Thank you all, I hope that at least half is right.
I normally post on a different forum and all this is fueled by my need to understand and possibly cure NPD - in a neruologic way. NPD features life long defense patterns of narcissism. Anhedonia, depression, anxiety all also appear in parallel with narcissism in all humans. Therein lies the connection, narcissism is an aroused state, paranoid-schizoid state of M. Klein. Simple as that. I have been refining my stuff so some stuff below may not match exactly, not sure.
I will copy paste selected parts of my posts that are not that relative to NPD but more generally explain what is neurologically described above in a more comprehensive, psychological way, so you can all understand this in practice.
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Reward is felt when an event that transpires causes one to learn/increase certainty and ability to operate/control/predict reality(detected by senses) in a way that provides pleasure or reduces pain(detected by senses). In short, reward/success is felt when a pleasuring scenario is learned through corporal senses.
Stress/failure is felt when an event that transpires causes one to doubt learned certainty in ability to operate/control/predict reality in a way that provides pleasure or reduces pain. In short, stress/failure is felt when a stressing scenario is learned through corporal senses.
Desire is the urge to repeat a rewarding scenario to increase the certainty of its availability. Desire is there to say "this part of reality is important because it makes you feel good, acquire it, protect it, learn how to use it best and with least effort"
Fear is the urge to avoid a scenario to increase the certainty of its avoidance/nonavailability/to confirm its nonexistance.
Fear is also created as a doubt in an existing desire scenario when it doesn't deliver expected result.
The urge to avoid a scenario may create a desire to destroy a part of reality that is the initiator of the scenario. Or to avoid it. The person will choose depending on certainty of availability of each.
The emotion of fearPure fear with absence of any other emotions is felt as terror or impending doom - a fear without a consciously known origin.
It is quite rare to feel pure fear as there is usually a consciusly known origin. The emotion of pure fear can be induced chemically via kappa opioid receptor agonists. Salvia Divinorum is a plant that achieves exactly that.
"Unpure" fear is felt when there is an origin in the sense of detected threatening cues. It is unpure because the existence of a known origin causes an interplay of emotions tainting the purity which we will discuss further down.
Regulation of fearThe brain will regulate the "amount of fear" or better yet "inevitability of stress" in accordance with detected salience of threatening cues facilitated by noradrenergic signalling in the amygdala. Noradrenalin signals both distance from stress and the return signal of aggression/anger.
The emotion of desirePure desire with absence of any other emotions is felt as bliss, impending heaven - a desire without a consciously known origin. It can be induced chemically via mu opioid receptor agonists. An example, although not a pure mu opioid agonist would be heroin/opium/etc.
"Unpure" desire is felt when there is an origin in the sense of detected rewarding cues. It is unpure because the existence of a consciously known origin causes an interplay of emotions tainting the purity which we will discuss further down.
Regulation of desireThe brain will regulate the "amount of desire" or better yet "inevitability of reward" in accordance with detected salience of rewarding cues facilitated by dopaminergic signalling in the mesolimbic region. Dopamine signals both distance from desire and the return signal of drive/vigor/elation.
Interplay of desire and fearEach reward cue automatically spawns a desire to acquire and each stress cue automatically spawns a fear of not avoiding it.
So, when a person is "aroused" by cues, there is an anticipation of a projected future that is either desired or feared, but given the complexity explained below it is usually both.
All desires except possibly innate desires(they might feed in directly at a lower level from other nervous subsystems) stem from basic root fears possibly all connected to a single root fear of annihilation/disintegration/death. So each desire is spawned out of a fear - as a solution to remove the fear.
Once a cue is detected it is time for the brain to calculate possibility of this desired or feared "projection of future" coming true.
In order to do that the brain "systemizes"/works out neccessary steps or "subprojections of the future" that are needed to succeed and the "subprojections of the future" that must be avoided to achieve or avoid the final anticipated "projection of the future". These we can call subdesires and subfears.
