That is disturbing.

Perspectival entrapment

doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

O-H!

You can imagine your mind as a dynamic topography with peaks and valleys at scales from milliseconds to years controlled by chemicals (neuromodulators) like dopamine and norepinephrine and your awareness is a marble rolling about. High focus = valley. Easy distraction = rolling shallow hills.

I dont see Tolman cited in your paper....that seems to be a bit of an oversight.

Edward Tolman's Cognitive Maps in rats and men....such fantastic work.

share.google/AMtCTqzWacPd...

Recurrence is the pulse, recursion is the evolving symphony!

I go over the developmental process of internalizing external scaffolding here in Value Saturation:

doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

This aligns with developmental evidence. Interacting with newborns, speaking to them saying "your hand touching your face" as you gently take there arm and maneuver thier hand to the newborns cheek, allows them to make this connection. The parent is the scaffold for thier future sense of self.

This worries me as a newly published author. Been through peer review 3 times....how can I trust it? I legitimately want to know where my ideas reside....right, wrong, or wacky.

Separation is the greatest of all illusions. Let's hope the message is delivered with as much altruism and humility as one human's perspective can muster. We tend to get in our own way vying for affirmation of that very perspective.

Wow....these guys completely miss the point. It is articles like this (and minds like those) that has prolonged the fallacy of separation.

Thank you! There is a massive misunderstanding of intelligence across all disciplines.

I cover the how and why within the R2R/Value Saturation framework:

R2R
doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Value Saturation
doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

The first 2 epochs support Value Saturation's developmental outline. This is exciting!

doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

tFUS offers causal evidence for my predictions on developmental shifts (ages 3-5) & clinical dissociations.

For Value Saturation,tFUS might modulate homeostatic saturation & perspectival entrapment e.g., insula stimulation during affective tasks to check if it creates aberrant phenomenology, validating my identity claim that consciousness IS saturated self-modeling under stakes.

doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

This aligns perfectly with my frameworks in BioSystems! tFUS could test recursive transitions in "From Reaction to Reflection" (R2R): e.g., stimulating prefrontal areas to probe implicit vs. explicit recursion shifts, or subcortical hubs for biological grounding.
Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

This is exciting! I cite Strohman (2024) www.jneurosci.org/content/44/8... in my Value Saturation paper as a means of validation.

Trukovich (2025)Value saturation: Architecture of subjective necessity - ScienceDirect share.google/5RZygLHuVfAP...

Freeman(2026) could be very useful!