Thumbprints on the brain

The results revealed discernable differences between touchscreen smartphone users and people with conventional cellphones.

Smartphone users had bigger EEG brain activity measurements in response to mechanical touch on the thumb, index and middle fingers.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30586017

More on the changing brain to what we see

The Impact of Television Viewing on Brain Structures: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses

Vodka, grapefruit and talking heads

Many drinking establishments have multiple TV screens assigned to various sporting events. Usually most with the sound off as not to compete with the one set with sound.  Watching the talking heads focusing on the left side of their head seems to be strangely productive in helping my left side tongue/sublingual region/throat/face to develop. I would have expected that hearing the sound would be better for me as I would translate the word and the facial expressions together. That process still may be valid but watching the TV with the sound off seems to prompt the occasional word to pop up in my head 'hey that is what he/she said'.  It happens on a level that is superior to my intellect. I don't puzzle it out it just happens.  Later (often the next day) there seems to be more sense of my left side structures and musculature. I don't know if the process will continue to develop but those greyhounds don't drink themselves.

Draw back a bloody stump

Mr . Cheney


My Dad ,who loved us dearly, had an explosive temper. If we reached across the table instead of asking to pass the food he would say "Touch it and draw back a bloody stump." He was usually joking to some degree but his voice pitch would change when he said it so it was a great relief if I saw he had a smile behind it.  (but it would have been dangerous to provoke him at that point.)


I have heard Mr. Cheney speak throughout the years and at times he makes a great deal of sense to me.  I find him to be very rational and politics aside very convincing. I don't think I have ever really seen the left side of his face however. It would have stayed on the periphery of my consciousness at best.  In the picture linked there is a sense of anger portrayed by the jaw line on the right.  I think I would have seen and related to and understood the anger. However with the benefit of the internet I can study his left side of face while browsing through images. I try and separate the face into a left and right side in my study and while the right expresses anger in this pic, the left in this picture to me now expresses danger. "Stay away". I am not saying that the man cannot be warm, lovable, and funny. I am also not trying to make statement on his politics. It just might be better to go through life with two hands.

Robert Ornstein's Book THE ROOTS OF SELF

Just read a chapter in this book. Chapter 13 goes into the difference between left and right handedness quite extensively. It does not suggest anything like I am saying. It's one of those things when I read I say to myself. "Boy,my thinking is screwed up". However it is a good discussion on the differences between left and right handers.

Trunk reversal

I am getting and deliberately trying to develop a different use of my head. I am focusing usually on the sublingual musculature and tongue on the left but the area of cooperation is now including the left half of face and jaw. It is something I have never felt before and even though there is a sense of powerful cooperation it is also somewhat uncomfortable, slightly spastic and with very poor control.

If an elephant after much pondering on his use of his trunk decided to try to switch his use to the opposite of what he was always doing I imagine he would feel something similar.  I identified with the way I normally use my head and face so much that I couldn't imagine doing anything different until recently. I became the right sided use and it was how I perceived other people in communication.  

http://mylefttonguetoo.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-do-elephants-have-trunks.html

More presidents earn less?

lefties earn less

Lefties exhibit economically and statistically significant human capital deficits relative to righties, even conditional on infant health and family background,” Goodman writes. “Lefties work in more manually intensive occupations than do righties, further suggesting that their primary labor market disadvantage is cognitive rather than physical.”

On the other hand

Taylor's eyes

Taylor Swift is on the cover of Time magazine. I happen to see it a my local coffee shop. She is a beautiful girl and there is a great deal of symmetry in her features. If I make believe I am communicating to her I tend to focus on her right eye. If I try to see both eyes at the same time it is possible but it is not what I usually do. When I try to connect with her I tend to focus in one place usually centered on her eye but traveling over points of interest. When I imagine communicating to the Taylor in the picture her left eye somehow disappears from my view. I see only the right half of her face and that's where in my mind I put 'Taylor'. If I switch to her left eye I have to spend time before I can see 'Taylor' with the right side fading from view. Switching back and forth between both sides of her face even though she is remarkably symmetrical the differences appear. The right side seems more the 'communicative side' with left more the quiet. I can imagine both sides as Taylor but the left side seems to transmit less information.