Each "subprojection of the future" is then assessed for possibility of success/failure to approach or avoid from learned experience. The values are then "merged" or "superimposed" or "summed up" to create the endresult possibility of success/failure to approach or avoid the final anticipated "projection of the future".
Desire and fear together are infact urges to find ways of controlling a known pleasuring or a painful object. Nothing more or less than that. Demonstration of interplayA basketball player wants to score. In order to score he needs to avoid the defending player and score a point.
So, his anticipated projected future is to score. He desires to approach it. But this, as explained above is not the beginning of it. He desires to approach it because he fears losing the game. Or he desires winning the game because he fears being a loser...It's a recursive relationship.
So he works out his "game-plan".
First he needs to avoid the defending player, this is the first "subprojection of future". He desires to avoid him and fears not avoiding him. He estimates possibility of this desire coming true and this fear coming true.
Second, he needs to score a point, this is the second "subprojection of the future". He estimates the possibility of this coming true or failing to come true as well.
He sums up the possibilities of approach to all subdesires of subprojections and sums up the possibilities of avoidance of all subfears of subprojections and yields an endresult of possibility of approaching "scoring a point" and an endresult possibility of failing to score a point.
The resulting predicted possibility of approaching desire causes a matching intensity of motivation via dopamine.
The resulting predicted possibility of avoiding fear causes a matching intensity of confidence via noradrenalin.
So you see this forms a matrix of mood responses.
High motivation + high confidence = high drive + high aggression = active-aggression
High motivation + low confidence = high drive + low aggression = passive-aggression + anxiety
Low motivation + high confidence = low drive + high aggression = reactive-aggression
Low motivation + low confidence = low drive + low aggression = passive
This all stems, as said, from success possibility calculations/predictions which are outputed via dopamine(motivation) and noradrenaline(confidence).
The interplay of desire and fear goes to much more granular levels than just 2 situations per play in basketball.
Here's a much more granular view of the said dynamics:
When a person wants to move their hand, they desire it to relocate to a different position. If the hand is holding a weight it will be difficult to move and the person will also fear that the hand might not move. Confidence in avoiding the fear of not being able to lift the weight will generate the aggression(noradrenalin) required to lift the weight. Desire to lift it will guide the hand to the target position(dopamine).
Imagine the other scenario. A persons hand suddenly goes completely numb. He is unable to move it no matter how aggressively he tries and instantly, as this is realized, his calculated possibility/confidence to move his hand is recalculated to be zero - which eliminates the possibility to place the hand in the desired position by moving it(flexing muscles). This means the desire possibility is eliminated completely and only the fear of not being able to move hand remains. At this point the person feels panic while he searches for a different method of moving his hand and as he eliminates any other possibility almost instantly a feeling of terror is revealed.
There is no detected obstacle and yet the person is unable to move the hand causing fear of disintegration without conscious origin - terror. Finally the terror is reduced by being pushed into the subconscious disabling the person from considering their hand as a controllable object.
This is in fact quite similar to, for example, overt NPD who are disabled from thinking the other people are not controllable objects. This will be explained further below.
Feeling the interplayWe have commented the emotions of desire and fear as pure and we have now seen how they get tainted through the interplay.
Desire, fear, motivation and aggression are separate feelings that are hard to discern.
Motivation alone is felt as agitation
Desire and motivation with confidence is felt as elation->euphoria.
Fear and motivation with no confidence is felt as anxiety->paranoia.
Since we're always running both a fear and desire we always have a ratio elation vs anxiety. This can be noticed when people in extreme situations keep switching attention to one or the other, flipping between extremes of mood. This can happen if the desire resulting moods are of the same intensity as fear avoiding moods. It's a small difference and each new cue tips the balance on the other side. If the moods are very intense the flipping will be very obvious.
And there are many possible combinations each yielding a mix of elation/anxiety/depression/confidence
At all times, when "aroused" our emotional state is determined by the intensity of the active desire and the active fear and by possibility of active desire approach success vs possibility of active fear avoid success.
Each newly detected cue in relation to running fears and desires causes the balance to shift in one direction.
