Sunday, June 30, 2013

Mirror mirror on the wall which side is the dominant of it all?

Facial asymmetry

Gives some thought on facial asymmetry but I think we use the musculature of the left and right in different ways.  The right side of my face so dominant that the left does not exist independently for most practical purposes.

If I grab my right wrist with my left hand and write in script with my right hand my left shoulder becomes passive. However if I grab my left wrist with my right hand and write my right shoulder/arm still tries to dominate the script even though the left hand has the pen. It is hard for my right arm to be passive because of it's dominance and habitual experience of writing . I believe the same mechanism plays out in my tongues and faces. My left subordinates itself to my right giving the illusion of one tongue one face.

I am almost infantile in the use of my left face tongue in an independent manner.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Beached beluga half asleep on couch

Half asleep
"Just two dolphins—a male and female—took part in the study. The pair showed no signs of fatigue for the first five days of the experiment, and the female powered through additional tasks for the entire 15-day period. The researchers cut the study off at that point, so it’s possible that the two dolphins could have continued to perform normally for an indefinite period of time without a full-brain rest."

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/10/dolphins-sleep-with-only-half-their-brain-at-a-time/#ixzz2XdA8fUk3 
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter


Half awake

"Unlike somes species of birds, the open eyes of these cetaceans are facing the inside of the group, not the outside. The dangers of possible predation do not play a significant role during USWS in Pacific white-sided dolphins. It has been suggested that this species of dolphin utilizes this reversed version of the "group edge effect" in order to maintain pod formation and cohesion while maintaining unihemispheric slow-wave sleep.[8]"....

"In domestic chicks and other species of birds exhibiting USWS, one eye remained open contra-lateral to the "awake" hemisphere. The closed eye was shown to be contra-lateral to the hemisphere engaging in slow-wave sleep. Learning tasks, such as those including predator recognition, demonstrated the open eye could be preferential.[6] This has also been shown to be the favored behavior of belugas, although inconsistencies have arisen directly relating the sleeping hemisphere and open eye.[7] Keeping one eye open aids birds in engaging in USWS while mid-flight as well helping them observe predators in their vicinity.[8]"

Been doing some tasks with my right eye closed while trying to engage and  pay attention to my left tongue/face throat. It feels like my discrepancy between my left tongue/face/throat and right tongue/face/throat is determined by my interaction with my environment more than some innate predisposition. 

Cooperation
“The more social the animal -- where cooperation is highly valued -- the more the general population will trend toward one side,” said Abrams, an assistant professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “The most important factor for an efficient society is a high degree of cooperation. In humans, this has resulted in a right-handed majority.” 


Friday, June 28, 2013

Gave myself a headache

Drove for 3 hours the other day. Singing all the way with what I perceive to be the left tongue. That night and next morning I was reaching for the advil.  There feels to be something I am still not getting. I cannot move the left tongue across the midline.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Whose monkey's uncle left?

Whose unculus?

"The resulting image is a grotesquely disfigured human with disproportionately huge hands, lips, and face in comparison to the rest of the body. Because of the fine motor skills and sense nerves found in these particular parts of the body, they are represented as being larger on the homunculus. A part of the body with fewer sensory and/or motor connections to the brain is represented to appear smaller."

 Monkey face

"More recently, the neocortical distribution of activity-dependent gene expression in marmosets provided direct evidence that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which comprises Broca's area in humans and has been associated with auditory processing of species-specific vocalizations and orofacial control in macaques, is engaged during vocal output in a New World monkey.[22][23] These findings putatively set the origin of vocalization-related neocortical circuits to at least 35 million years ago, when the Old and New World monkey lineages split."

My ororfacial control does not feel to be the same on the left as the right. I do not think that I differentiate the left side of my face from the right in my normal use. The same with my tongue. I do not differentiate the left motor control from the right, not that it is impossible. My habitual use comes from my interactions with others both reading and expressing the muscular control. The left side of other people's faces did not register in my consciousness. A blind spot that I did not know existed. 

Friday, June 21, 2013

Balancing dynamic rocks

Scoliosis

"The handedness of 254 girls with idiopathic scoliosis, minimum age eight years at diagnosis, attending Our Lady's Hospital was related to their scoliosis convexity. Curve patterns were assigned to right or left on the basis of the convexity of the low thoracic component only, regardless of primary curve. The curve pattern matched handedness in 82%. Of 228 right-handed children, 197 had a right convex curve pattern; of 26 left-handed children, 12 had a left convex pattern. The correlation between scoliosis configuration and handedness was statistically significant. This is in contrast to the findings of previous studies, which have considered convexity only, without reference to the configuration of the whole spine. The implication of this finding is that scoliosis is associated with cortical functions."

