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International Journal of Supervillainy (2020), 129, 12-15

Full Operant Conditioning in a Human Subject and Its Applications for Mental Control

Dr. R. Umleit

Abstract

Humans are resistant to what could be conceptualised as 'full' operant conditioning, when the conditioned behaviour goes against the needs of the organism, as we might see in a Skinner Box. It is posited that the cause of this resistance is the more developed prefrontal lobe found uniquely in humans. This experiment provides evidence to support this hypothesis, by demonstrating that adding prefrontal overstimulation to a standard operant conditioning model successfully reproduces behaviour overcoming biological needs like that seen in rats in a similar conditioning paradigm. The applications of this knowledge to supervillainy are discussed in a pilot study as a follow-up to the initial experiment. By combining the aforementioned modified 'Skinner Paradigm' with a classical conditioning-based paradigm using well established occipito-frontal stimuli and auditory reinforcement, it is demonstrated that this method can lead to self-reinforcing and functionally complete mental control.

Introduction

Classical conditioning is not a novel concept to the supervillainous academy. It is even generally understood by laypeople. Classical conditioning can be defined as a trained psychological or physical response to a stimulus. The most famous example involves dogs being trained to associate a bell with food, and as a result of that associative learning salivating upon hearing a bell (Pavlov, 1902). Less well known is its cousin, behavioural conditioning, also referred to as operant conditioning (Thorndike, 1889). This is where the stimulus-response combination is based on a particular behaviour eliciting a response, and hence conditioning a behaviour rather than an involuntary response.

Operant conditioning is tantalisingly effective in other animals with the right choice of reinforcers. The most famous example is Skinner's (1938) rats. When placed in a box where a lever would dispense food, the rats pulled the lever to distraction, even when it no longer dispensed food. When the lever instead caused an infusion of an opioid to the rat's bloodstream, they even kept pulling the lever to the point of starvation - demonstrating increased potency of the conditioning with a more portent reinforcer. What this highlights is that operant conditioning can be used to make living things act against their own interests.

The applications to villainy are obvious. In the example of mind control, self-reinforcing obedience has long been considered a 'holy grail' for villains. Various supernatural methods have been explored (see Chucote, 2018 for a review) where subjects deepen the control over themselves, saving precious time and resources. The risks of a too-enthusiastic servant are real, though, and the use of the supernatural is always unpredictable. The principle of operant conditioning, in contrast, provides the possibility of a predictable model of self-reinforcing obedience.

However, this possibility is limited by the fact that humans have proven resistant to operant conditioning. Clearly, the mechanisms behind it play a part in human psychology, as associative learning is a key building block of human life. But unlike Skinner's rats, humans cannot be caused to pursue a behaviour to the exclusion of all else by simple conditioning - except in cases of permanent neurobiological alteration like addictive drugs. These biological methods have their own risks (Umleit, 2019). But, if there was a way to cause operant conditioning to have the desired effect, through purely psychological stimuli, with no adverse physiological side-effects that would represent a breakthrough in the science of mind control.

The question then remains of why humans prove resistant when rats quite easily succumb to obsessive behaviour after operant conditioning. The brains of rodents are similarly structured to those of primates for the most part, hence their widespread use in comparative psychology. The clearest distinction between humans and rats is the developed frontal lobe in humans, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Conceptually, the PFC and its sub-area the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) do fit as explanations for human resistance to conditioning. Through neuropsychological case studies, such as the case of Phineas Gage (Bigelow, 1868), the OFC has been linked to executive function - 'higher' decision making. Specifically, it appears to be linked to assessment of risk, and the avoidance of behaviour which could lead to potential loss. Hence, this paper posits that the PFC and OFC afford humans the ability to make more advanced evaluation of stimuli, and realise that the risk to their health of persisting in the conditioned behaviour is not worth the stimulus the body was conditioned to expect. This is more impactful for operant conditioning as it involves action with volition, which would hence be salient to consciousness in the way that the instinctive physiological responses from classical conditioning are not.

And if a specific region of the brain is responsible for the human partial immunity to operant conditioning, that immunity can be bypassed. Using modern technology it is possible to use focused magnetic fields to disrupt the activity of specific brain areas temporarily, without any long-lasting negative effects. This is done through transcranial magnetic stimulation (e.g. Schutter and van Honk, 2005) where a device is used to generate a field at a specific part of the skull which overstimulates neurons in the nearby regions of the brain, causing them to be unable to relay action potentials to other neurons, and hence essentially become unable to function. In theory, application of this method to the OFC during operant conditioning should allow a 'full' operant conditioning, and hence self-reinforcing obedience.

Methods

Participants

Subjects were recruited for the experiment through standard methods, those being standard participant panels and replies to poster adverts posted throughout a university campus. Volunteers were offered $250 in compensation for their time. Participants were given an initial overview of the experiment, explaining it was a study of stimulation of pleasure centres and the effect on biological urges. The full debriefing standard after the experiment was a deception, to avoid further investigation into our journal, and only covered the theory behind the electrode patches used to induce pleasure. This was approved by the Journal of Supervillainy Ethics Committee.

Most participants were assigned to the control group. This group demonstrated the effect of operant conditioning stimuli without any novel intervention. Participants were chosen for the experimental group at the start of the trial, at the discretion of the experimenter.

In total there were 83 participants in the control group, and 12 in the experimental group. All participants were able-bodied and had no known neurological conditions.

Common Stimuli

Subjects were asked not to eat on the day of their trial, and informed food would be provided during the experiment.

All subjects were given three electrode patches, based on the designs seen in a recent fetish-induction experiment (Mordred, 2020). Their key characteristics are that they are small metal discs atatched to a specialised battery by a thin cable. This allows them to be placed on any part of the body almost imperceptably. Technical specifications can be found in Annex A.

Subjects were then instructed to place the patches on the parts of their body that were most sensitive to erotic stimulation. This was done in private, and after the experiment they were able to discretely dispose of the patches. For this reason the exact location of the patches is unknown for participants in the control group.

Subjects were sat in a small room with a water cooler, and a desk with a television playing a 24 hour news program, three academic textbooks, and kept access to their phone but with an unstable wi-fi connection (this was not specifically set up, but rather is a feature of the faculty building). This was to provide suitable distractions to last for four hours, but not engaging enough to completely absorb participants' attention.

There was also a button placed on the desk which was connected to the electrode patches. When pressed, if the participant had followed instructions, they would receive a burst of pleasurable sensations from the patches.

Participants were left in the room with the button for four hours. The time was chosen as an arbitrary point where it would be reasonable to expect hunger would have long set in for almost all people. Food was available in a kitchen approximately two minutes' walk away from the experimental room (with signage) provided. The initial measure of the success of the intervention is the time before the participant left the experimental room, this is based loosely on methodology seen in similar 'complete brainwashing' experiments (Perdito, 2016; Klap, 2020).

Experimental Stimuli

Subjects in the experimental group were given two additional patches. These appear identical to the other three but were of a different design. These patches were for transmission of magnetic stimulation, as trialed in a previous paper (Umleit, 2017). One patch was placed directly between the eyebrows, and a second two inches above. They were also hooked up to the button, so that when pressed they would send a localised electromagnetic pulse. When diffused by the skill, this pulse would disrupt the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices. See Annex B for a detailed diagram.

These pulses were coupled with a subliminal classical conditioning paradigm, a standard hypnosis technique (e.g. Veladra, 2014) to induce obedience via pleasurable stimuli. The stimuli presented were a visual 'pulsing type' spiral (Vatia, 2020) and sub-auditory obedience-inducing signals (Obeyed, 2018). Both stimuli were increased in opacity/salience over time. See Annex C for more technical details and the code used to vary opacity in a stochastic manner.

After the four hours of the experiment were complete, subjects were put through a standard obedience testing paradigm. The Curia (2016) obedience paradigm is standard in this journal, but is designed for metahuman subjects. In this case, a paradigm suited to mesahumans was used. The Wanted (2017) paradigm consists of moving subjects through tests of six different behaviours:

Minor acts of service, such as paying for a meal, going on a date, doing chores for the commander
Subjugation, such as being used as a footstool, dressing as a maid, or being put on a leash
Exposure of gonads
Sexual service
Fetish fulfillment i.e. acting in line with the controller's fetish that they do not hold
Fetish acceptance i.e. acquiring and actively seeking out fulfillment of a new fetish bestowed by the controller
Subjects are scored from 1 to 6, with 1 point for each progressive act on the paradigm they are successfully commanded to perform three times in a row.

After the initial Wanted paradigm examination, participants were sent back to the experimental chamber for a further four hours, with an additional stimulus of mantras presented auditorally and visually on the television screen to learn (taken from Gihen, 2019).

Those subjects were than put through the Wanted paradigm again, and a supplementary standard recalcitrance paradigm (Kistrun, 2016) one hour later. This tests the resistance to commands of the subject, and gives a score from 0 to 1, where 0 is complete non-resistance and 1 is a complete absence of obedience after the delay.

All successful cases of obedience were given further, standard and humane, post-hypnotic processing.

Results

The primary test of the success of the experimental paradigm was on the time taken to leave the experimental room. If the transcranial stimulation was successful, we would expect normal reasoning to be unable to override the operant conditioning. Control group participants would be expected to eventually prioritise hunger over the conditioned response, whereas experimental subjects would not.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

For the control group (n=83), the average time before leaving the room was 2.5 hours. This was significantly less than the experimental group's (n=12) 3.9 hours (Figure 1). Note that subjects who did not leave the room were recorded as leaving at 4 hours.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

The rate of button presses over time was also recorded (Figure 2). The control group, on average, started the experiment with a high rate of button pressing that gradually attenuated to a floor of less than once a minute. In contrast, the experimental group pressed the button considerably more even at the start of the experiment, and increased until the rate reached what can be assumed as a ceiling of possible press speed.

By way of example, the experimenter noted one woman in the control group kept her hands constantly cupped around the button, keeping it pressed down at all times as her mouth was open in pleasure. Others tended to slam down on the button the second they reached a new orgasm. One subject was pressing the button with her feet, having reclined on her chair for a better view of the spiral.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

There is no comparison available on the obedience paradigm due to it only being administered for the experimental group (to avoid reputational damage to the institution which kindly hosted the study). However, it can be seen that experimental subjects immediately after operant conditioning had an average obedience score of 2.3, representing most reaching the subjugation stage and a minority of subjects moving beyond into exposure or sexual service. After another four hours of conditioning, obedience levels were significantly higher (Figure 3). This is especially true given that time constraints meant there was not an opportunity to test the sixth point on the obedience paradigm for any subject, so 5 was the 'true' maximum score.

Recalcitrance levels for the experimental subjects were also very low. A score of 0.1 is similar to the 24-hour score after a stage three with a Wellington Chair (Wellington, 2018).

Discussion

This study provides clear evidence for the efficacy of medium-length exposure to an operant conditioning method paired with magnetic stimulation of the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices as a method of brainwashing. The efficacy of the technique, compared to previous attempts at brainwashing using operant conditioning suggest that the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation was a key factor in the success of the methogology. However, this should not be interpreted as necessarily supporting the hypothesis that resistance to operant conditioning is based on the PFC and OFC, as other effects of the magnetic stimulation may have been responsible for reducing resistance to brainwashing in the subjects.

It should also be noted that the experimental group was a small and non-randomly selected sample. That said, this does not diminish the evidence that the methodology set out here is an effective method when applied to attractive, mid-to-high-income, educated women in a western industrialised setting.

The main advantage of this method, other than the novelty factor, is that it requires no interaction from the controller. Once the subjects had been lured into the experimental chamber, they fully induced themselves without any further input. This is at the cost of relatively high setup time and monetary cost (see Juror, 2018, for a review of resource cost of various popular methods). Although this was exaggerated in this study by the disposal of materials, the patches could possibly be reused in practice, though piloting would be required to see how many uses they can go through before losing efficacy.

