Modulation — value first, then reasons; bound by synchrony

Value precedes deliberation: an intuition — a fast value read tagged by reward-prediction error — arrives before the reasoned account (the affect heuristic). A whole episode is bound by synchrony, where phase alignment in the θ–γ code makes a conjunction index — not an energy sum and not an electromagnetic carrier.

Memories carry value tags learned by reward-prediction error, and value precedes deliberation: an intuition — a fast value read — arrives before the reasoned account (the Iowa Gambling direction), which is the affect heuristic. Trauma is over-consolidation plus over-generalisation toward threat, and extinction is not erasure — the old trace can return and be repaired only through reconsolidation. A whole episode is bound by synchrony: one cue restores the episode because phase alignment in the θ–γ code made a conjunction index — not an energy sum, not an electromagnetic carrier.

Value

Memories are not stored neutral; they are tagged with value. The tag is learned by reward-prediction error — the gap between expected and received reward updates the value of the associated state, the same error signal that trains action selection. A memory is thus also a prediction about worth.

Intuition before reasoning

Because value is tagged and fast, it is read before deliberation finishes. An intuition is a rapid value read that arrives ahead of the reasoned account; in the Iowa Gambling pattern, the body's value signal anticipates the good choice before the subject can explain it. Dressed up, this is the affect heuristic: the feeling of worth precedes and biases the reasoning, rather than following it.

Trauma

Trauma is this machinery pushed too far. The threat memory is over-consolidated (written too strongly, §5) and over-generalised, so neutral cues read as danger — a threat bias. Extinction does not erase it: the original trace persists and can return (spontaneous recovery), which is why durable change requires reopening and rewriting the trace through reconsolidation rather than overwriting it. (Mechanism only; this is not a clinical claim.)

Binding by synchrony

An episode is many features — a place, a face, a smell, a feeling — yet one cue restores the whole. They are bound not by being summed but by being synchronised: features firing in phase within the θ–γ code form a conjunction index, a temporary pointer that ties them together. This is the honest form of "many frequencies combine": a conjunction made by phase alignment — explicitly not an energy sum and not an electromagnetic carrier (§9). Emotional salience strengthens the binding, which is why charged episodes are recalled whole.