A stroke of insight

Or there and back again: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few neuroscientists would wish for: she had a stroke and witnessed the boundaries, set by the left cerebral cortex ..disappear. She experienced the ‘enormous and expansive universe’ where we live coming through the parallel portals of the right cerebral cortex, which was unaffected by the stroke. She returns to tell an astonishing tale.

Psych unit

“A horse at my window ..a voice singing in my head. Reality beckons but I will stay here instead. In delirium people are free to see what they want to see. And I am not alone. In the darkness I have a thousand friends. And the music plays and it never ends. And the midnight owl comes to fly with me. And I feel and hear what I cannot see.” ~ Emilie Autumn

Group therapy: Florence pulls at a mop of tangled red hair. Says she thought the spirits that possessed her had disappeared. But they showed up again last night, clawing at her soul. Someone told me she suffers chronic heartache (!?) Robbie needs more medz to think clearly in class. Reasonable request. Stacy, clearly the worst off, hunkers in the corner weeping ..saying her husband (who is deceased) gave her another round of beatings last night. Her head is bandaged and her face is black and blue. Startled, I look at Dr Russell. He says this cycle of recrimination has been going on for years. Some patients appear to have already left the world. The techs brought them in ..they look inanimate. “They’ve escaped their tyranny” the doctor likes to say. I tell him I feel out of my depth. He’s says that’s a good first step. I stare at a chart of the brain on the wall. “Don’t get fooled into thinking that’s any use” he says. Robbie tells me that talking about her problems has helped as much as any anti-depressant a doctor prescribed. “When I speak out, say what’s inside ..they appear to understand and give me direction on what to do.” Makes me think how much better girls are at expressing what’s inside. “So, the people here are pretty helpful ..?” I ask. “No, I mean the Angels ..!!” she shouts incredulously. Dr Russell says you gotta’ treat them for what they believe ails them. “Doesn’t that just reinforce their beliefs ..?” I ask, thinking back to a class in abnormal psych. “Some of these patients were incoherent when I got here” he says. Like they’re making sense now, I think. But who am I to say.

Reading behavior

“Our universities deliver education in English ..[so] we should teach reading in the language that will be most useful.” Letter to the LATimes re. dual-language immersion ~ [link]

As reasonable as this may sound ..it is not consistent with the way nature prepares children to read. Nor is it supported by the state-of-the-art in neuroscience and language development. The language children are going to need in college isn’t as important for reading education as their native language. Learning to read in one’s native language is the most effective route to fluency. That’s because learning to read starts out as a process of linking the sound of words on paper to their meaning in memory [link]. This puts children from non-English backgrounds at a disadvantage when trying to read English first. They have no ‘phonic memory’ for it. That’s what accounts for the high percentage of high school students in the U.S. who cannot read or write well. Furthermore, it is widely known that reading fluency in one language is easily transferable to another [link]. It only makes sense to teach children to read in a way that assures early success in one language and boosts their chances of future achievement in other languages.

Deconstructing Romney

Mitt Romney has a problem. Apparently Obama’s health care act looks a lot like the plan he implemented in the state of Massachusetts. In fact, Obama admits to ‘modeling’ Romney’s program. This makes Romney look like he’ll be less effective helping Republicans repeal Obama’s health care act. I think this is a real problem. He can either stand by his past actions or back away and appear shifty. Recently however, I’ve heard several republican loyalists defend Romney by accusing Obama of ‘stealing’ the idea. Now I don’t believe this is a deliberate attempt to obscure the issue. I think what I’m hearing is a native function of human memory. We retain our own interpretation of events better than actual events. Psychologists say that memory is more of a ‘heuristic’ than ‘algorithmic’ process. It tends to follow the rules of predicate logic, which are looser than those of Cartesian logic. So I looked at how the Romney defense plays out in terms of predicate logic:

Notice where the terms ‘principle’ and ‘democrat’ appear on the network path. For sake of efficiency, I believe memory often drops what’s at the periphery and focuses on the primary action (i.e. model). From there it’s a short step to re-interpret the action ‘modeling’ as ‘stealing’ and forget it’s a democrat ideology to begin with. As crazy as this may sound, it makes Romney’s actions appear much more consistent with republican loyalties. I’m not playing partisan politics here. I believe members of both major parties rationalize events this way.

Soundcheck

I went to the dentist yesterday. This morning my soundscape seems different. More amplified. The people next-door sound like they’re shouting at each other over coffee on the patio outside. The volume of their chatter makes it seem like my boundaries are contracting, which in turn makes my music sound louder and more obnoxious. I turn it down to half it’s usual volume but it still sounds too loud, making me wonder why they haven’t complained before (or perhaps they have and I couldn t hear them). The telephone ringing sounds like a train roaring through the room. This afternoon, the bell inside the meditation hall goes off like gunfire scaring the daylights out of me. Now I’ve had enough. I call the dentist to see if got a soundcheck with my teeth cleaning. He acts as though I’m asking a strange question. Does that sound like a strange question ..?

Anti anxiety practice

Continued from previous post [link]

During conscious breathing I can often hear the internal narrative that my thoughts create. I find myself trying to tell if it’s quarrelsome, critical or confined by past events. Am I busy judging those events as right or wrong – agreeable or offensive ..? Now I’m caught-up judging whether that action is the right or wrong way to practice. I quickly return to my breath ..feeling it rise and fall without effort. When I return to my head, like I so often do, I see a procession of discriminating thoughts rising and falling. So I remind myself not to resist or control them (from an old zen instruction). Trying simply to pay attention to their passing nature. Like the breath arrives and dissolves the toxins of the body .. can I allow each mental instance to arrive and dissolve of it’s own accord. I see periods of neutral thought followed by periods of critical thought. Perhaps I catch a glimpse of clarity once in a while. Like the bubbles of air I’m breathing ..can I let go and allow mental formations to flow, unencumbered, until they vanish. Sometimes, while I’m following my breath ..I imagine myself mimicking the action of the nervous system ..the way it transmits messages and recovers without congestion. There’s no time for bickering there. Then I let that image flow until it vanishes and return to my breath. And so it goes.

Anti anxiety drug

The basis of most stress-relief practice is the simple act of conscious breathing. Like any sport, it helps to return to the fundamentals once in a while. So it is with conscious breathing. Breathing is the closest handle we have on the cleansing and replenishment cycles of the body. Breathing is the way we rid ourselves of carbon dioxide and replenish ourselves with oxygen. It is a process that works on many levels. At an obvious level, our sustenance requires a regular cycle of cleansing and replenishment. On a not-so-obvious level, the senses follow rapid cycles of cleansing and replenishment in order to keep the buffers clear and make way for each successive round of sense-data. Otherwise, we’d experience ‘white-out’ in an instant. At the neural level, synapses perform a continuous act of cleansing and replenishment allowing transmission to proceed without congestion. At the cellular level, cycles of cleansing and replenishment are necessary to prevent toxicity. And finally in the mind, the place where stress-relief occurs ..the conscious mind is a continuous process of forming and dissolving thoughts and images. I find that the easiest way to approach the native processes of mind and body for stress-relief is through what is most accessible ..the simple act of breathing.