A design-based approach to sleep-onset and insomnia: super-somnolent mentation, the cognitive shuffle and serial diverse imagining

This paper describes an approach to sleep onset (SO) and insomnia that involves a broad, design-based theory of cognition and affect (H-CogAff, Sloman, 2003). It proposes that the SO Control System (SOCS) has somnolent and insomnolent mentation inputs. A disruption of situational awareness and temporal sense making is posited to be somnolent. Perturbance (tertiary emotion) and primary emotions are posited as insomnolent. Many prior deliberate mentation strategies, prescribed as cognitive therapy for insomnia (CT-I), appear to be insufficiently counter-insomnolent (e.g., insufficiently able to compete with insistent motivators) and not inherently somnolent. According to tenets presented here, serial diverse imagining, a deliberate form of mentation involving a cognitive shuffle, is predicted to be super-somnolent (somnolent and counter-insomnolent).  This paper calls for the development of SOCS theories and CT-I, both from the design stance. Particular attention should be given to perturbance and the possibility of super-somnolent mentation

Meta-effectiveness, Effectance, Mindware and Other Key Concepts for Understanding the Development of Adult Competence

This article presents a list of concepts that are importants for understanding adult development of competence  (including "learning to learn") but that have not received sufficient attention in the literature on self-regulated learning

The possibility of super-somnolent mentation: A new information-processing approach to sleep-onset acceleration and insomnia exemplified by serial diverse imagining

This paper proposes a new conceptual framework and techniques for sleep-onset acceleration: the somnolent mentation framework. It distinguishes between somnolent, asomnolent and insomnolent mentation. Somnolent mentation inherently accelerates sleep onset (SO). Insomnolent mentation (e.g., deliberating, ruminating or focusing on one’s arousal) interferes with SO. Deliberate mentation approaches to insomnia attempt to influence the participant’s mentation at SO. They may prescribe somnolent or counter-insomnolent mentation. Existing deliberate mentation approaches attempt mainly to counter insomnolent mentation (e.g., thought control through imagery distraction). Thus they are at best counter-insomnolent. Super-somnolent mentation is both somnolent and counter-insomnolent. Extended SO (E-SO) is defined as the period just before SO (P-SO) combined with SO. A scientific challenge is to correctly classify features of mentation as somnolent, asomnolent and insomnolent. This classification should be done both from a phenomena-based perspective—e.g., the empirical study of E-SO mentation— and from a designer-based perspective (in terms of a theory of the architecture of the human mind). This paper proposes a secondary hypothesis: the E-SO mentation emulation hypothesis. To emulate somnolent features of P-SO mentation is somnolent. This paper proposes also that some types of incoherent mentation are super-somnolent.  This paper presents no new empirical data. However, from the new conjectures, several predictions can be derived, new treatments developed, and new possibilities investigated. From the incoherent mentation principle the serial diverse imagining (SDI) family of techniques is derived. From this and related considerations SDI is expected to be super-somnolent

Mending Broken Hearts: Specification for a productive practice app to assess and improve psychological treatments for romantic grief and other tertiary emotions

The poster below summarizes the theory, purpose and requirements (intended functionality) of an iOS® app ("RFB") being designed to help users (1) regulate a specific emotion (romantic grief), (2) instill some of the mindware[1] of acceptance and commitment (Hayes, Strosahl & Wilson, 2011), and (3) better understand and regulate their affective states after their romantic grief is resolved. The design applies principles of meta-effectiveness theory (Beaudoin, 2015a). We intend RFB also to help researchers develop and experimentally contrast emotion regulation treatments for romantic grief and other forms of perturbance (Beaudoin, 1994) by using productive practice and other components of meta-effectiveness. Other objectives are listed in the poster below

Towards a theory of sleep onset and insomnia that considers conative, affective and cognitive processes, and from which treatments are derived

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First-order sidebands in circuit QED using qubit frequency modulation

Sideband transitions have been shown to generate controllable interaction between superconducting qubits and microwave resonators. Up to now, these transitions have been implemented with voltage drives on the qubit or the resonator, with the significant disadvantage that such implementations only lead to second-order sideband transitions. Here we propose an approach to achieve first-order sideband transitions by relying on controlled oscillations of the qubit frequency using a flux-bias line. Not only can first-order transitions be significantly faster, but the same technique can be employed to implement other tunable qubit-resonator and qubit-qubit interactions. We discuss in detail how such first-order sideband transitions can be used to implement a high fidelity controlled-NOT operation between two transmons coupled to the same resonator.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

A test of the somnolent mentation theory and the cognitive shuffle insomnia treatment

Insomnia affects about 33% of Americans according to Harvey & Tang (2003) who called for new cognitive treatments. We will report preliminary results from a test of (a) the Somnolent Mentation theory (SMT) of sleep onset (SO) and (b) a new cognitive treatment for insomnia, the cognitive shuffle (CS), derived from the SMT (Beaudoin, 2013, 2014). According to SMT, incoherent mentation characteristic of SO is not merely a side-effect of the SO period but promotes it, meaning it is somnolent. The SMT identifies several types of insomnolent mentation, which involve sense making (e.g., problem solving). SMT postulates counter-insomnolent mentation, thought patterns that interfere with insomnolent mentation. The CS is predicted to be both somnolent and counter-insomnolent (super-somnolent). Participants either engage in constructive worry Carney & Waters (2006) or in the CS using SomnoTest an iOS app developed by CogSci Apps Corp. (led by Beaudoin) based on mySleepButton®.&nbsp

A new stylolite classification scheme to estimate compaction and local permeability variations

This study was carried out within the framework of DGMK (German Society for Petroleum and Coal Science and Technology) research project 718 “Mineral Vein Dynamics Modeling”, which is funded by the companies ExxonMobil Production Deutschland GmbH, GDF SUEZ E&P Deutschland GmbH, DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG and Wintershall Holding GmbH, within the basic research program of the WEG Wirtschaftsverband Erdoel- und Erdgasgewinnung e.V. We thank the companies for their financial support and their permission to publish these results. This work has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 31688. The Zechstein data were collected with the help of Simon Gast. We thank Jean-Pierre Gratier and an anonymous reviewer for their comments that improved an earlier version of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin