Voluntary control

Broadly speaking, the most important factors in the safe use of economic poisons are adequate information and appropriate care by all persons having any contact whatsoever with the poisons. Safety may be promoted but not ensured by voluntary control, such as the self-discipline of industry by legal control, such as regulation of sale, labeling, and distribution and by economic control, such as the refusal of food processors to buy from farmers or dealers food containing excessive residues for which no adequate method of decontamination is known. 

Stimulate Voluntary Control. As previously indicated, voluntary control is the desired method for regulating problems which have their roots in industry. It is desired that this approach be undertaken and its many possibilities exhausted before resort is made to other measures. Sincere efforts in this direction will win the cooperation and support of all other interested groups. The committee will aid and encourage this approach by bringing health problems to industry s attention and will suggest possible ways for their correction. 

Voluntary control of skeletal muscles crossed Originates in brainstem subconscious control of skeletal muscle (muscle tone, posture) crossed Voluntary control of skeletal muscles uncrossed Originates in brainstem subconscious control of skeletal muscle (muscle tone, balance, equilibrium) uncrossed... 

Skeletal muscle comprises the largest group of tissues in the human body and accounts for up to 40% of total body weight. This type of muscle, which is innervated by the somatic nervous system, is under voluntary control. Skeletal muscle performs many important functions in the body, including ... 

N-methyl-MDA is extremely pleasant, producing more euphoria than cocaine, lasting much longer and having a very easy down. N.N-dimethylation or N-ethylation diminish activity drastically and the latter appears to have sedative effects. The methylenedioxy compounds are generally free of marked visual changes, allow considerable voluntary control of the experience and are more potent than the dimethoxy counterparts. 

The Directive, however, does not exclude the voluntary control of advertising of medicinal products by self-regulatory bodies and recourse... 

The nervous system is divided into two parts the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists of all afferent (sensory) neurons, which carry nerve impulses into the CNS from sensory end organs in peripheral tissues, and all efferent (motor) neurons, which carry nerve impulses from the CNS to effector cells in peripheral tissues. The peripheral efferent system is further divided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. The effector cells innervated by the somatic nervous system are skeletal muscle cells. The autonomic nervous system innervates three types of effector cells (1) smooth muscle, (2) cardiac muscle, and (3) exocrine glands. While the somatic nervous system can function on a reflex basis, voluntary control of skeletal muscle is of primary importance. In contrast, in the autonomic nervous system voluntary control can be exerted, but reflex control is paramount. 

Although this objection helps itself to an unexplained notion of compulsion, it is valuable, nonetheless. If we can make sense of motivational compulsion at all, then susceptibility to different motivation does not prove voluntary control. Hence, no serious test of compulsion in terms of susceptibility to counterincentives will work. 

Counter-altitudinal behaviour (e.g., continued smoking in spite of acknowledgement of dangers to health) is not necessarily dissonance-arousing for individuals who see their behaviour as beyond their voluntary control (e.g., who say "1 can t help myself"), or who selectively reduce their self-esteem (e.g., who say "1 haven t the will-power"). In terms of this interpretation, "dissonant" smokers are not in a state of unresolved dissonance, once they label themselves as addicted. It may well be, then, that many smokers are motivated to see themselves as addicts. 

We suspect that the assumed physiological mechanism of pain and heart responses may have facilitated self-deception in the first experiment. Most people believe that such responses are not under an individual s voluntary control. This widespread belief makes it very easy to deny to oneself that the action was deliberately enacted to make a cheerful diagnosis, for how does one intentionally pull the strings. That self-deception may occur more often and be more successful for actions (incorrectly) believed to be uncontrollable than controllable is an interesting question for further research. The possibility of a motivational placebo effect, in which the desire to have one s tolerance shifted produces actual changes in physiological tolerance thresholds, seems worth exploring. 

Now that biochemistry has given us mind-altering pills, the modern seeker of psychosis-like transcendence has it all voluntary control, personal meaning, and the social support of a large subculture. Psychotic... 

The negative emotions that became increasingly unbearable and made this LSD trip a bad one are also characteristic of dreaming we can speculate that when serotonin modulation is impaired, either naturally (in dreams), pathologically (in depression), or artificially (in LSD states), the limbic lobe centers of dysphoric emotion are activated. And, as is true of dreaming, volition is impaired, the loss of voluntary control that Hofmann describes as follows ... 