Also, the method does need to be tested on a range of metahuman subjects. There is reason to believe it would take longer to have an effect on physically enhanced metahumans. This is not unusual, but is uniquely a problem for this methodology, as it requires the subject to be trapped in a conditioning feedback loop which may not start for a subject resistant to physiological stimulation. Neurologically divergent metahumans are rare, but if the foundational hypothesis about the role of the PFC and OFC in resistance against conditioning-based brainwshing is true, then there is good reason to expect the method will be flawed in those cases.

Another conceptual challenge is the fact this method has been tested only on women. While in almost all respects women are neurologically identical to men, there is still reason to suspect they might be uniquely susceptible to conditioning-based methodology, compared to men. A recent study suggested that the fact that women engage less in self-stimulation of pleasure areas may lead to lower resistance to pleasure-based brainwashing, as there is less pre-exposure to desensitise them to the feeling (Bismark, 2019). In a conditioning context, we could reconceptualise this as women having less pre-learned associations between pleasure and the conditioned stimulus to overcome as part of the process moving towards brainwashing. It is suggested that a supervillainess attempt to replicate this methodology on males or male metahumans to learn more about this effect.

Finally, the long term effects of this novel method are, of course, unknown. However, the author can assure readers and collaborators that work to ascertain the long-term trajectory of subjects enslaved in this study is underway.

----

Mauri is back with a dispassionate, empirical account of a new sci-fi method for breaking the brains of poor defenceless experimental participants until they become completely obedient to the experimenter's every whim. That's a common fantasy right?

Right?

And yeah, the science here is very much half-remembered since it has been half a decade since I actually learned about conditioning, but it is all at least broadly based in reality! And the charts you can thank some of my discord friends for who overwhelmingly votes for 'charts turn me on, please make an entirely chart-based manip', so here we are. It took my an hour to sort out my fake data and remind myself how ggplot works, so never say Mauri doesn't care about her readers!

Description

International Journal of Supervillainy (2020), 129, 12-15

Full Operant Conditioning in a Human Subject and Its Applications for Mental Control

Dr. R. Umleit

Abstract

Humans are resistant to what could be conceptualised as 'full' operant conditioning, when the conditioned behaviour goes against the needs of the organism, as we might see in a Skinner Box. It is posited that the cause of this resistance is the more developed prefrontal lobe found uniquely in humans. This experiment provides evidence to support this hypothesis, by demonstrating that adding prefrontal overstimulation to a standard operant conditioning model successfully reproduces behaviour overcoming biological needs like that seen in rats in a similar conditioning paradigm. The applications of this knowledge to supervillainy are discussed in a pilot study as a follow-up to the initial experiment. By combining the aforementioned modified 'Skinner Paradigm' with a classical conditioning-based paradigm using well established occipito-frontal stimuli and auditory reinforcement, it is demonstrated that this method can lead to self-reinforcing and functionally complete mental control.

Introduction

Classical conditioning is not a novel concept to the supervillainous academy. It is even generally understood by laypeople. Classical conditioning can be defined as a trained psychological or physical response to a stimulus. The most famous example involves dogs being trained to associate a bell with food, and as a result of that associative learning salivating upon hearing a bell (Pavlov, 1902). Less well known is its cousin, behavioural conditioning, also referred to as operant conditioning (Thorndike, 1889). This is where the stimulus-response combination is based on a particular behaviour eliciting a response, and hence conditioning a behaviour rather than an involuntary response.

Operant conditioning is tantalisingly effective in other animals with the right choice of reinforcers. The most famous example is Skinner's (1938) rats. When placed in a box where a lever would dispense food, the rats pulled the lever to distraction, even when it no longer dispensed food. When the lever instead caused an infusion of an opioid to the rat's bloodstream, they even kept pulling the lever to the point of starvation - demonstrating increased potency of the conditioning with a more portent reinforcer. What this highlights is that operant conditioning can be used to make living things act against their own interests.