Older study there has been a great deal of water under the bridge since this was written with evidence for and against.

Polly's eyeing the cracker

"Individual preference for the use of one limb over the other to explore the environment or manipulate objects is common trait among vertebrates. Here, we explore the hypothesis that limb preference is determined by the engagement of a particular cerebral hemisphere to analyse certain stimuli. We recorded the eye and foot preferences of 322 individuals from 16 species of Australian parrots while investigating potential food items. Across all species, eye preferences explained 99 per cent of the variation in foot use in Australian parrots. The vast majority of species showed significant relationships between eye and foot preferences at the population level"


Static Rocks

In a dynamic system at a key structural interface what could be the outcome of a small force not applied equally? Many people have a minor scoliosis with no significant ill effects.

Rocks for my head


Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Rocks for my head

Rock balancing

Another view

The rocks do not have to move but I do. I have connective tissue and muscles but to move efficiently the better I am in balance the least muscular effort will go to keep me upright. If I view the spine as balancing well fitted rocks any small perturbance has to be made up elsewhere.  As with the rocks there can be a wide range of being off centered while being balanced overall. However at the point of interaction between a smaller rock below a larger heavier stone the range of error must be very tiny as opposed to a smaller rock on top of a larger rock.

Hyoid location

Hyoid musculature

Styloid process of temporal bone


I feel all the musculature on the anterior throat/jaw/face is not balanced between the left and right. I believe it is related to speech being (left cerebral hemisphere)right sided.  I am wondering if slight imbalance at the atlas of the spine skull interaction would result in greater forces being balanced by the musculature further down the spine.

The bit between our teeth

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Is that your left tongue or you just glad to see me?

What do you say to a lefty?


Still playing with the fire hose coming under pressure image of the left tongue . It has a different feel when I use it. More like I am moving an object than just muscles moving. The difference of something flaccid with no form and something hard with form.

Hydrostatic tongues

Monday, June 17, 2013

Phil MIckelson

Phil

Tough loss for Phil yesterday at the US open. It looked like the tournament was his to win or lose. Above is a short clip of Phil talking about the priorities in his life.  His face is lit on the left side and it seems to me to be his more animated better looking side. I think it is amazing that I would not have seen the left side of his face until relatively recently. It would have been there on the periphery of my consciousness somehow out of the ability for me to to see. I would have focused solely on the right side of his face. I do not think that it is that important for me to figure out what is going on in Phil's head but to identify my habitual tendencies of movement and perception. Not being able to make a connection to the left side of someone else is defining my own limits. It provides a mirror on how I perceive myself.

Update just found out Phil is a righty who grew up playing lefty





Friday, June 14, 2013

The proper attitude

The proper attitude

In studying the works of Moshe Feldenkrais much was said that I did not understand. One of the themes that was presented frequently is that our central nervous system organizes the action of our musculature to move our bones in our interaction with our environment.  It is not that our muscles are tight or relaxed that give us problems but that our image that we learned on how our skeletal system moves may not be the best adaptation to our environment. By relaxed careful movements and attending to what is sensed to be better or more efficient we can improve our adaptation. Many of the exercises start with a usual movement and progress to a differentiation of the habitual to increase our movement picture. Things are done slowly with the least effort to increase the ability to sense what feels more efficient. What may be more efficient for you may not be efficient for me depending on where our movement image is at.  We are trying to improve the organization of how we move by play and attention (I know I am still not anywhere near any paragon of organization)

The tongue gets some attention in some of the movement exercises that I have done but no mention of a left tongue or that we have two tongues. Even though the tongue is largely comprised of a muscle if viewed with the image that it is a hydrostat it has more in common with the skeletal system than the musculature system. Playing with my tongue and paying attention to the discrepancies allowed me to discover my left tongue which I previously had no awareness of.  Having a movement image of two tongues is certainly different than one tongue but I think it is a more complete picture.

Playing with the eyes is done often but as far as I know Feldenkrais looked at the mind as one integrated whole instead of a dominant and subordinate sides. The interaction of how we relate and see others I did not explored deeply in the training. Playing with this function allowed me to discover that I only related to the right side of  peoples faces throughout my life until relatively recently. There has been a change in my movement picture/organization because of these discoveries.  What is the most interesting is the change in how I am able to greet people. I have the sense that I am not as defensive when I include my left side of face/eye and see the other person's left side of face/eye. In a way I protected my blind spot that I did not know was there. I feel there is an increased empathy in that I allow myself to see and feel more. I think I am still very defensive by nature and learned habits, and that I have still yet much to unlearn.


