13. Plugins (Biofeedback and similar techniques)

The hardest things to control of all are biological responses. If the ground shook and you heard a loud explosive crack close by you right now, your body would probably do exactly what this spider on my desk just did when I banged down a cup beside it...you would freeze for an instant and your blood pressure would go up, then you would go into fight/flight mode and hasten to escape the area of the explosion. Biology acts without conscious thinking to protect itself, having had to do so for all the years prior to the evolution of sufficient intelligence to protect it in more sophisticated ways. Even when we are consciously aware of our safety we react to biology's prompting; if you doubt this, try sticking your forehead up against a window with a vexed snake behind it and seeing if you can keep your face against the glass when the snake strikes, or try not to blink when someone else's hand rapidly approaches your eye.

Because biological responses are some of the hardest things to control, we're not going to attack them all at once. But we need to understand the biological basis of attention and association control, because this underlies all learning, so what we are going to do here is speed up the learning process and make it more efficient by incorporating this biological basis into the learning cycle (as was intended) by using conditioning. Instead of acting against our biology, we can interact with it and use it to further our purpose. Biofeedback is a very useful tool for this. Using it, automatic systems (like your heartbeat and blood pressure) can be brought under conscious control, and controlling your own biology is one very powerful way of controlling input from within. That makes a huge difference to your speed of progress, because it is the difference between having to be constantly vigilant about what you are surrounded by all the time, and the noble art of being able to completely ignore it without even having to try very hard. It means there will be no distractions; that regardless of what is going on around you, you can remain serene and unaffected by it for as long as you want to.

Biofeedback systems have a great deal to offer to a neurohacker. Ideally, your system should have: multiple input processing and multiple output possibilities (sound, light, display on screen, TMS link etc.) I'll talk about TMS in another chapter, because it's best to get the hang of all the rest first.

But this is the outskirts of Cyborg City; this is wires stuck all over you and electrodes and sensors and things connecting you to computers and all that jazz. Where you get all those cool cyberpunk phrases drifting past from the stranger groups you wish you were either in or at least not so embarrassed to be in, like, "jack your head into the deck, dude." No problemo. Hasta la vista. Allrighty then.

So, let's keep this simple. You're a machine. Live with it.

You should be using multi-color light I/O that is controllable and reducible to red/green or monochrome. You should have good encoding/decoding processors for each different kind of input.

You should have a source of 'mental games' or 'tutorials' for learning to use mind/computer interface. You should have a method of storing a lot of sessions in non-volatile memory. You need SP, Pressure and Contact electrodes of different kinds for each input. The system should be capable of using mains or battery power (excluding TMS). And you should have the capacity to play with 'binaural beats'.R35

You should set the whole lot up as you intend to use it and make yourself a workspace. Spend at least half an hour being paranoid about the safety of your power supply, including the phone line, if it's connected to a modem, which is connected to...ultimately, your head. Right. Keep a good eye out for lightning storms and use an emergency cutoff system.

Practice with each individual kind of biofeedback on its own. Get the hang of how input is translated into various outputs. Arrange gear around you; you'll need to see screens, LED readouts and meters and read them with familiarity, so that you know what's going on.

A good one to start with is the classic 'BP control' biofeedback cycle using only skin-surface pressure electrodes (some people prefer a temperature sensor) and a GSR processor. It's gentle, easy to learn, and has no side effects apart from possibly inducing sleep if you needed it anyway.

A simple GSR machine will give you an LED display of a color spectrum, or a graph on your PC screen correlating with its readings of your GSR. The best units also use sound, as a rising or falling tone. The aim is to lower your blood pressure, as you relax and move in the right direction to achieve that, you're given feedback of your progress and a signal when you get it right. The 'game' is simply to get the lights to turn green or the tone to fall, or whatever. It's fun, easy, and you really get the hang of how your mind affects your body and vice versa. You recognize the changes as you start to make them happen. When you can do it easily, you reduce the machine's sensitivity and train yourself up. Next you can try the same technique with other forms of input; try wiring up to an EEG and deliberately changing your brainwave pattern; slowing it down, for a start. You'll notice how similar it seems to the technique that lowered your blood pressure...now try this wired to both GSR and EEG. You'll notice your blood pressure falls as your brainwave pattern slows down, and vice versa. Keep doing it. Until you can run up and down the brainwave-spectrum with the adeptness of a turbo lift, keep doing it. This is your mind, taking control of your brain.

By changing your blood pressure (which you can already do) you can shift your brainwave pattern or push it in the direction of such a shift by setting up the circumstances conducive to one.

Explore how far you can change those factors and keep a written record of your progress.

Your biofeedback system should give you several options. If you are writing your own software, bear these in mind; they are important and necessary tools. You should have the option of recording all the data from your inputs, together or in any combination, and of replaying that data at any time, alone or together with current input. I'll explain that a bit more. You should be able to record as much as possible about your neuro/physiological state, and play that back to yourself either by itself or with the biofeedback from your current state.

This opens up several possibilities. You can record yourself having a particular experience, for example, then use the recording to help induce the same experience at any desired time. It is a 'memory', in a very real sense. It is a memory, which triggers other memories.

You can hack the midbrain, specifically, so well with this technique that you can reproduce the effects of drugs without the drugs. You can use recorded sessions as triggers for emotions or memories of experiences; like, would you record your brainwave patterns on your wedding night?1

Another option you should have is that of writing programs for the enhancement of various states. Example: You take your EEG recording on a graph, let's say its beta rhythm. You plot a graph of the classic alpha rhythm and you get the computer to construct a sliding scale of graphs in-between. You feed the result to yourself slowly from where you are at now all the way to alpha rhythm. If you get the rate of increase sussed, your brain will actually follow the program and shift with it into alpha. In just the same way, if you record a drum beat at the same rate as your pulse and slowly speed it up, your pulse will rise with it to follow suit. If you're a musician, you could write a 'symphony for the brain' that pulled you about all over the place, by finding which chords and which sounds shifted your brainwave pattern and where.

A third thing you should be able to do is control various parameters of feedback during 'mental games' or 'tutorials'. These are great fun, and there's lots of software available, one example is a skiing game where you control your direction by altering your brainwave pattern. You can find programs for almost anything, controllable by biofeedback and/or neurofeedback, including ones that let you type2

You should be able to plug straight in to your computer from the biofeedback units, which should plug straight into you. Building it all into one machine or making it wearable is a good idea especially if you want it to be mobile. The first interface machine I put together was (is!) housed in an old stereo tuner. It monitors GSR, MCG and EEG and sends the signals to the computer where the software deals with it according to which program I want to run. More recently I built a small, light mobile unit which I can use with the wearable, or connect to any PC with Internet access and enough processing power to do the business3

Any good sound/light system will have precise control of pulse rate (at least 0.20 to 50hz), plus control of light intensity and audio pitch. This is important because everyone is slightly different and you can fine-tune your system for your own personal optimal use.

One of the nicest things biofeedback can do is give you a decent night's sleep without drugs. You can fall asleep to a program of yourself falling asleep, or a written program that will take you all the way down into deep sleep and then turn itself off. You'll get used to the habit of a healthy sleep pattern after a while and your brain will be able to do it all by itself, quite the opposite of sleeping tablets. You can also use the system to boost certain areas of the brain by triggering the relevant optimal hormone cycles, for example, before an exam, before physical hard work, before sex, or when you need to relax.

Other techniques

Next, you'll want to integrate biofeedback with NMT.

A long time ago, (and I don't know if this is still possible), you could do the following: If you couldn't play (for example) tennis and you wanted to play tennis and you couldn't be bothered to spend weeks out there being crap at tennis whilst learning it, and you had lots of money, you bought a 'Tennis VR' package. I saw my first one in 1980. What you got in this package was: a video of someone demonstrating all the basic tennis moves, in slow motion and then at full speed, then finally a series of games with all the moves in them. You also got a cassette tape of white noise, and an instruction manual which told you to play the tape through headphones whilst watching the video in dim light, with no distractions. You were told to concentrate on the player and imagine it was you, making those moves.

What does this achieve? If you video someone doing this, covertly, or wire them up to MCG, you can (with the aid of a computer) detect their making muscular micromovements as they watch.R16 If you have a look at what their brains are doing you'll see that these movements are causing neurons to fire along pathways in the same networks as are used when actually playing tennis. If you do it enough, when you get out onto the court you will pick up the game a lot faster than an ordinary beginner.

Every time we think or imagine, we make these movements, from before birth until the day we die. These movements are a clue to the way the brain patterns in information from that sensory motor map, through the mid brain to the frontal cortex. Every memory has a corresponding micromuscular pattern, replayed every time we recall it; a code of impulses flying through the brain as 'full-body-knowing'; together with all the information from our sensory organs, the nervous system itself as a sensory organ is bringing in as much as the eyes via the whole body, with every thought, every image, and especially any sound, including the sound of our own 'inner dialogue'.

By producing an audio input of white sound, the Neuro Muscular Training (NMT) system makes the video input and imagination the sole triggers for that patterning. By imagining making the movements ourselves we are firing off neurons in the same areas they would fire if we were actually playing tennis, only to a much smaller extent. This pattern in the brain will be used later to direct the muscles and limbs. The brain is able to construct, in VR, a map of the movements necessary to play tennis. It applies the map to reality when we walk onto the court, and imagination plus world equals hyperreality...we find we already have part of the necessary network built into our brains, and the rest comes easily.

Like the youngsters I mentioned in an earlier chapter who could ride horses because they'd seen it done so often in the movies, this is how the brain loves to learn. Computer gamers must have noticed a sharpness of reaction they gain after a session; the visual cortex network improves, and the change is carried over from the game into reality. Obviously the teaching value of simulations is well known. Simulations on their own are a bit limited, but with biofeedback added in they are extremely useful.

Biofeedback is when the cyborg thing can really get you. I started wearing a biofeedback system permanently and noticed when I took it off, it was like losing an extra sense. Using biofeedback all the time is only useful if it helps train us to be more aware of the subtle signs of our physiological changes, because these are what we are trying to learn. If we learn to do it without the machine, the machine then becomes a real short-cutter for making things easy. If we don't, we'll get less sensitive as time goes by, which is not what we want at all.

