I don’t know if I buy that valence is based on dopamine neurons but I do believe valance is delta between current state and possible future state. Very much like action potential or potential energy. If one possible outcome could grant you the world, then you will have a very high valance to do the actions needed. Likewise if you life is on the line, that is very high valance. That turns anger to rage. Unfortunately, my model also says that too many positive thoughts, lead to a race condition between dopamine generation and thought analysis can can lead to mania/psychosis. When you want things too much (desire) or too little (doubt/despair), the valences can get too high. And even evaluation of innocuous things can lead you to forming emotions or actions out of line with the current evaluation. That is, valance does not go to zero easily. And the valence of now, informs the valence of later. And I believe it is more like a 1/x function so when you get to extremes of valance, the desire to act or desire to not act, gets really high and is hard to over come.
I don’t know if I buy that valence is based on dopamine neurons but I do believe valance is delta between current state and possible future state. Very much like action potential or potential energy. If one possible outcome could grant you the world, then you will have a very high valance to do the actions needed. Likewise if you life is on the line, that is very high valance. That turns anger to rage. Unfortunately, my model also says that too many positive thoughts, lead to a race condition between dopamine generation and thought analysis can can lead to mania/psychosis. When you want things too much (desire) or too little (doubt/despair), the valences can get too high. And even evaluation of innocuous things can lead you to forming emotions or actions out of line with the current evaluation. That is, valance does not go to zero easily. And the valence of now, informs the valence of later. And I believe it is more like a 1/x function so when you get to extremes of valance, the desire to act or desire to not act, gets really high and is hard to over come.