OESS Blog®: Part II, Digital Covert-Coercion, Social Perception & The Brain’s Stress Response.

1. How the named brain regions may be involved

Fusiform Face Area (FFA)

Primarily involved in face perception and recognizing facial identity. It may be equally relevant when distress involves: negation, suppression, and exclusion from:

a) Video calls: nobody answers when you call or they act differently. There is a strange narrative that you are a drug addict, and you can't even have more than a beer in reality. Someone convinced your community of the alternative reality that your 2 nephews in your homeland are children you left unattended without child support from your secret 3rd divorce. (social engineering using defamation and slander)

b) Profile images: nobody likes your posts, people block you for no reason (defamation and slander or shadowbanning)

c) Repeated exposure to a person's face: the person you confided in no longer FaceTimes you; they only text or email now, or they disappeared (ghosting).

d) The Face of the Person You Once Knew: The person's face may look the same, but the person you thought you knew no longer seems familiar. Your best friend still calls you and pretends to be your friend, although less consistently than before. She continues to FaceTime you while your current boyfriend is on her lap. She lies to your face, speaks to you as though nothing is wrong, and maintains the appearance of friendship. You do not even know what is happening behind the scenes, yet you feel confused, unsettled, and strange, and continue talking to her because you still believe, or want to believe, that she is your friend.

Potentially implicated behaviors, patterns, and legal concerns, depending on the facts I as the author imagine are sustainable by evidence, intent, and applicable law: gaslighting; network gaslighting; adultery; intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED); covert harassment; deceit; duress; covert coercion; intimidation; hostility; antitrust concerns, if the conduct involves qualifying anticompetitive behavior; abuse; domestic-violence concerns if the relationship and conduct meet the applicable legal criteria, including circumstances involving individuals who continue to live together; endangerment of cognitive functioning; dissonance induction; scamming; scheming; and, depending on the context of the conversation, harking, sharking, emotional exploitation, and instrumentalization for financial and emotional purposes, as well as usurpation and unjust enrichment. The overall pattern may also raise concerns about manipulation, betrayal, exploitation of trust, interference with personal autonomy, and the deliberate creation or maintenance of confusion for another person's emotional, relational, or financial advantage at the expense of damaging another's person, overall life, and well-being.

It is not established that digital suppression or network gaslighting directly injures the FFA, but the fact that this is the region involved in normal interactions is what strongly suggests that the negation of those natural and healthy interactions will cause this region to become underactive or start misfiring information with the information being dissonant.

Networks associated with observing and interpreting other people's actions, including aspects of action understanding. They are so highly relevant to interpreting gestures or behavior in video interactions that, when the interaction gets negated, suppressed, and excluded, they negate humanity, empathy, deceptive intent, and, in a particular silent, suppressive, controlling aggressor–target relationship

The broader role of these networks in complex social cognition remains debated yet not obscured from us, not being aware of what is the function under abnormal circumstances such as covert-coercive domestic violence & sexual harassment take place.

For instance, research has not established a specific mirror-neuron-related abnormality in survivors of domestic or intimate-partner violence. Existing evidence instead suggests that trauma, particularly when associated with PTSD, may alter broader networks involved in threat detection, attention, emotion regulation, social perception, and action prediction. Although action-observation networks may contribute to recognizing and predicting others' movements, their roles in empathy and interpreting intentions remain debated. Therefore, changes in a survivor's interpretation of gestures or behavior should not automatically be attributed to impaired MNN functioning.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)

Participates in networks involved in conflict monitoring, effort, pain-related processing, attention, and emotional regulation. Persistent, unwanted interactions may increase distress and demands on these systems.

That does not establish an ACC lesion or a specific neurological disorder. However, not visually monitoring the conflict, yet perceiving the hostility of an aggressor and evaluating the damages that they invisibly induce via all e-networks, including organic-social networks, makes the ACC hyperscan to find the conflict when the result is what is being registered and the conflict is invisible to most and their brains, so it's hard for the ACC to consolidate the end result and not identify when, whom, how, and why this started due to the invisible nature of this abuse.

Only the target initially suffers until the social environment of the target and its individuals start feeling afflicted by the afflictions of the target. That is what the ACC registers: the target's afflictions from its own perspective as a target. The emotional reactions of their inner social organic and e-networks, and those individuals start feeling puzzled and unsure about what is going on, just like the ACC of the target initially. Leads to misreading and misinterpreting, as well as underestimating emotional abuse via the ACC in cases of this type of abuse (domestic violence and sexual harassment).

The Insula: Three Broad Regions

Anterior Insula: integrates salient emotional and bodily information; contributes to awareness of internal states.
Middle Insula: participates in integrating bodily and sensory signals.
Posterior Insula: more strongly involved in representing bodily sensations and interoceptive information.

Chronic stress from chronic covert-coercive abuse (clinical or legal also) may change how a person experiences bodily tension when they are being targeted, and they can't find whom, why, how, how to make it stop, where to go, whom to talk to, the discomfort of the uncertainty for a resolution, the uncertainty of trying to explain something that most can't understand, or emotional salience.

Although these are broad functional descriptions for the insula, no one-to-one mappings are being specifically identified so far between a tactic and a brain region, or cause and effect per region.

For instance, Shadowbanning would be safe to assume to affect the Anterior and Middle Insula more than the Posterior. Yet, if a computer or cell phone gets burned remotely, or a document gets deleted remotely (hacking), then the Middle and Posterior Insulas would be the most affected regions (safe assumption). A structural MRI scan would confirm the insula regions' form, and yet for that I would opt for an fMRI for form and function.

There is also no specific tally (and there should never be a tally for neuronal terrorists to coordinate and push buttons) on how much of stimulus ABC and DEF they should induce to overstimulate or suppress the Anterior Insula vs. the Posterior to induce a "Disease Outcome". Some think that they need to induce an imaginary tally of chronic induced-covert-coercive stimulus that would reach a count of 10 times a day, with mid- to high-intensity, to then change the form and function of the Insulas, leading to a lot of confusion now being the end result of chronic abuse, but targeted to the Insulas for ABC "Insula Damage Disease Associated Outcome". It can be done. But it should not be shared with all, obviously.

2. What intensity of impact can we establish?

There is no validated numerical scale that converts digital mistreatment intensity [visible mistreatment like Doppleganging vs. invisible mistreatment like Shadowbanning] into a level of FFA, mirror-neuron, ACC, or Insula damage. The infographic framework here therefore proposes using a functional-impact scale rather than claiming measured neural injury using neural imaging to create an abuse-ratio analytical scale.

3. If a male coworker targets a female colleague, is it sexual harassment?

Potentially. The conduct's gender alone establishes sexual harassment under U.S. federal employment law when the conduct is non-consensual, is unwanted, is unwelcomed, is unsolicited, there has been communication that his actions and conduct are unwelcomed, and they still do it. Yes, it is sex-based harassment.

Here is a legal threshold: for example, creating a sufficiently severe or pervasive hostile work environment where a male calls an ex-partner's old or new employer to imply that they are still together, and planning their engagement and/or a baby to become a family by the end of the year. When they have been done for 2 years, and she is single in another state. Or he calls the same employer or ex-employer to confide that he feels hurt, and last month she left him there, and she comes and goes, and he feels confused and hurt, and she's been done for years. And even if she had sex again with him, one more time, just like he was any other guy, and she was single, it does not make her a piece of property that he needs to claim as if he was the "Sheik" of the land. That affects potential future social and professional relationships, future relationship suitors, and employment decisions.

Being misrepresented by an ex-partner who disseminates inaccurate information does not demonstrate his sexual desire. The reason why he is harassing her is less important than why nobody has stopped him or asked her in the first place or let her know what he is forcibly, covertly, coercively doing. Some ex-partners may even crank on an ex's corner, apply, get hired at her current city, workplace, become her supervisor, or an administrator, or an independent contractor to have control over the professional life of an ex. Desire is not required, and harassment can occur virtually (remotely) or organically in all workplaces.