Taylor time

slightly strange but nice gif

One at a time if I please

If I am trying to use my left eye to see the persona on the left side of another person, my attention on the left dominates the use of my right. In those moments of time I am unclear what the right of both the person I am seeing and what my right eye is doing. It is not that my right stops seeing but it feels to resemble how I use my left eye in normal day to to day activities. In order to see a persona on the left using my left eye the right side of the other person disappears in my mind. There is a real tendency for me to drift back to the right side of most people's faces as that is the side that seems more communicative. The left side of others often appears to be more expressionless.  When I drift back to focus on the right I lose the left.  I don't seem to be able to see the persona of others reflected in their faces in a bilateral way but with a focus of one side or the other.

It's complicated

I now believe as I grew up I learned to see the right side of other's faces and the mimicking of those movements had a great influence in leading to the right side dominance of my speech and the corresponding left side of my brain. When I use my left eye to see to others left eye it takes a long time to see a persona manifested in the left side of their head. It is automatic on the right but with the left I often have to use my imagination and a careful scanning of the face on the left. Somehow my brain can then put a persona there but not always. Sometimes it is easier and I wonder what the problem was with the other times that I did not manage to have a persona appear.

It makes me wonder about my whole process and doubt what I am believing at times. However I can feel the postural adjustments in reaction to relating to the persona on their left and the relatively new way I am able to use the left sublingual/throat/jaw/head/neck musculature. It is a different process. I then wonder why it never developed before. But the process is complicated and it feels to me that is why it may have never developed. In trying to see with my left eye I have to first put my attention in it.Then I have to move it to center on their left eye and somehow get a global image that includes the persona. However if I am correct about the right eye to right eye connection it is the input of others that I noticed very young. It is the development of reading the more active side of the face that is more natural and productive. It develops and developing the left side would just confuse matters.

From the second article linked in previous post. It does not make the division between the sides of the face that I believe is important in my development of how I see others. I mimic what I see not what I don't.

Humans are incessant imitators. We unintentionally imitate subtle aspects of each other's mannerisms, postures and facial expressions. We also imitate each other's speech patterns, including inflections, talking speed and speaking style. Sometimes, we even take on the foreign accent of the person to whom we're talking, leading to embarrassing consequences.

Empathy emphasis on the left

When I use my left eye to center on someone else's left eye I find myself mimicking the expressions almost below the level of my conscious control. It feels as if I am developing a new independent usage of my left facial muscles as an effect of the mimicking. It is not at a level at which the right side is able to express but something very new for me. There seems to be a connection between empathy and muscle mimicking. My sense is my left eye/ face has been underdeveloped as I would exclusively focus on the right side of the face of others.

Empathy of either sort relies on unconscious mimicry: “empathic individuals exhibit nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, and facial expressions of others (the chameleon effect) to a greater extent than nonempathic individuals” (Carr et al., 2003). The ability to mimic is key to the empathic process of relaying information from one brain area to another via “mirror neurons”:

2nd article

That finding is evidence that unintentional speech imitation extends to lipreading, even for normal hearing individuals with no formal lipreading experience, they wrote in a paper titled "Alignment to Visual Speech Information."

I am a not right idiot

Interesting article. After reading it I am of course less sure in what I am saying. But what the author hints at but does not mention is how often most of us develop a certain expertise in the things we do. Usually we wind up knowing details that very few in the world do. Not that we have the whole story correct but we find a method, practice or something in the way we care about the thing we do that is uniquely our own. That may or may not be the case with what I am saying. It would seem improbable that the lateralization of the brain in regards to communication comes down to a lack of differentiation between how I use the left and right side of my head but I think it does. That idea points me in the direction that it may be superfluous to develop the undifferentiated left side use in normal day to day activities but I have not fully come to that conclusion either.

This blogger(and much more) develops a post on the above linked article.

Toilet confirmation

When our daughter was two and a half we had her in daycare at my wife's workplace. (Back in the day when they had that kind of thing). She was wearing pullup diapers at the time and of the slightly older girls said to her "You are a baby. You still wear pullups." Our daughter did not have a bowel movement for two days and then on the third asked to use the toilet. She was potty trained from that day on. It saved my wife and I a great deal of work and in it's own way something to be thankful for. However nothing ever struck me as how significant were members of group on getting someone to conform.

A recent article confirms with very young children the urge to conform even when the kids know that it would not be the optimal choice. Us adults are not much better as shown in this study.  My sense in watching both sides of people's faces and feeling my postural adjustment to where I see the persona that I did not have a clue on how significant how my own use of myself conforms to what I see in others.

