Guilty feelings.

Guilt is aversive, like other aversive mental states, because that is its functional purpose. Hunger is unpleasant because it exists to make us eat, ditto thirst and drinking, ditto tiredness and sleep, ditto pain and avoiding harm. Guilt, if I'm right, serves the same purpose for social and moral enforcement.

The pain is the symptom. The neurotransmitter is the trigger.To repeat: "It is now known that, in addition to sending projections throughout the brain, serotonin and norepinephrine cell bodies also send neuronal projections down the spinal cord."The pain is generated by the neurotransmitters in the spinal cord. Because the paper I mentioned specifically measured the "guilt component" of depression and showed it resulted in physiological symptoms. Should you wish to look at the study in the book I cited earlier, books.google the title: Facets of Emotion. On page 45, you will find a table with the results. The symptoms include: lump in throat, breathing, stomach, feeling cold, feeling warm, feeling hot, heartbeat, muscles tense, muscle relaxed, perspiring and other symptom.I can't copy and paste the table as books.google won't let me.I honestly have no idea why you are so resistant to the idea that guilt has physiological symptoms.

Jackpot.Survivor guilt (aka survivor syndrome).Scholar.google that puppy!Physiological symptoms out the wazoo.

Please present them as my search fu is obviously lacking. But please don't just say something along the lines of:"paper A says there are physiological reactions"If paper a does say so you should be able to quote it without reference to anxiety or depression or anything that is not guiltIf it's just my search fu that's lacking I'll be happy to concede the point.ABE: I'll get back to you on the Facets of Emotion, Klaus R. Scherer, no time Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Do you mean guilt is a software feature rather than a hardware feature, if you get my meaning.

That's exactly as I should have explained it!Can I use that when I explain the difference between cognition and pysiological reactions to my patients?

But it's bullshit! The brain absolutely, categorically, does not work like that. There is not software running on hardware in the brain; you cannot pull apart an analysis of how things work like that.Or, at least, there is absolutely no sign of it. Everything we know about the function of the brain shows no differentiation between physiology and mental process. For example, patients with OCD show characteristic pathology of the brain. You can solve their symptoms by giving them prozac and, if you do, their brains return to normal. However, you can also solve their problems by given them Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and, sure enough, the physiology of the brain changes. If you are happy, you can see it in the brain; if you are sad, you can see it in the brain, and so on, and so forth. Right down to the functional physics and chemistry of the neurons, and the wash of brain chemicals, none of them show any hardware/software divide.

Yah. This is the same issue I'm having with molbiogirl. I absolutely agree that you are correct.However, the hardware of the brain runs the software i.e. the meaning ascribed to the thought. No hardware, no thought. But the meaning to the individual is not the activation in the brain.Kinda like the difference between qualitative and quantitative data.But I do see the irony of my present point considering what I said here

Larni, you've lost me again. By way of analogy, here's what this sounds like to me:"The hardware of the genome runs the software i.e. the information generated by the base sequence."In other words, it makes no sense whatsoever to separate the information encoded by the genome from the genome. Nor does it make any sense to separate the information generated by the brain from the brain.Edited by molbiogirl, : No reason given.

Mr Jack and molbiogirl seem to know what they're talking about. This thread has prompted me to do some reading up, if it helps Larni it seems that Neurologists think it's best to look at when things go wrong.When you start up a computer and something goes wrong, you can definitely state something like "Oh, my graphics card driver is conflicting with my modem driver"*. This problem would have nothing to do with the physical condition of your modem or video card. Obviously it has to do with the semantics of the information stored within the computer. However if your graphics card has melted itself, then it is a hardware problem. Apparently, with the brain you cannot point to some specific level of neural activity and say "this is the level with the problem" and classify these levels into software and hardware.Now there are cognitive activities which fit into these categories (Adding, subtracting are very "software"), but the vast majority don't and are simply neural processes with no such software/hardware divide. Pretty wierd, didn't fully realise it myself.*A bug talking from Half Life 1 V1.1.0.9.

The computer analogy is useful in understanding some features of how the brain works but don't take it too literally. I defy you to find a single case where you can do that; or someone has successfully done that. One.In the brain, there isn't any such distinction, when you think, the biology changes, when you remember, it rewires the neurons. Even when you see, you change your brain (not much, these days, but it happens), your visual system remolds itself learning from what you see. This is fundamentally different from how a computer works; in a computer you have hardware which is distinguished by being fixed and immalleable, and software that runs on top of the hardware. It the brain you don't.

Ok, let me try tis approach:If I ask one of my patients to describe to me the physical symptoms of anxiety will he or she describe actication in the brain or symptoms such as rappid heart rate or dry mouth?These are the physical symptoms. Not activation of structures within the brain. Of course these are happening but is this usefull in any way to note in therapy?I'm still waiting for the physical symptoms of guilt from you.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.Edited by Larni, : Deleted scenes. Alternative ending. Gag reel.

And I'm still waiting for you to look up the cite I've already provided.

btw.A person who is anxious may describe only psychological symptoms (inner feelings of tension, agitation, out-of-control) or physical symptoms (palpitations, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, butterflies, sweating, an urge to go to the bathroom).Similarly, a person who is guilty may describe either psychological or physical symptoms.My guess is, were you to ask one of your patients who is plagued by guilt, "Do you have any physical symptoms?", the answer would be yes.

You know, I don't think I ever have.That could account for my suprise on reading the Facets of Emotion.I concede the point that guilt has psyiological symptoms.I still hold that it is very usefull to conceptualize cognitions and percieved psyiological symptoms as different.