The biology of deception: Emotion and morphine

Abstract 

The biology of deception suggests that denial-like processes are at the core of the cognitive coping. In this regard, with cognitive ability, one associates or assumes that this process occurs by way of a ‘rational’ mind. Such a detailed cognitive process as being rational would also lead, counter intuitively, to inactivity and/or major delays in conclusion reaching. Thus, our perceived rationality may also be a deceptive behavioral response. Of equal noteworthyness, man is also ‘emotional’. We surmise that emotion represents the pre-cognitive short-cut to overcome this potential for excessive rationality. In this light, we may explain certain psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behavior as emotional extremes dealing with cognitive habits used to bind anxiety operating most probably at the pre-cognitive level. Given recent discoveries in neuroimmunology and an understanding of naturally occurring morphine as both an immune and neurological down-regulatory substance we hypothesize that abnormalities associated with emotional extremes may be due, in part, to morphinergic imbalances.

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