(A) IF my hypothalamus & brainstem are getting some evidence that I’m in danger
(the “evidence” here would presumably be some of the same signals that, by themselves, would tend to cause physiological arousal / increase my heart rate / activate my sympathetic nervous system)
(B) AND my hypothalamus & brainstem are simultaneously getting stronger evidence that I’m safe
(the “evidence” here would presumably be some of the same signals that, by themselves, would tend to activate my parasympathetic nervous system)
(C) AND my hypothalamus & brainstem have evidence that I’m in a social situation
(D) THEN I will emit innate play signals (e.g. laughter in humans), and also I will feel more energetic (on the margin), and more safe, less worried, etc.
This makes me wonder about PTSD/trauma responses. If I shake your model of laughter here a bit, it does produce the etiology that trauma can damage or destroy (B) (I felt this safe just before our position got overrun and almost everyone died) or (C) (social situations are horribly dangerous! that’s where we got assaulted!), which produces a lot of the rest; it also suggests that if you wanted to treat trauma responses maximally effectively, you should go figure out which of (B) and (C) got damaged, and specifically target interventions to fix them. (Or possibly also something about (A) getting overly strongly procced with respect to (B)? But my guess would be that strengthening (B) would be easier-per-unit-effect than weakening (A) and have fewer/less-bad side effects.)
This makes me wonder about PTSD/trauma responses. If I shake your model of laughter here a bit, it does produce the etiology that trauma can damage or destroy (B) (I felt this safe just before our position got overrun and almost everyone died) or (C) (social situations are horribly dangerous! that’s where we got assaulted!), which produces a lot of the rest; it also suggests that if you wanted to treat trauma responses maximally effectively, you should go figure out which of (B) and (C) got damaged, and specifically target interventions to fix them. (Or possibly also something about (A) getting overly strongly procced with respect to (B)? But my guess would be that strengthening (B) would be easier-per-unit-effect than weakening (A) and have fewer/less-bad side effects.)