I identify with the right

Re reading some of my posts. It is embarrassing how badly I write.

I am trying to identify why I could not feel the musculature moving on the left side of my face/throat tongue prior to a relatively recent history. I could sense these areas to touch or sensation and the areas did move. However I am feeling movement in a different way in these areas that feels to be left side dominated instead of a more reflexive habitual left side to a right side functionally dominant way.

It appears that the function sets the playing field. As an infant I believe I saw people's right side of their face/eye as the more expressive and mimicked that with my right side as the communication was directed that way. After trial and error the slight adjustments that led to the right side being in a more optimal position and utilized my left side to facilitate the right. The identification of the movement became right sided with the passage of time with more and more control going into the myriad of movement patterns including those necessary for making sound expressing emotions. The left's role being more a facilitator which often means stabilization and less movement.

For example I identify eating with the movement of the right side so much when I try to eat left handed with a utensil I still use my jaw trunk shoulders in a right side dominated pattern. As I bring the fork to my mouth I run into increased resistance. It becomes hard to get the fork in my mouth and I can feel the over effort to get the job done. I can make it a great deal easier if I just use my shoulder blades in the opposite normal pattern. If I retract and stabilize the right shoulder blade and let the left be more free to protract then it becomes much more easier for me to reach my mouth.

If I try to throw a ball with with my left arm the main activity that needs to be adjusted is the role of the right. It is the right arm/shoulder complex that needs  to allow the throw from the left. It is also remarkable how I switch back to the right side dominated pattern when my sense of the situation is that is difficult for the left to make the particular throw. (Say if the throw is just a little longer than I think I can make easily then there is an unconscious shift in the way I organize my shoulders)

I think the same is true in how I use the tongue/throat/face/lips musculature. The movement is identified with the right side. I am saying movement when a great deal of it is the spoken word but there is a muscular pattern with every word to generate the particular sound. There is also a facial/eye expression that assists along with hand and postural and hand gestures that facilitate the communication. All of these elements have become right side dominant with the left taking a subordinate role. To switch to the left side dominated speech takes a great deal then just remembering the word. I have to reorganize how I use myself on multiple levels.

Left eye monkey see, left eye monkey do

When I am centering my left eye on another's left eye my right eye is moved slightly more to the right while my left is put in the more center position to see the left eye. Not all the time but enough to where I am feeling that I am actually make a connection, then there is a global response on my left side. It is a fleeting feeling most of the time but on occasion the sense that I am mimicking what I see. My face on it's own seems to try and muscuarly reflect what is seen. There is often a feeling that I generate an emotion to match the emotion that I see.

Left tongue creationism

In trying to get my left tongue/sublingual muscles and throat to pronounce words there is a distinct muscular pattern to form a pronunciation of the word. If I check in on my normal right side creation of the muscular pattern the right side seems to be in charge of the origin of the word while the left is used in a undifferentiated sense. Getting the left side to create the words is often tricky as I can easily switch back unnoticed to my normal right side dominated generation. However I think I am succeeding in getting the left side a good portion of the time. As each word has a different sound formation pattern there are a great many patterns to achieve. What is interesting I seem to know how to make the sounds but have more difficulty achieving the result I want. I don't have to think about shaping the left tongue for the long O sound in 'hello' but more on the coordination side of what I am trying to achieve.

Trying to coordinate the sounds often is difficult and I am slower on the left than the right.  The whole head, neck and throat complex feels to be involved in the coordination of the simple saying of the word 'hello'

Left unseen

I have been playing with the left tongue/throat/side of head as usual and I am trying to account for why I had no sense of this musculature moving in the way it does now.  It appears that I never developed independent action of my left side muscles. I could use them only in relationship to the right side dominated activity. Using my left eye to  focus on the left eye of others is beginning to allow me to see the persona of someone else as existing in the left side of their head. Most of the time the right side of others seems to be the more expressive side and it is hard for me to maintain my left eye to eye contact as my usual sense is to search for the greater feedback and nonverbal communication muscular actions. By putting my attention in my left eye and having it cross the midline of other's head  (the opposite of my usual habit) seems to put my left eye in charge and provokes the response of my trying to mimic what I see. The mimicking seems to happen at level on the borderline of my awareness and I get the feel I am getting more information than I consciously recognize.