But it is a hell of a thing, to be in the middle of a situation and know exactly what your brain is doing, so cut yourself a little slack and be prepared to indulge yourself here.

There are games you can get which you play via a biofeedback system.R36 You don't need to use your hands, but your brain, to move things about or achieve your aims. These are very addictive at first but pale quickly because they are quite slow, and the novelty wears off.

The first best use of biofeedback after you've got the basics is weighting adjustment (you can amplify an effect, or devalue it). Controlling emotional/imaginative weighting is largely at first still a matter of controlling input. Until you can learn the noble art of ignoring things, you must still control your input very carefully. (That means input from your own brain and body as well as from 'out there'.)

When you were wiping erroneous programming you were repairing damage and removing stuff that shouldn't be there. To do this you had to use the basics of memory adjustment, you had to learn how to do a diagnostic on your own mind and you had to learn some ways to block dodgy input. Those skills will continue to be necessary, but now that you've used them with one system you can do it with others. Now you need to get up to the bridge of your own starship and take control.

And the first step toward that is maintaining a completely clear picture of how much control you currently have, and how much you do not have. Being aware of what your own brain is doing. Continuing the analogy of a starship, most people's minds are being run from the wrong part of the ship. You can run the ship from other departments, in an emergency, or if the main bridge is damaged, but if you are going to run the ship optimally you need to transfer control of everything that can be transferred, section by section, to that main bridge, which, when working properly, has access to all parts of the ship and all it's systems, and we can then use those systems correctly to our greatest advantage. The locus of your consciousness should live on the bridge; access to everywhere granted.

Being stuck in M4, for example, is a little bit like running a ship from engineering with access to only half the sensors. All the data you perceive are being processed through a system designed to process only one kind of information; in this case the semantic kind. Some things it can't even tell are there, for example the pheromones flying up your nostrils, the subconscious effects of light and sound frequencies on your mind, the internal chemical cycles you go through daily, nightly, monthly. Subliminal signals, body language, midbrain language and eidetic imagery. Your biology's awareness of its own chemical changes and responses to that. Information from all these areas is relevant in the full picture of reality, and trying to 'run the ship' from the left hemisphere's point of view is not what we were designed to do, biologically. Biofeedback can make us a lot more aware of what we might be consciously missing, but is still going on. You can get to know yourself, in depth.

An awareness of the full spectrum of reality is vital for control. Control means real-time adjustment in the present, as opposed to messing with past memories. Sentiment control has to begin with blocking, then moving on to catching it before it starts and preventing the actual response, but the technique is not the same with emotion or imagination.

The reason we concentrate on control of emotion and imagination so much may not be obvious; the point is they are affecting every bit of input we perceive. That means if we change the emotion, we change the experience. It is an extension of the control of input; that is all. Taking charge of your own programming by deliberately weighting information with biofeedback instead of allowing yourself to be conditioned is a skill you can use throughout. You can award or deny relevance to events chemically according to how relevant they are in reality, as opposed to judging them from an artificial system of arbitrary values. You are slowly starting to build up a database of 'life according to reality'. You may be surprised, shocked or dismayed by the distance between your perspective and that of others, or you may, if you are one of those rare individuals who is not afraid of truth, be feeling absolutely marvelous.

1 Yes. Would you play it back to your wife?

2 It's very slow, and beware of seriously mad typos when sneezing.

3 A word about wearable computers: Don't try to plug into the back of public computers in cybercafes and libraries from the back of your neck or your chest, you will get banned for attempted hacking. Who knows what they think you're doing, exactly, but it also causes the Uncanny Valley effect; i.e., they think you are a weirdo.

14.Video Editing (Enhancing/controlling emotion)

Memory is automatically enhanced whenever emotion is enhanced and learning is always enhanced when there is greater emotional weighting. Emotional weighting can be increased by combining sensory motor, emotional and intellectual input into one 'trigger package' as described previously. You can thus decide the importance or lack of it, of any item or event. A single word can increase emotional weighting. Witnesses to an accident will under- or over-estimate speed depending on the wording of the question, "How fast was the vehicle going/coming/moving/speeding towards you?" Uncontrolled memory falls prey to error often because of this sort of thing. Usually, every single witness to an accident or unusual occurrence will remember something different, often widely different. If you ask Mrs. Jones, "How did Mr. Jones respond to the assault?" you will get a different answer than if you ask, "How did your husband react to the assault?" Consequently most eyewitness statements are completely unreliable on anything but major details. Memory is designed to be personal. It is this customization at the heart of memory that creates the ability to be conscious of ourselves as individuals and which creates (or possibly gives the illusion of) a 'separate self'.

Our ability to recognize a face at birth is hard wired in. Other animals have similar 'given' concepts; the ability to peck at seeds, grasp at fur, etc. Humans have a remarkably small number of them. This is significant, because we have an ability other animals lack which replaces the need for given concepts; we have the ability to create them (or at least, that is biology's plan.)