Ordinary conflict, unfair treatment, or digital exclusion is sexual harassment when the aforementioned has layers, and layers, and motive, motivation, continuity, has established so.

Relevant evidence could include:

Sex-based or sexualized messages, comments, threats, or differential treatment.
Repeated conduct that interferes with work or access to employment opportunities. (displacing, hiring another and giving them advancement and ranking instead, creating hostility and conflict and grounds for warnings, memos, and admonishments until he can get her fired).
Evidence that similarly situated colleagues are treated differently.
Documented attempts to report the conduct and the employer's response.

Now, this phrase of "intent to digitally imprison her" expresses the target's perception of covert-coercion, but intent must first be established through evidence (and sadly experience) rather than inferred solely from a ONE TIME ONLY, 20 minute only, ONE DAY ONLY adverse digital experience. Likewise, "shadowbanning for a day" or "digital erasure of 1 post in 10 years" should be described as an allegation unless platform records, access logs, communications, or other evidence substantiate that what occurred was coming from an obsessed and morbid compulsive manipulator who is abusive.

4. If a male former partner targets a female ex-partner, is it domestic violence? It qualifies. In both the USA and Puerto Rico, the law specifically recognizes forms of psychological and cyber abuse within domestic violence law.

Let's say Amelia from Caguas, PR, got super sexy and fit, 3 years after her divorce. It took every ounce of her to get back on her fitness program, restructure her finances, and date again, while going back to school for a Master's Degree.

Amelia notices that she's at Ocean Park having a wonder-walk (amazing am walk at the beach) and sun-tanning without any problems. That until she starts getting tickets from the same "Guardia Estatal" that is the buddy of Amelia's ex-spouse. The Guardia takes pics of the car parked at the beach and of her tanga while she was sunbathing. He sends Amelia's ex-spouse an update on the car's ticket at the beach and her tanga while she's lying down.

Amelia's ex-spouse enjoys bochinche, so now he takes a pic of himself and his new girl and posts it online while nearby, eating an Acai bowl. And his quote is all about gratitude for having God always on his side and for his lady being a ride-or-die. How great the weekend was, the concert, the "VALET PARKING," and how easy it was to pay $20 and not get a ticket or get towed. This is a passive-aggressive way of releasing a hint that he is stalking her but Amelia is being mocked on, harrased and targeted, bullied on, and taunted about not being able to get the evidence. The Guardia is corrupt. How do you nip that in the bud?

This ex-spouse, technically speaking, is a) Harassing, b) Stalking, and using proxy hostility, which categorizes his little charade as an offensive c) Antitrust Retaliation towards Amelia. She can get a d) Restraining Order against both her ex-spouse and the cop. She will need an e) IP lawyer to subpoena the evidence and confirm the interaction between the Guardia, her ex-spouse, pictures of her, her ex-spouse tracking her online, with others that knew Amelia, and the location and frequency of the ex-spouse and the Guardia when negatively targeting Amelia with parking tickets. It is f) Sexual Harassment (indirectly and covertly), but he is causing unnecessary harm. Most certainly harassment via proxy with the g) intent to induce Economic Harm and h) induce emotional distress or IIED. He's trying to i) coerce her into an emotional reaction to call him is Duress and Coercion, when she is clearly done with him. He is not, but he doesn't want her for good, and those j) mixed signals constitute Network Gaslighting. He is angry that she is doing better without him. It's hostility, and as an ex, it's considered k) Domestic Violence (they don't have to live together for this tag to be applied; he is using others to cause harm).

Since we don't know how long this ex-spouse has been harassing and bullying Amelia, or if they worked at the same employer, different departments, or if she had no other way to transport herself, or if this is the 25th ticket in 3 years, and all other cars in the same lane never get a ticket, except for her.

Can we agree to say that Amelia is the victim of Domestic Violence, Antitrust Harassment, Retaliation, Bullying, Cyberbullying, Excessive Surveillance, and Authority, Sovereignty, and False Imprisonment?

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