Centering with the left eye to left eye

I am studying other's left eye face with my attention in my left eye often. It is the easiest to do on the tube but there feels to be a difference in real life. I seem to be captured by my habitual more in the day to day interactions while on TV I can do my own thingy and not be involved in an interaction. My left tongue/sublingual/throat musculature has a strong connection to my left eye. When my left eye 'centers' on the left eye of who I am watching there is a vivid sense that my left tongue/subl/throat muscles are being pulled along with the eye motion. There is a feeling of tension that extends to a large portion of my left side. I am trying at times to move inside that framework with simple things like turning my head back and forth.  It is quite easy to come out of it and do the usual right side dominated movement however I think the movement is on occasion left side dominant when I can manintain left eye/subl/throat feeling.

Don't necrotising me, Bro!

Our daughter was in a public school kindergarten and we both worked so she would go to the day care on school property after class. I got a call from the school one day with the lead off from the administrator "If you are going to take your daughter out of school you need to tell us." I said "What" and proceeded to break all traffic rules getting to school as fast as possible as neither of us picked up our daughter early. She was there safe and sound and first she thing said was "They did not 'necrotise' me" (recognize me).

My usual habit is to see the persona existing in the right eye/face of the person I am talking to. It is often hard for me while attending to my left eye to recognize the persona in the left eye/face. I may be looking at the left eye but my brain needs to perform some of it's magic before I 'necrotise' the persona.

Attending to my left eye does not seem to be different than attending to one's left hand if playing a instrument. It is fairly easy to do but I have found I often am not doing what I think I am doing with regards to movement.  Moshe Feldenkrais created a bunch of exercises that were suppose to enhance awareness while doing movements. The major awareness I came away with is that I am not very aware of how I move. I have spent far more time than most breaking down some very elemental moves but continue to see others move with far more grace, elegance, and power than myself. I do feel my pattern of communicating with left tongue/lips/sublingual muscles/throat is something different and it does change my usual habit of use and posture in the face skull and spine with some change being felt as far as the pelvis. It is a combination of differentiating between the left and right musculature of eye and face and seeing the perona existing in the left eye/face of others that seems to be the most productive at enhancing the change. There is also some benefit by attending to the sound of my voice being generated in left throat and sublingual muscles. It is still by far and away not something I can do easily and the movements often feel spastic like moving against a strong resistance.

Trunk control

I have posted the below links before but the question of combining both of the results seems to be pertinent.. In the first link specialization of the musculature of the elephant's trunk leads to dominance of one side. In the second cooperation in society leads to one hand dominance in humans with the vast majority right handed. I feel my usual mode is to see the persona that I talk to residing in the right side of others. I communicate right side to right side and expect the feedback in the same direction. I am not so much as right handed as I perceive others are. It occurs to me that it is reason for the wide disparity in handedness as compared to the 50/50 chance with the lateralization of the elephants trunk.  However once the process is started it stays in one side leads to greater dexterity and control.
Trunk to mouth

Martin is now beginning work on a project to determine whether these side preferences in elephants are learned from family members or determined primarily through genetics. Unlike humans, who are about 89 percent right-handed, elephants tend to be left- or right-trunked in equal measure. This suggests that elephant side preferences may be less genetically determined and possibly more plastic than human side preferences.

Shedding light on southpaws

Two Northwestern University researchers now report that a high degree of cooperation, not something odd or sinister, plays a key role in the rarity of left-handedness. They developed a mathematical model that shows the low percentage of lefties is a result of the balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution - See more at: 

Hold, my tongue

I am moving the left side of my face and head in ways I never felt before. My left side of my head and face have seemed to play a more stabilizing undifferentiated role previously. My control of the left side musculature in my new way is almost spastic in it's movements as it pushes against a very dense resistance. I am unclear if the resistance is muscular, neurological, or fascial (I am ruling out my being a wack job for this post). What is still surprising is that I can feel the left sublingual musculature moving and cooperating in a different way, I do not have a different picture of the tongue itself. To move the tongue I revert back to my normal method of control.

That's not right

Louis CK on cellphones and kids

A funny clip by Louis CK on empathy, media and kids. He talks about empathy and how kids might be being harmed by 'toxic' phones. At 38 seconds in he scrunches up the right side of his face to convey the hurt that is felt when a child is called fat. My thoughts tend to run toward agreeing with Louis but when I freeze the clip at 38 seconds there is a clear disparity in the halves of his face.