Two things, the personal nature of our memories and the ability to form new concepts, are at the core of our conscious awareness. We remember what we like and what we don't like, and begin to structure our personality from this basic. Gradually in childhood there is awareness of 'me', and 'not me', and episodic memories begin to be stored like a video, for now there is an observer apart from events. The emergence of individuality takes about seven years.R2 It starts to become apparent during the third or fourth year (the first functions of the CC begin in year two). After age seven our self awareness begins to specialize and localize; social self interactions begin to be handled by the LH, kinetic awareness is dealt with by the 'old' brain systems, and our 'overview' (how we fit in with things and how things fit together) by the RH. This can only happen if the brain has processed sufficient input to have already formed (a) thick enough connection lines and (b) an awareness of the basics of the material world through interaction with all senses. The CC has to be fully formed to allow communication between hemispheres, or this specialization cannot take place. The basis of personality has formed in the brain as a whole, and regardless of the degree of specialization later, the synergy of this basic personality will be the reference point for all thought and action, and all the video memories that you make.

(This is why people stuck in M2 cannot see the difference between themselves and the things they like. The separation of 'me' and 'not me' has never been made. If you criticize the things they like, you are criticizing them personally. They genuinely feel offended; it is not an act. Likewise, they cannot understand why, if they hate something, that everybody else doesn't hate it too. 'I don't like it' is synonymous with 'It's crap', to someone in M2. People stuck there never fully develop self-awareness, and are never fully sure what is, and what is not, a part of themselves (including their partners). Like most three-year-olds, they can speak and they have an opinion, but the problem is they may also have a driving license and access to firearms. (I find it ironic that so many cognitive scientists are busy trying to find out things about 'human consciousness', whilst failing to realize that a large percentage of the species they are studying may in fact not have a fully developed or functional one.)

It's important to control emotion because emotional arousal has such a strong effect upon all cognitive processing. Emotional weighting determines brain activity in every area.R6 Whatever you are consciously involved in from moment to moment will dictate the contents of your working memory, and emotions or feelings consciously felt will form a part of every memory made under their influence. Memories of past similar situations to your current one are all colored by the emotions you felt at the time, which in turn will affect your emotions in the here and now.

The interesting thing is, emotional pain activates some of the same brain regions as physical pain. The ventral Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC) and the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus (ACG) respond to distress just as if it were a fork stuck in the leg, and the amygdala is always on the case of anything that might be dangerous. This is why uncontrolled emotional pain is an express ticket to anxiety, and why emotion must be controlled and used for weighting intensity. Once you are able to control real emotion, the world is your console.

Emotion enhancement is dependent upon the fact that you are running COMP and using genuine emotion in the first place. You will find polarities in there and you can play them with opposing neurotransmitters. For now, you need to learn to recognize those basic polarities, and the main ones are Attraction and Repulsion, Inspiration and Relaxation, Happiness and Sorrow, Excitement and Calm. In a sense they are all linked; it is a single polar system based on Yes/No, On/Off, population voting and a set of glands to match, with the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous systems all tied in for good measure. We should expect no less from a system based upon intelligence. Once you are able to run emotion, without interference from sentiment, you'll find it a relatively easy task to keep control.

Cognition has four sources of input from imagination, all with emotional weighting; (a) what's going on now (b) what went on before, (c) chemicals currently in the brain, and (d) what might go on very soon. So, for example, even if you can see a wasp landing on your hand now, and a wasp landed on your hand last week and stung it, and you can imagine the probability of its happening again, your awareness and response can still be strongly affected by the chemicals currently in your brain, whether they be lager, caffeine or anesthetic.

Chemicals of course are also manufactured inside the brain and body. Cortisol is one, which in excess will make every experience seem more fearful. Cortisol changes neuronal transmission in various emotion/memory networks. The amygdala, when affected by a fear response, changes sensory-processing networks at all levels. Sensory perception is vital to working memory, and the sensory cortex is hard-wired in to the temporal lobe memory networks (these handle long-term memory and its access by working memory.) The amygdala also affects working memory in real-time, courtesy of the ACG and its networks, causing changes in processing of information and assessing what is beneficial or deleterious. An inability to assess this clearly is pretty crippling to the functioning of intelligence.

For an encore, the amygdala influences neurotransmitter efficiency, affecting levels of serotonin, dopamine, choline, noradrenaline and all of their related by-products.

This is how fear can rule the mind. Many of these transmitters are only able to act on already-active circuits. Which circuits are active depends entirely upon what you are thinking or doing, and every network you employ will attract the immediate attention of any unemployed transmitter molecules lurking around waiting for a chance to change your mind. Something which the world of psychopharmacology has to start taking notice of soon, hopefully, is the fact that some drugs will only work if the networks are active that enable them to work. We need to integrate drugs with psychological techniques and technology that will activate the networks we wish to affect. Until practitioners realize this, drug therapy for psychiatric and psychological problems will continue to be a mysterious hit-and-miss affair. Patients who get the input (deliberately or by accident) that activates the relevant networks will get better, those who don't, won't. It's that simple.