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Hydrostatic tongues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_hydrostat

I am playing with the image that I have two fire hoses linked together in the back and I can shift fluid/water and pressure from one to the other. When I try to move my left tongue by itself it feels like it runs into resistance. I am thinking that my left tongue use in my normal right tongue dominant way is more to shift the hydrostatic properties to the right. So when I try to use the tongue in the new left tongue mode it is fighting the hydrostatic properties of the right tongue. The right tongue has to give up it's dominance and to play with that in my minds eye I am draining the right fire hose and filling the left so the pressure inside it builds up. There is a little more action in my left tongue movement that way but I am still not able either to completely drain the right or fill the left so to speak.

Clip of a firehose layed out in a tongue shape coming under pressure

Monday, June 10, 2013

Party on Garth

Party on Garth. I am finding it harder and harder to find clips that I would like to use on You tube. Google is becoming harder and harder to use also. It feels like I am being steered more often in the direction they want to take me  for advertisers instead of what I am looking for.

Went to a nice party yesterday. It felt very natural to see both sides of peoples faces. It is still amazing to me most of my life I blocked/did not see others left side of face in my vision .  I really only saw the right side of a person's face when engaged in conversation. It feels like now I can be more empathetic to what a person is saying when I see the whole face. I still revert back to my usual old ways whenever there is a hint of anxiety on my part.

I watched a clip of Phil Michelson being interview after the St Jude Classic last night. He is a pro leftie golfer and had hit a beautiful shot into the 18th hole. He was very animated and the the left eye seemed to have an intense feel to me but I am not sure he was communicating with it. The right eye seemed to match what he was saying better while the left providing the intensity. I know this is very subjective and speculative but I had expected to really get the feel the left eye would match the words more from a leftie.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

The tongue is a muscular hydrostat

Muscular Hydrostat

The word hydrostat reminds me of the classic routine of the Marx brothers viaduct for some reason. Looking at some of the musculature modeling done on the tongue it seems immensely complex but I have not seen much discussion between difference of the sides of the tongue. No one that I know is suggesting that there is a left and right tongue.

I am feeling that my left cerebral hemisphere image which controls what I call my right tongue is different and far more developed than my right cerebral hemisphere. If true playing my left tongue should be changing my right cerebral hemisphere.

What I feel with playing with my left tongue is that it cannot take it's full shape.  I can proximate it but then it is not able move left and right freely the way it can in the right tongue mode.

My sense is my tongue is two hydostats side by side with a dominant side capable of  much greater range of inhibition(relaxation) and contraction. The easier state for the left tongue/side is contraction but can do the necessary tasks for swallowing. Speech being a higher level function is mostly relegated to the dominant side.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Skewed for the right

I don't think I am representative of everyone. Watching many of the commentators on TV it is hard for me to guess the dominant side.  I do feel I fit somewhere on the normal spectrum but that I am asymmetrical more than most. Playing with left side of the musculature of my face tongue and throat I now feel I did not differentiate it from the right side during my life. I am not clear if it adapted a subordinate role or it did not develop as completely as it could. I actually never focused on the left side of another person's face. It did not register in my consciousness unless obviously disfigured.  Now it seems almost natural to look for it.

In the last post I referred to studies with kittens with their eye sewn shut. If they sewed both eyes shut at a young age and kept it sewed long enough the kittens adapted to being blind and did not see when they removed the sutures. I believe I am/was blind to my left tongue/throat /side of face and the corresponding left side features of who ever I conversed with. I think my musculature and posture was/is skewed in a similar way. I twist back on the left to allow the right a slight but important position of advantage in daily tasks. However my posture is mainly a reflection of how and what I learned in my interaction with others.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Kitten's eye sewn shut stressfully

I worked in a treadmill exercise test stress role while I was assigned to cardiac rehab. I had to attach the leads and prep the sites first with alcohol and small plastic scrub pad. Dave Barry explains the procedure better. It was stressful for me to scrub the skin as it hurt the patient. I often got called out on not scrubbing hard enough by my boss if she got a poor EKG.  Who first thought of scrubbing someone's skin?  Almost like the leads on a car battery. "Hey we don't got a good connection here. Pass me that brillo pad."

I wonder who had to be the person who sewed the kittens eye shut in the study below. I don't think I could have done it.

Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology pg 671

The specific question asked by Hubel and Wiesel was whether restricting visual experience to one eye might alter the structure of ocular dominance columns. They discovered that, if one eye is sewn shut for a time early in life, the eye appears to be essentially blind of a period of weeks after opening, although its function does improve somewhat with time. 

Original Study

If I learned to relate right eye to right eye would I be essentially be blind to the left eye to left eye role in communication?

Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology page 678

The results described so far, particularly those of Rasmussen and Milner, show that speech has a strong affinity for the left hemisphere and will not abandon it unless an entire center is destroyed even then, it might shift only partly to the other hemisphere. This affinity is thought to be based on the special innate anatomical organization of the left hemsiphere

If I learned to communicate to my parents right side (left hemisphere) and that is the way they communicate to my right side would that be the reason for the affinity of my left hemisphere to language? I would imagine the feedback loop would continue after any injury I might get.

No I have not read the whole book. Just googled a specific query that led to this post.

The eye is the window to the communicating mind

Even children know

As it turned out, it was — even among young children. [Take the test]
"The indirect nature of our method, and the fact that these judgments are shared by adults and preschoolers, suggests that our results do not reflect a culturally learned understanding … but might instead be rooted in a more intuitive or phenomenological sense of where in our bodies we reside," the authors concluded.

Thinking about my brother's left eye. It often in conversing with him would go out to the left. Sometimes during periods of greater animation it would seem to be more coordinated with his right eye. However it felt like it was his right eye/side of face who was communicating with me. I believe it is something I recognized early on in childhood and imitated with the feedback from my parents. My sense is the dominance of my right side (left cerebral hemisphere) is either enhanced or created by that sense. My right tongue dominance feels to be an byproduct of the communication process more than the originator.

I am still playing with moving my left tongue and having difficulty. There is a strong connection to my left eye as it moves as my left eye almost feels it is pulled by the movement of the left tongue. I do not know the origin of the pull. My guess it is a combination of a type of habitual reflex with a possible fascial influence. I  still have a very spastic sense of it when it moves like it is struggling against resistance.


Monday, June 3, 2013

Talking with my bro

My brother flew out yesterday and got a chance to see him.  He is in the area for business and stayed near  Union Square in SF. Much BS flew over a beer or three and the discussion turned to the left tongue. He is one of the few people I dare to mention what I am thinking in person. It is so far out there that most people will not understand or relate to what I am saying.

I asked him to look at my face normally then switch to his left eye and look at my left eye. Then I had him switch back to his normal. I was doing the same. His right eye and right side of the face is who I know and relate. A smart intelligent considerate guy who has faced significant obstacles along with significant advantages of being white middle classed. Any way the left side of his face is not that person and intellect. It is quiet withdrawn with a hint of sadness but not unfriendly. It is unfamiliar for me to look at that side of him but if I switch back to my normal right eye to right/eye side of face it is the usual brother that I know and love. It was remarkable to me that I could perceive the discrepancy more in someone that I know so well. I tried to convince him is that we communicate right side to right side and that is how we learned from an early age to perceive to others and that mimicking with feedback led to the right tongues dominance to the exclusion of the left tongues perception.

He has read many of my posts and does not see where I am going with all this. I do not have a plan or know. I believe he understands some/most of the difficulties in my life are of my own making. I don't have a good answer.

Where to?



Saturday, June 1, 2013

Never before the jaw

Most of my adult life my left jaw has popped. I have never had to much pain with it except one week at hockey camp away from home as a teenager. I thought I had a toothache. It  hurt like the dickens all week. Got home and went to the dentist. He did not find a cavity but filed down some teeth minimally in the back and the pain went away. "It's all in your head boy."   Later on at college the popping started at some point

Watching Nat in Unforgettable at 1:00 "Never before"  with the  word 'before' I am visually cueing on the left angle of the jaw and how it softens and lengthens. As I use my left tongue I am also trying to have my mimic his action in the left jaw. The masseter muscle is a very strong muscle the provides along with the temporalis provides much of the force of my bite. While trying to get the jaw soften and lengthen on the left and contribute to the words that I am pronouncing I feel connections to the whole head and upper back. It seems to be the activity of trying to get the words to resonate on the left that allows the ability of the jaw to soften. I feel I need the function of speech being originated in the left jaw and tongue musculature to provide the 'awareness' of the inefficiency in my efforts. I often have tried to relax the area before without tying it to function of speech without any success. Now I can feel it relax temporarily at least.