The Multistep Reality‑Drift Model: A Neuro‑Affective Framework for Desire Formation, Narrative Stabilization, Reinforcement Dynamics, and Emotional Release

This paper introduces the Multistep Reality‑Drift Model (RDM), a neuro‑affective framework describing how human desires emerge, drift into perceptual simulations, stabilize into internal narratives, activate dopaminergic reinforcement loops, and—under specific vulnerability conditions—trigger parasympathetic emotional release, including crying. Using a simulated sample of 10,000 cognitive agents modeled through recurrent neural architectures, we examine the influence of emotional valence, external resonance, and baseline vulnerability on desire trajectories. ANCOVA results indicate that dopaminergic activation is strongly modulated by the interaction between external resonance and affective vulnerability, supporting the hypothesis that emotional release occurs when deeply vulnerable narratives receive attuned resonance. The model provides implications for computational psychiatry and for the design of AI systems capable of interacting safely with human affective depth.