Emotion enhancement

Hormonal responses, and consequently emotional states, can be very easily conditioned. If you have an important event coming up and you want to be in the right mental state at the right time, you can pre-program your brain to produce the correct chemical balance for that state. We can physiologically control the mid brain with higher and lower brain functions, with chemicals, and with technology.

If you experiment with biofeedback, you will also probably discover the 'reciprocal' method of inducing emotion. Mimic the behavior that an emotion causes, and it fools your brain into releasing the chemicals associated with that emotion. Smiling, or even looking at someone else smiling, really will brighten your mood. Frowning will darken it.R38 The way in which this is most obvious is the fact that physical stimulation can cause mental sexual arousal in a person who was not feeling that way to begin with.

Enhancement is most easily achieved in the short term with drugs. Using drugs for long-term enhancement is fraught with problems, dependence, addiction and tolerance being three of them. I'm going to use this as an example of how complex neurohacking can get, if you go right in there, because if there is a sequel to this book that's where it will be going...I'll keep it as simple as I can...

Addiction results from changes in brain function in response to the drug or drugs. The reinforcing effects of many drugs are due to actions in the midbrain. Various areas, including the amygdala, hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex send glutamatergic projections to the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens sends GABAergic projections to the ventral pallidium and ventral tegmental area. Both of these network with the medial dorsal thalamus, extending major GABAergic efferents to it. The network is closed via glutaminergic projections from the thalamus back to the medial prefrontal cortex. (It's a loop. You got that, right?) So here's your map for using and choosing drugs for basic control/enhancement neurohacking:

The activation of mesolimbic dopamine projections underlies the reinforcing properties of most popular 'recreational' drugs:

Nicotine activates nicotenic acetylcholine receptors located on dopaminergic cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which results in dopamine release in limbic nuclei. In short, it's an acetylcholine receptor agonist. Nicotenic acetylcholine receptors are ionotropic channels that, when stimulated, become permeable to sodium and calcium. This results in depolarisation and excitation. Stimulation of nicotenic receptors in the VTA excites dopaminergic neurons and enhances dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. Nicotine is useful for: Attention and concentration enhancement, anxiety reduction, reflex enhancement, controlling constipation. Nicotine is not a good idea long term because (a) it is highly addictive and difficult to use sparingly, (b) ever-larger amounts are necessary to avoid the withdrawal symptoms of craving, irritability, anxiety, dysphoria, restlessness and increased appetite.

Alcohol (ethanol) and Benzodiazepines increase the firing rate of dopaminergic neurons in the VTA via disinhibition. Alcohol has varied and diverse effects on the nervous system, including influences on membranes, ion channels and multiple neurotransmitters. It is mainly important because it increases the firing rate of mesolimbic dopamine neurons through positive modulation of GABA receptors located on GABAergic cells in the VTA. So do benzodiazepines. Alcohol is useful for: anxiety reduction, controlling memory, emotion enhancement, confidence, euphoria. Benzodiazepines (including chlordiazepoxide and diazepam) are useful for: anxiety reduction, controlling memory, sedation, reducing the effects of alcohol withdrawal. They can enhance the effects of other drugs, particularly alcohol. This is not surprising, given that barbiturates, benzodiazepines and alcohol are all positive allosteric modulators of GABA receptors. Alcohol and/or benzodiazepines are not a good idea for long term use because: (a) it results in down-regulation of GABA receptors. (b) Together, they're a good combination for death.

Lay off sleeping tablets except in an emergency. They are bad, bad news, for your mind.

Cannabinoids increase the firing rate of dopaminergic neurons, and dopaminergic transmission in the nucleus accumbens, partly by inhibition of GABA release following stimulation of presynaptic CB1 cannabinoid receptors in the VTA.2

Cannabinoids are useful for: Controlling memory, euphoria, giddiness, relaxation, sedation and pain-relief. For some people they are also useful for anxiety relief. Cannabinoids are not a good idea for long term, heavy use because (a) you cannot remember anything, (b) the resulting neurochemical imbalance will lead to paranoia and lack of confidence, and finally neurosis or worse.

Psychostimulants (speed, cocaine, ecstasy), increase extracellular dopamine levels in the midbrain by inhibiting the dopamine transporter (DAT), which is supposed to be removing dopamine from the synapse. Psychostimulants are useful for: euphoria, elation, alertness, attention focusing, mood-elevation, appetite suppression and fatigue reduction. They produce their physiological effects by interacting with biogenic amine transporters. Cocaine blocks them. Most amphetamines promote their release through reverse transport. Both cocaine and amphetamines result in increases in extracellular levels of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. The reinforcing effects of psychostimulants are mainly due to increases in dopaminergic transmission in the midbrain. Psychostimulants are not good long term or regularly because: they can cause unwanted permanent changes in dopaminergic and glutamatergic transmission in the midbrain.

Opiates (morphine, heroin, codeine) stimulate a type of opoid receptors on VTA GABAergic neurons, which synapse on dopaminergic cells. Heroin is more lipophilic than morphine and produces its psychoactive effects more rapidly. Because both opiates and GABA are inhibitory neurotransmitters, opiates activate dopaminergic neurons in the VTA through disinhibition. Opiates are useful for: Pain relief, cough suppressants, controlling diarrhea, bronchio-dilatory, relaxation, imagination enhancement, emotion enhancement, and creativity. Opiates are not a good idea long term because: Chronic opium administration increases activation of the cyclic AMP-PKA-CREB system in the locus coeruleus and nucleus accumbens.

So, if the war were over tomorrow, the mesolimbic dopamine system is certainly where the party would be. But looking at the changes in neural function resulting from long-term use is essential when choosing your chemical candidates for neurohacking. Activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system is the cause of the euphoria initially produced by many drugs, but the increases in serotonin and norepinephrine transmission caused by some also contribute to the elevated mood. Choose wisely, and use with care.

You can use much more than drugs to enhance emotion. At the psychological end of the scale you can use music, movies, books or pictures. At the tech end of the scale you can use biofeedback, TMS, and neuro-stimulation. You can use aversion therapy if you want to. You can put various techniques together and go for a hard take off, or use one at a time to go step by step.

Let's hack. (Please read through this whole section before doing this in real time, as timing is important. The hack is designed so that the bits of text to be read, in between directions, last just long enough to allow an effect, which would be ruined if you went for a sandwich halfway, for example.)

Let's hack our emotion networks and change the way we feel about our own intelligence. Okay?

The simplest, most natural (and cheapest) way to start doing this is with lower brain functions as a part of Neuro Muscular Training. Most basic emotions, e.g. happiness/sadness, attraction/repulsion, cause very noticeable changes, not only in the mood but also in the physical behavior. There is a natural biofeedback loop in this system which feeds back the muscular movements and body language as the brain continues to interpret what is going on. We can hack this by modeling our own facial and body muscles to send that feedback to the brain, and the brain will quite happily produce the hormones associated with those movements. So, recall the facial expressions of someone in love. Don't use a mirror, but try to copy them as though you were an actor playing a role. Think of some good dialogue, which that actor might say...if they were playing a person who is in love with you. They are probably going to see all the best things about you and express attraction and delight in your company. Allow yourself to be 'wooed'. Appreciate it, and be well aware that you deserve it. That's the part you start off playing.

One step up, we can amplify emotional responses with biofeedback tech, enabling us to achieve any base emotional state reasonably quickly. We can also affect others with this; fMRI scans show an increased perception of attractiveness when we view a smiling face. The face of someone we like a lot lights up our medial orbitofrontal cortex with a firework display of reward-associated networks.

So if you're sure enough of yourself, enhance that now with biofeedback, and spray some Oxytocin up your nose...one blast of nasal spray if you're female, two if you're male. (I'll explain why in a moment, but timing is important here, so don't go off to put the kettle on, or anything; I'm doing this in real time so keep reading.) The medial insular circuit triggers an immediate response, and you may feel like you have an urgent need to communicate, yet nervous somehow about doing so...but whatever it is it seems important. You start paying more attention. As we pay more attention, the anterior cingulate gyrus, caudate nucleus and putamen join in the firework display. (Or should). Bring in the higher functions...And stay in that captain's chair...we have time now for a little more background info.

Why the sexist doses? -Oxytocin is present in both male and female brains, but estrogen and vasopressin regulate it. Girls get more out of it, boys get less. Both have their advantages, but we can bypass this biological prejudice by altering the doses for males/females. People with more oxytocin manage stress better; avoiding it's turning into anxiety. It is necessary for bonding, and you can't physically bond without it. For bonding, oxytocin receptors and dopamine receptors must be plentiful enough to overlap, in the nucleus accumbens particularly and several other dopamine-rich regions. Oxytocin itself, though, does not produce a set pattern of behavior or response. It's only part of the hormone cocktail we need to match that neurochemical state we call love.R37

Bonding is a central part of love, although it need not necessarily be physical, it must, currently, be chemical. Bonding rewires whole networks of brain. The pattern of activity in our cortex is different when we view pictures of people to whom we are bonded. This 'paying more attention' is not only a key part in the process of 'falling in love', but also a hacker's master key for learning. Because we can use the bonding circuit for acquiring any new skill.

COMP does this already, if it's working aright. In most people, it isn't, and this is a shortcut to getting it to work. You fall in love. In this case, deliberately and in a preferred sequence. (Did I forget to mention that? Ah well, having got this far, it seems a pity to waste it.)

First of all you fall in love with your own mind. Oh my. That sounds sooooo egotistical, doesn't it? It is. It's ultimate egotism. Here's the catch. You fall in love with what you really are, not what you have been pretending to be in the past. And you can do that now because you know the truth.

You already know you are quite fantastic, if you are currently sane and happy. It does not matter how you have achieved this, or even if you only manage to achieve it 20% of the time, bolstered by drugs or vodka, the thing is, your intelligence has fought and won many battles, to get you where you are today. You've had to experience some horrible things, that truly shouldn't happen to anyone; maybe a drugged-up birth, nasty school, boring family; -the way society is alone is enough to depress all but the strongest souls...and here you are, still using your mind and navigating your way through life as best you can.