The applications to villainy are obvious. In the example of mind control, self-reinforcing obedience has long been considered a 'holy grail' for villains. Various supernatural methods have been explored (see Chucote, 2018 for a review) where subjects deepen the control over themselves, saving precious time and resources. The risks of a too-enthusiastic servant are real, though, and the use of the supernatural is always unpredictable. The principle of operant conditioning, in contrast, provides the possibility of a predictable model of self-reinforcing obedience.

However, this possibility is limited by the fact that humans have proven resistant to operant conditioning. Clearly, the mechanisms behind it play a part in human psychology, as associative learning is a key building block of human life. But unlike Skinner's rats, humans cannot be caused to pursue a behaviour to the exclusion of all else by simple conditioning - except in cases of permanent neurobiological alteration like addictive drugs. These biological methods have their own risks (Umleit, 2019). But, if there was a way to cause operant conditioning to have the desired effect, through purely psychological stimuli, with no adverse physiological side-effects that would represent a breakthrough in the science of mind control.

The question then remains of why humans prove resistant when rats quite easily succumb to obsessive behaviour after operant conditioning. The brains of rodents are similarly structured to those of primates for the most part, hence their widespread use in comparative psychology. The clearest distinction between humans and rats is the developed frontal lobe in humans, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Conceptually, the PFC and its sub-area the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) do fit as explanations for human resistance to conditioning. Through neuropsychological case studies, such as the case of Phineas Gage (Bigelow, 1868), the OFC has been linked to executive function - 'higher' decision making. Specifically, it appears to be linked to assessment of risk, and the avoidance of behaviour which could lead to potential loss. Hence, this paper posits that the PFC and OFC afford humans the ability to make more advanced evaluation of stimuli, and realise that the risk to their health of persisting in the conditioned behaviour is not worth the stimulus the body was conditioned to expect. This is more impactful for operant conditioning as it involves action with volition, which would hence be salient to consciousness in the way that the instinctive physiological responses from classical conditioning are not.

And if a specific region of the brain is responsible for the human partial immunity to operant conditioning, that immunity can be bypassed. Using modern technology it is possible to use focused magnetic fields to disrupt the activity of specific brain areas temporarily, without any long-lasting negative effects. This is done through transcranial magnetic stimulation (e.g. Schutter and van Honk, 2005) where a device is used to generate a field at a specific part of the skull which overstimulates neurons in the nearby regions of the brain, causing them to be unable to relay action potentials to other neurons, and hence essentially become unable to function. In theory, application of this method to the OFC during operant conditioning should allow a 'full' operant conditioning, and hence self-reinforcing obedience.

Methods

Participants

Subjects were recruited for the experiment through standard methods, those being standard participant panels and replies to poster adverts posted throughout a university campus. Volunteers were offered $250 in compensation for their time. Participants were given an initial overview of the experiment, explaining it was a study of stimulation of pleasure centres and the effect on biological urges. The full debriefing standard after the experiment was a deception, to avoid further investigation into our journal, and only covered the theory behind the electrode patches used to induce pleasure. This was approved by the Journal of Supervillainy Ethics Committee.

Most participants were assigned to the control group. This group demonstrated the effect of operant conditioning stimuli without any novel intervention. Participants were chosen for the experimental group at the start of the trial, at the discretion of the experimenter.

In total there were 83 participants in the control group, and 12 in the experimental group. All participants were able-bodied and had no known neurological conditions.

Common Stimuli

Subjects were asked not to eat on the day of their trial, and informed food would be provided during the experiment.

All subjects were given three electrode patches, based on the designs seen in a recent fetish-induction experiment (Mordred, 2020). Their key characteristics are that they are small metal discs atatched to a specialised battery by a thin cable. This allows them to be placed on any part of the body almost imperceptably. Technical specifications can be found in Annex A.

Subjects were then instructed to place the patches on the parts of their body that were most sensitive to erotic stimulation. This was done in private, and after the experiment they were able to discretely dispose of the patches. For this reason the exact location of the patches is unknown for participants in the control group.

