. she cannot relax, maybe you need the GABA drugs to mellow you to a moderate levels of stress? difficult to say as if you are taking them regularly your gaba system might be out of balance (up and down all the time). as for amygdala overactivation (which seems plausibe) do you ever have feelings of emptiness and fear of abandonment? impuslive behaviour or constantly changing sense of self image/self worth? from what you describe you already indulge in drugs although how frequently? if not then i'm simply describing myself here.

Thanks for saying that last bit. One of the freakiest feelings is having a problem you think is universal and then finding out that it's not common at all.

There's a wiki page that talks about a chronic GABAergic effect in which nerves become good conductors and poor resistors (which is a consequence of Ohm's law); this limits a circuit's ability to do work, and since the circuit in question is an inhibitory one, the effect has behavioral consequences. Where am I remembering this from? It's analogous to making a filament in a light bulb out of copper instead of tungsten: no light would be transmitted.

Cortisol . . . you know, I took adrenosterone for 6 weeks a while back and didn't notice marked behavioral effects. Is this compound not a cortisol inhibitor?

it is quite possible to have amygdala doing more reacting than the prefrontal cortex and put this high speed of process to good use. i for one am very quick to process what people around me are saying

Surely it's not as simple as the first sentence implies. As for the 2nd sentence: yes, this is the desired outcome.

instinct shouldn't lead to fear in telephone calls (something we haven't evolved to fear) where as in aligator you never want to be walking around them fearless (silly move). one is a rational fear the other a learned fear.

You'd be surprised. The pristine swamp is best, but if you're ever in South Florida visit a park in the Everglades called Shark Valley. You'll run into this continuously:

They're really a lot nicer to deal with than humans in a corporate setting.

 

[pofacedhoe]

They're really a lot nicer to deal with than humans in a corporate setting.

lol!!!

i'm sure they are- its not as simple as the prefrontal cortex being overided by the amygdala though they think that something to that effect is the cause of borderline "personality disorder" (i call it all day fight mode), which i have quite a lot of the "diagnostic criteria" for. either way i am so quick off the mark and hear far more of whats in the background than other people, i have three female friends with these tendencies and they both react quicker than others especially at getting a sly dig in thats acctuallly a fair piont. they dont get the chance to screen their words and i quite often dont either.

during development in your teens there is a point where the amygdala grows (13-15ish) before the prefrontal cortex gets to grow (16-19ish) and then get it under control. over activation of the amygdala during this time (always having to be on guard, for whatever reason) strengthens the hold of the amygdala and the prefronetal cortex isn't connected well enough to overide it.

there's more i'll look up later when i haven't got to get ready for work

 

[/navarone/]

Yeah but the growth of those regions apart from genetics is also very suscetible to drug use and prolonged stress during growth.

I don't quite remember where I read it but I found an article once stating the neurological developmental disorders of some areas of the brain caused by drug use during teen growth (especially amphetamies but also regular caffeine, alcohol and nicotine intake).
Well this is not new to anyone but the article higlighted the exact regions of the brain that showed abnormal growth related to various drug intake and chronic stress.
Even nutritional plays a foundamental role so there's so much to take into account...
I can clearly feel how my excessive coffee and tobacco consumption (apart from drugs and very stressful live events) have affected my thinking, I wish i never got into those addictive habits.

Is there any of these developmental factors that you feel you have gone through to a significant degree?