Fear/reward learningThe brain learns reward through mu opioid network when reward is delivered. The brain compares the delivered reward(mu opioid in one part of the brain) to what was predicted(mu opioid in a second part of the brain). If there is an increase in delivered reward in comparison with what was predicted, reward value is increased/reinforced(mu opioid in the second part of the brain). If there is a decrease from predicted reward to received reward - fear is learned through kappa opioid network.
There also exists a third opioid newtork - delta opioid.
Delta opioid network is in charge to reduce fear learning from perceived reward reduction and most probably to facilitate reward learning from perceived reward increase.
If there is enough delta opioid agonism, fear from failure to acquire predicted reward will not be learned, delta agonism will inhibit kappa opioid fear learning from reward prediction error.
Here's a very detailed study on reward prediction error(negative contrast) causing fear learning(not that explicitely stated but everything I said can be found proven but not so much explained in this study)
http://www.comparati...09/4.Papini.pdfhttp://personal.tcu....iniHandbook.pdfDelta opioids reduce acute frustration from reward failure - in short. They stop the induction of the current frustrated state to be analyzed and recorded by the brain as a fear cue - they stop fear cue learning that would result from reward failure.
AddictionAs we can see from the above process, addiction stems from fear learning which is why symptoms of drug abuse and mental disorders converge as they get more intense.
We can explain the process of addiction in the following way: Artificially increasing predicted reward values and delivered reward values(by flooding receptors with drugs) causes increased control learning during acute drug intoxication. That means everything you do is seems more under control and this control is learnt and this learning is the pleasure you get out of the drug.
Once the drug, for example, cocaine, wears of, everything becomes less controlled(on some weird level because the flooding caused it, it is undetectable in a direct way). As we can see from the above paragraph, the perceived reduction of control during withdrawal causes "stealth" fear learning(if delta opioids do not inhibit it). This result in an increase in kappa opioid tone(fearfulness).
Increasing fear infact causes tolerance - fear/kappa opioids oppose the positive effects of the drug(mu opioid effects) and in the end only paranoia remains.
Kappa opioids infact are the receptors that cause acute tolerance and long term tolerance. Cocaine is only good while you're increasing perception of level of control, at some point you reach a maximum level of control at which point you can only learn fear from losing control - this is kappa opioid action. This causes the acute tolerance of cocaine and the mechanism causes KOR upregulation overtime causing chronic/tonic tolerance.
Notice that we said - if delta opioids do not inhibit it - delta opioids have been found to inhibit development of drug tolerance and are themselves much more resistant to tolerance. If I am correct, delta opioids infact inhibit fear and reward conditioning/learning which inhibits tolerance.
Lack of emotional awareness, depersonalization, derealization, dissociationKappa opioid network(fear) causes oxytocin and vasopressin supression. It seems mu opioid probably does this as well but at higher levels.
http://www.ncbi.nlm..../pubmed/1665795This causes lack of emotional awareness of others - lack of "empathy" in fearful situations. It probaly also causes lack of emotional awareness of self experienced as depersonalization.
Even higher levels start to cause dissociation - which is infact desensitization - loss of senses. First you lose mammalian emotions(depersonalization - loss of familiarity with self, derealization - complete loss of familiarity) then, via a different mechanism, senses(dissociation).
Senses are lost through a different mechanism than oxytocin. I believe kappa opioid overactivity causes nNOS(neuronal nitric oxide synthase) to induce NDMA receptor shutdown via nitric oxide. NDMA receptors mediate all senses so this effectively causes dissociation.
Dissociation is therefore also caused by NDMA antagonists/blockers as well, such as ketamine.
Dissociation is also caused by nitric oxide - laughing gas.
Dissociation can also be caused by various other infection, trauma all causing elevated nitric oxide.
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I have a lot more to copy paste but it's mostly plagued with references to NPD behavior, hard to weed it out, if anyone is interested, I'm sure you can find the original location where I'm writing this.
Edited by addx, 01 November 2013 - 11:10 AM.
LongeCity