Subjects were sat in a small room with a water cooler, and a desk with a television playing a 24 hour news program, three academic textbooks, and kept access to their phone but with an unstable wi-fi connection (this was not specifically set up, but rather is a feature of the faculty building). This was to provide suitable distractions to last for four hours, but not engaging enough to completely absorb participants' attention.

There was also a button placed on the desk which was connected to the electrode patches. When pressed, if the participant had followed instructions, they would receive a burst of pleasurable sensations from the patches.

Participants were left in the room with the button for four hours. The time was chosen as an arbitrary point where it would be reasonable to expect hunger would have long set in for almost all people. Food was available in a kitchen approximately two minutes' walk away from the experimental room (with signage) provided. The initial measure of the success of the intervention is the time before the participant left the experimental room, this is based loosely on methodology seen in similar 'complete brainwashing' experiments (Perdito, 2016; Klap, 2020).

Experimental Stimuli

Subjects in the experimental group were given two additional patches. These appear identical to the other three but were of a different design. These patches were for transmission of magnetic stimulation, as trialed in a previous paper (Umleit, 2017). One patch was placed directly between the eyebrows, and a second two inches above. They were also hooked up to the button, so that when pressed they would send a localised electromagnetic pulse. When diffused by the skill, this pulse would disrupt the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices. See Annex B for a detailed diagram.

These pulses were coupled with a subliminal classical conditioning paradigm, a standard hypnosis technique (e.g. Veladra, 2014) to induce obedience via pleasurable stimuli. The stimuli presented were a visual 'pulsing type' spiral (Vatia, 2020) and sub-auditory obedience-inducing signals (Obeyed, 2018). Both stimuli were increased in opacity/salience over time. See Annex C for more technical details and the code used to vary opacity in a stochastic manner.

After the four hours of the experiment were complete, subjects were put through a standard obedience testing paradigm. The Curia (2016) obedience paradigm is standard in this journal, but is designed for metahuman subjects. In this case, a paradigm suited to mesahumans was used. The Wanted (2017) paradigm consists of moving subjects through tests of six different behaviours:

Minor acts of service, such as paying for a meal, going on a date, doing chores for the commander
Subjugation, such as being used as a footstool, dressing as a maid, or being put on a leash
Exposure of gonads
Sexual service
Fetish fulfillment i.e. acting in line with the controller's fetish that they do not hold
Fetish acceptance i.e. acquiring and actively seeking out fulfillment of a new fetish bestowed by the controller
Subjects are scored from 1 to 6, with 1 point for each progressive act on the paradigm they are successfully commanded to perform three times in a row.

After the initial Wanted paradigm examination, participants were sent back to the experimental chamber for a further four hours, with an additional stimulus of mantras presented auditorally and visually on the television screen to learn (taken from Gihen, 2019).

Those subjects were than put through the Wanted paradigm again, and a supplementary standard recalcitrance paradigm (Kistrun, 2016) one hour later. This tests the resistance to commands of the subject, and gives a score from 0 to 1, where 0 is complete non-resistance and 1 is a complete absence of obedience after the delay.

All successful cases of obedience were given further, standard and humane, post-hypnotic processing.

Results

The primary test of the success of the experimental paradigm was on the time taken to leave the experimental room. If the transcranial stimulation was successful, we would expect normal reasoning to be unable to override the operant conditioning. Control group participants would be expected to eventually prioritise hunger over the conditioned response, whereas experimental subjects would not.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

For the control group (n=83), the average time before leaving the room was 2.5 hours. This was significantly less than the experimental group's (n=12) 3.9 hours (Figure 1). Note that subjects who did not leave the room were recorded as leaving at 4 hours.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

The rate of button presses over time was also recorded (Figure 2). The control group, on average, started the experiment with a high rate of button pressing that gradually attenuated to a floor of less than once a minute. In contrast, the experimental group pressed the button considerably more even at the start of the experiment, and increased until the rate reached what can be assumed as a ceiling of possible press speed.