There is probably no biological phenomenon that has excited more interest among biochemists than the movement caused by the contractile fibers of muscles. Unlike the motion of bacterial flagella, the movement of muscle is directly dependent on the hydrolysis of ATP as its source of energy. Several types of muscle exist within our bodies. Striated (striped) skeletal muscles act under voluntary control. Closely related are the involuntary striated heart muscles, while smooth involuntary muscles constitute a third type. Further distinctions are made between fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers. Fast-twitch fibers have short isometric contraction times, high maximal velocities for shortening, and high rates of ATP hydrolysis. 

Third, you have some voluntary control over the input to your exteroceptive sense organs, if you do not want to see something, you can look away or close your eyes if you do not want to hear something, you can move away from the sound source or put your fingers in your ears, in any state of consciousness, you have some voluntary control over exteroceptive functioning. But the control is limited if the sound is intense enough, it is difficult not to hear it at all, even with your hands over your ears. 

Many other interoceptive signals not normally in our awareness can be put in our awareness by turning our attention/awareness to them. For example, you may not have been thinking of sensations in your belly a moment ago, but now that I mention them and your attention/awareness turns there, you can detect various signals, with practice you might become increasingly sensitive to signals from this area of your body. Thus, as with our exterocepters, we have some voluntary control over what we will attend to, but this control is limited. 

Besides the sheer number of simultaneous and reinforcing stabilization processes, the degree of voluntary control over them is important. To the extent that your stabilization processes are too powerful or too implicit to be altered at will, you are stuck in one mode of consciousness. These dimensions of stabilization, control, and ability to transit from one d-SoC to another are important ones that must be the focus of future research, as we know almost nothing about them now. 

Green, E., Green, A., and waiters, E. voluntary control of internal states Psychological and physiological. J. Transpersonal Psychol., 1970, 2 (1), 1-26. 

A Theoretical Model for States of Consciousness. Paper presented at Menninger Foundation Conference on voluntary Control of internal States, Council Grove, Kansas, 1970. 

Continual dribble of fecal matter through the anus is prevented by (1) tonic constriction of the internal anal sphincter, a circular mass of smooth muscle that lies immediately inside the anus, and (2) the external anal sphincter, composed of striated voluntary muscle that both surrounds the internal sphincter and also extends distal to it the external sphincter is controlled by the somatic nervous system and therefore is under voluntary control. 

However, despite the defecation reflexes, other effects are also necessary before actual defecation occurs because relaxation of the internal sphincter and forward movement of feces toward the anus normally initiates an instantaneous contraction of the external sphincter, which still temporarily prevents defecation. Except in babies and mentally challenged persons, the conscious mind then takes over voluntary control of the external sphincter and either inhibits it to allow defecation to occur or further contracts it if the moment is not socially acceptable for defecation. When the contraction is maintained, the defecation reflexes die out after a few minutes and usually will not return until an additional amount of feces enters the rectum, which may not occur until several hours thereafter. 

Human sleep occurs involuntarily. That is, with rare possible exceptions, humans cannot volitionally change their brain state from wakefulness to sleep. The environment and behavior can be manipulated to increase the likelihood of sleep, but the neural activity that brings about sleep is essentially involuntary. Similarly, the maintenance of sleep (i.e., sleep length) and the termination of sleep (awakening) are endogenous processes, rather than under voluntary control. In fact, when individuals wish to impact the awakening process, they rely on external stimuli (e.g., alarm clock). In sum, endogenous neural processes control ... 

Despite origination of interrelated reactions in the early 1900s, the outlook for chemical interference is expected to be, if not extraordinary, but quite useful for interpretation of complex events and voluntary control of processes proceeding in chemical and biological systems. 

The somatic nervous system is composed of sensory afferents and motor efferents and serves to perceive external states and to modulate appropriate body responses. The autonomic nervous system (ANS), together with the endocrine system, controls the milieu interieur. It adjusts internal organ functions to the changing needs of the organism. The ANS operates largely autonomously, beyond voluntary control, at the subconscious level. Its central components reside in the hypothalamus, brain stem, and spinal cord. The ANS has sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. Both are made up of afferent, mainly in the vagus nerve, and efferent fibers. 

The efferent somatic nervous system differs from the autonomic system in that a single myelinated motor neuron, originating in the CNS, travels directly to skeletal muscle without the mediation of ganglia. As noted earlier, the somatic nervous system is under voluntary control, whereas the autonomic is an involuntary system. 

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