Maybe you've been seeking; searching for answers for yourself, looking here and there to see what fits...maybe you've tried to speak the truth through your own creativity somehow...maybe you think none of it makes sense so you might as well just have a good time, or maybe you want to save the world...whatever it is, here you are, and that's a great achievement for intelligence and a tribute to your own intelligence. A splendid and wise old lady I knew said to me once, "If you're alive and sane, then you have an advantage. -Use it." I would say more. I would say, appreciate it. Know what a great and rare thing is your kind of a mind. Discover the true meaning of 'self esteem'.

Self-esteem is not arrogance. It is not about being loud and dictatorial and 'I'm here now, time to talk about me' behavior.... Real love is not arrogance and assumption, but joy. Esteem. So enjoy, you deserve that pleasure, as we all do. It is the pleasure of intelligence recognizing itself, and you will feel exactly the same way about any other intelligence that you ever esteem so highly.

Now...(remember, we're still in the middle of a hack here -where were you?)...Add a small dose of your favorite Adenylyl Cyclase inhibitor...anandamide will do, or cannabis, the dose varies for different people; start with 0.25g as a first attempt. (You are not doing this to get high; you are aiming for a specific chemistry, so start out straight and stick to the amounts specified). Sit back for a while and watch the oxytocin/dopamine party commence. Now take active control of your input. Watch, listen to and observe things that remind you of your best times; consider some of the times you have avoided unpleasantness because you were intelligent. Stupid arguments you have avoided joining in, problems you have solved, and difficulties you have overcome. Your mind is the real you; the you that no one else can ever truly appreciate as much as you, because they don't know the whole story.

...Relax and do a GSR slowdown and get on with appreciating yourself. Begin to think about your potential now that you know so much more. Imagine some of the things you'll be able to explore, if you're no longer stuck in a matrix...You can go as far as you like, and linger along the way. Time will no longer be a problem, because you won't have to keep trying to catch up. Fear will no longer be a problem, because anxieties can be resolved. You'll have everything you need. Right there between your ears, safe and strong.

This is quite a sexy concept, so don't worry if you feel that way. For some people the experience is more like awe. Feel free to express yourself, as you see fit. (You can see why you need a private workspace now, no?)

Next...Add 0.1g of your favorite MAOI. Selegiline seems to get most votes. There now, have a chain reaction...Concentrations of 2-phenylethylamine (PEA) will start to rise...catecholamine activity gets interfered with...dopamine slowly falling, serotonin on the rise, you crest the hill into the land of feeling really groovy. Now add in biofeedback as a real-time cycle, and amplify it.

Now consider: it's your mind that's enabling you to feel this good. Appreciate that. Recognize your own intelligence.

...You can come here and have fun with it anytime you want to. It's saved your life many times. It's the thing that cares about you more than anything else in the world, and it will strive to keep you alive against all odds, for as long as it is able. By your intelligence, you are cherished. Listen to your biofeedback, and enjoy. Roll in it.

...Let everything wear off naturally, and try to sleep for at least three or four hours before doing anything else.

Once you have had this experience and seen the result, you will really start to understand bonding.

You can bond to any new skill or task, for the length of time it takes to learn it, by using exactly the same hacks, but altering the subject of input. You can do this with machinery, surroundings, other people, and most certainly computers. You'll go through a beneficial physiological change, every time you're in a 'bonded space'. You'll pay more attention. You'll recognize detail, sights, sounds, which others will not recognize because you'll be attuned to your environment. This is the function of bonding in learning. The unknown becomes the known, as we bond to it, and assimilate it into the known. Once you can do that, you won't have to go looking for real emotion; you'll be experiencing it. A major part of all learning is a chemical act of 'love'. Absolutely successful learning will bring absolute pleasure. You may have to endure that.

It's starting to look a little more fun now, isn't it? You can do the equivalent of writing your own video and editing your own reality, because you can control how you feel about things. As soon as you've got the hang of doing this to yourself, you may wonder about the possibilities for doing it for other people...beware.

Cruel to be kind

We've all seen or heard of incidents in life that have what we call 'poetic justice'...The violent macho man who's wife ran off with another woman... the homophobe bully who discovers his new boss is a 6'6" raving queen... the cruel kid who picks on the wrong animal to torment and ends up getting badly bitten... such incidents we call the 'lessons' of life. Some people learn from them, some don't. In cases of chronic stupidity, some actually get worse after such an incident, but for most people the result is an improvement, often to a large degree.

In order to help intelligence grow, we sometimes need to be cruel to be kind in this way. We can guide people into glimpsing reality, in order that their intelligence can recognize it and aim towards it more efficiently.

Nature teaches like this, practically and without sentiment. Tribal kids deal with fire competently from a very early age, because they've been allowed to play with it (supervised, but not interfered with unless seriously in trouble) and they've had minor burns and blisters...they know the nature of fire with a full-body knowing, and they will never be careless with it again. On the other hand, give a western child of eight or nine a box of matches and s/he could well burn the house down. No experience of the nature of fire has been had. (This is why tribes don't need fireguards, safety gates, etc. and still manage the lowest rates of injuries to children around.) Awareness of reality is always the best security because that is how we are designed to keep ourselves safe. Once we are free of a matrix, it's automatic. We can see truly where the dangers lie, and circumnavigate them.