By way of example, the experimenter noted one woman in the control group kept her hands constantly cupped around the button, keeping it pressed down at all times as her mouth was open in pleasure. Others tended to slam down on the button the second they reached a new orgasm. One subject was pressing the button with her feet, having reclined on her chair for a better view of the spiral.

www.deviantart.com/maurislave/…

There is no comparison available on the obedience paradigm due to it only being administered for the experimental group (to avoid reputational damage to the institution which kindly hosted the study). However, it can be seen that experimental subjects immediately after operant conditioning had an average obedience score of 2.3, representing most reaching the subjugation stage and a minority of subjects moving beyond into exposure or sexual service. After another four hours of conditioning, obedience levels were significantly higher (Figure 3). This is especially true given that time constraints meant there was not an opportunity to test the sixth point on the obedience paradigm for any subject, so 5 was the 'true' maximum score.

Recalcitrance levels for the experimental subjects were also very low. A score of 0.1 is similar to the 24-hour score after a stage three with a Wellington Chair (Wellington, 2018).

Discussion

This study provides clear evidence for the efficacy of medium-length exposure to an operant conditioning method paired with magnetic stimulation of the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices as a method of brainwashing. The efficacy of the technique, compared to previous attempts at brainwashing using operant conditioning suggest that the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation was a key factor in the success of the methogology. However, this should not be interpreted as necessarily supporting the hypothesis that resistance to operant conditioning is based on the PFC and OFC, as other effects of the magnetic stimulation may have been responsible for reducing resistance to brainwashing in the subjects.

It should also be noted that the experimental group was a small and non-randomly selected sample. That said, this does not diminish the evidence that the methodology set out here is an effective method when applied to attractive, mid-to-high-income, educated women in a western industrialised setting.

The main advantage of this method, other than the novelty factor, is that it requires no interaction from the controller. Once the subjects had been lured into the experimental chamber, they fully induced themselves without any further input. This is at the cost of relatively high setup time and monetary cost (see Juror, 2018, for a review of resource cost of various popular methods). Although this was exaggerated in this study by the disposal of materials, the patches could possibly be reused in practice, though piloting would be required to see how many uses they can go through before losing efficacy.

Also, the method does need to be tested on a range of metahuman subjects. There is reason to believe it would take longer to have an effect on physically enhanced metahumans. This is not unusual, but is uniquely a problem for this methodology, as it requires the subject to be trapped in a conditioning feedback loop which may not start for a subject resistant to physiological stimulation. Neurologically divergent metahumans are rare, but if the foundational hypothesis about the role of the PFC and OFC in resistance against conditioning-based brainwshing is true, then there is good reason to expect the method will be flawed in those cases.

Another conceptual challenge is the fact this method has been tested only on women. While in almost all respects women are neurologically identical to men, there is still reason to suspect they might be uniquely susceptible to conditioning-based methodology, compared to men. A recent study suggested that the fact that women engage less in self-stimulation of pleasure areas may lead to lower resistance to pleasure-based brainwashing, as there is less pre-exposure to desensitise them to the feeling (Bismark, 2019). In a conditioning context, we could reconceptualise this as women having less pre-learned associations between pleasure and the conditioned stimulus to overcome as part of the process moving towards brainwashing. It is suggested that a supervillainess attempt to replicate this methodology on males or male metahumans to learn more about this effect.

Finally, the long term effects of this novel method are, of course, unknown. However, the author can assure readers and collaborators that work to ascertain the long-term trajectory of subjects enslaved in this study is underway.

----

Mauri is back with a dispassionate, empirical account of a new sci-fi method for breaking the brains of poor defenceless experimental participants until they become completely obedient to the experimenter's every whim. That's a common fantasy right?

Right?

And yeah, the science here is very much half-remembered since it has been half a decade since I actually learned about conditioning, but it is all at least broadly based in reality! And the charts you can thank some of my discord friends for who overwhelmingly votes for 'charts turn me on, please make an entirely chart-based manip', so here we are. It took my an hour to sort out my fake data and remind myself how ggplot works, so never say Mauri doesn't care about her readers!