Now here is a great dilemma: if we cannot escape the problems of sentiment in a relationship with another, or their intelligence has potential but sentiment is present, we can be tempted to try and give that other person glimpses of reality, in order to help them grow a little and make them less likely to damage us, as well as themselves. How can we know when it's right to do this and when it isn't?

If the situation is simple and an obvious choice must be made about who gets hurt, you must base it on your own personal assessment. You must know how much dodgy input you can take before it starts to affect you deleteriously. If you catch yourself feeling bad, as in, anxious, for more than ten minutes at a time, chances are you're sustaining damage. Sometimes it can be better to cut contact with a person altogether in order to avoid harming either of you. Beware the 'altruistic trap'...because one thing you must not do is pander to people's insecurities. You need to know when to be kind...and when to be cruel to be kind.

Example: Brian tells Ann he's going to see a skiing tournament at the weekend...he didn't book a ticket for Ann because she hates skiing, gets too cold, and there's no restaurant or anywhere else to do anything...plus he knows that Ann has a project to finish for work. Ann, however, is attached. She can't bear the thought of being away from Brian all weekend so she asks to go along. Brian, baffled, says he doesn't see the point. Ann bursts into tears, and accuses Brian of not wanting her around and not loving her any more.

Confused, Brian does the worst possible thing he could do; he gives Ann a cuddle and 'cheers her up', saying what nonsense this is and of course he loves her and he'll book her a ticket. Ann, however, doesn't actually want to go, so she'll respond with something like "I don't actually want to go, but you could have asked! You just don't want me around!" At this stage, Brian cancels the trip. He pacifies Ann's anxiety... There, there, don't cry... of course you can have your lollipop. They end up having sex. (She rewards him.)

Ann learns by association all that she can learn...whenever you get anxious, all you have to do is burst into tears and accuse people of not caring. They'll be sorry! They will then step in to pacify your anxiety and everything will be okay...Ann stays dependent on others for her happiness and peace of mind, and cannot really communicate except by the long-range 'baby' method of crying or the retarded child method of throwing a mood...We are supposed to grow out of this emergency behavior as soon as we are able to replace it with speech and body language...When we can say, 'I want food', or point and say, 'my toe hurts', we no longer have to yell and scream to get assistance. If our yells are paid attention to when we are that small, we do indeed grow out of it as soon as we are able to better articulate our desires. If Ann was healthy, she would have said, 'Ah, I know I hate skiing...but I really enjoy being with you and that makes it worth the hassle...book me a ticket; I'll stay at a hotel in the town, work on my laptop, you can watch your boring old skiing and you & I can get together in the evenings for other kinds of groovy fun." (Which would, incidentally, have made it more fun for Brian as well). That's interaction.

Sadly, Ann is still trying to communicate as a baby would, because that need of nature was never fulfilled. Instead of thinking rationally through the problem, she panics. Ann's body may be in the here and now, but Ann's mind is back there screaming it's head off in a cot somewhere, waiting and waiting for the comfort that never came. Ann's bloodstream is still full of stress hormones, because she never stopped producing them since then. Whenever the anxiety becomes too much, Ann will pick on anything to get upset about, to get comfort. She can't tell the truth quite simply because she doesn't know what it is. Ann will pick on the skiing tournament today, the TV program Brian doesn't want to watch tomorrow, the fact that he can't afford a dishwasher the day after that...he didn't fancy sex when she did...he did fancy sex when she didn't...he changed his mind about going out...or staying in... and it will never end. Ann will never become independent, free and happy because she is utterly at the mercy of her own insecurity. As she starts running out of things to get upset about she'll pick on sillier and more trivial things, or start creating conflict because she needs it to throw the wobble-out she thinks is necessary to get her comfort...She cannot interact sensibly because she panics. She uses the baby's emergency communication system to voice her distress, because that part of her brain did not develop since babyhood. Sitting in a bath full of stress hormones, how could it? Ann is not an adult human; Ann is an augmented baby in an adult costume.

We mistake people stuck in a matrix for adults because they look like them. They're big, they're over twenty years old, and we expect them to be mature. Their bodies have obviously grown as intended, and we expect their brains to have done the same. Indeed, despite great improvements in scanning techniques, we still do not notice the problem because almost everybody has it. The occasional healthy brain scan will look like an anomaly, just as the guy with vision in the land of the blind would seem like a weirdo, if everyone thought blindness was natural. We are surrounded by infant mentalities in giant bodies and we get confused whenever we expect them to behave like adults, because they can't. Their bodies have matured, but their brains have not. They are, and I mean this quite literally, children.

...And the greatest gift you can give to any child is independence. Show them how to do it for themselves. Give them that self-esteem. Make it clear they don't have to cry for a sandwich; they can just ask for one or better still get it themselves... If they ask, they will not be ignored or laughed at. The appropriate response will be made.

Taking out the emotional charge and reverting to plain common sense, whilst making sure they see the way to achieve their aims themselves, helps people get the courage to be honest; to risk rejection or misunderstanding, because they are enabled to communicate. They can interact. They have a sense of self-esteem and they know their worth.