My sense is that when I communicate normally I connect right side to right side and the left side remains somehow unseen. Trying to make the connection with the left side with my attention in my left eye I often see less emotional content on the other persons left. In fact my normal is to see the 'persona' existing in the right half of others. I think there is a postural adjustment of my body to relate right side to right side.

Hat tip No Agenda Show 652

Questioning authority of the right

The deep throat sublingual tongue musculature is far stronger than I would have suspected. Almost seemingly controlling my postural response to my environment. I am still literally stuck in feeling only partial elements of the left side dominance but unable to bring it to full fruition. It does not feel like I have fully fleshed out what it takes to use the left tongue/face/lips/throat/eye in a way that is comparable to the right side structures. It feels like the difficulty is getting both the right giving up it's slight but significant positions of advantage and the left gaining operational range.

It is still amazingly difficult to connect left eye to left eye. Not that it is hard to do in a physical sense but in matter of a habitual response, my right eye 'naturally' travels to and makes a connection to the person I am communicating with or observing right eye. That dominance of the right eye feels to be reflected and amplified in my tongue and throat structures to my right sided muscle-skeletal posture. The unexamined belief that I had that I used my left sided structures in a similar way to the right increasingly does not hold water.

The thrill has left

Watching BB King sing he has the microphone set up on his left side. BB King is left handed but plays right handed on the guitar. Watching his lips he opens the mouth much wider on the left and seems to sing from his left side. It may be he is just responding to the placement of the microphone. I think he is demonstrating more vocal muscular control on the left. It reminded me of this video of the autistic boy who seemed to switch way to the right to open his mouth when he imitated Iago from Aladdin.

If I want to talk using my left tongue/side of head. I have to engage a great deal of musculature on the left that seems to have a much more passive role when I normally speak

Split Judgement

I have been focusing on left eye to left eye contact and trying to imagine the persona that is reflected on the left side of other's faces. It feels to be an active process to see the persona residing in the left half of others. On the right it is something I seem to do automatically. I have to look for the left eye and scan what I see around the eye/face. While on the right side I can take it in a glance. During our walks as a person comes down the path at us my right side can very easily make a judgement about the right sided person I see from a good distance. Focusing on the left side of their head takes quite a bit of time. I think most people have more facial expression on their right side which is easier to take in. The left side for most seems to be less (searching for the correct word here) communicative.

As you judge you shall be judged


Psychologists have discovered that our brains automatically process a person's facial features with the first glance we have of them, helping us to form snap judgements about them before consciously perceiving their appearance.

excessive-screen-time-may-hurt-a-child-s-ability-to-understand-emotions-study

Positive and negative

I have been getting more sense of differentiation of the left and right sublingual musculature. When playing with left under tongue musculature I get a nice feeling of elongation that extends all the way form my clavicle on the left through the hyoid to the left anterior mandible. It also provides a relief to left posterior skull spinal muscles in a way I never experienced.  I had no sense of the independence of this under tongue musculature a few years ago as I had one undifferentiated mass that I used without much thought. There are strong connections to how I use my head and spine that still feels quite foreign to my usual organization of my muscular-skeleton. Again the process seems more predicated on communication and perception of the right side dominant in myself and others

On a negative note I am getting what feels to be hip pain on the right while taking my walks. At first I thought it might be related to some skeletal reorganization related to the left tongue/eye/head. I am now leaning more to joint arthritis of the femoral head as the pain wraps around pelvis to front and back in a deep ache. If I stop ambulating the pain goes away after a bit but reoccurs when I ambulate any significant distance.

starbuck kid

Sitting in starbucks just noticed an infant in line with a stroller. My right eye went naturally to his right eye and looked for the connection. Thought about seeing his left eye with mine and there was a delay in my ability to switch from my right eye to my left eye and see what I was seeing. Briefly thought I made a connection with the right eye but did not see anything personal with my left eye to his left eye. I don't know what the baby was seeing but I  find it interesting how my habit of looking continues to be so one sided.

Comfortable

I cannot say I am comfortable with using the left side organization of myself as the dominant side but it is very interesting as the fragments seem to be coalescing. When I am able to see the persona on the left which again is an active process there is a subtle postural change that happens throughout my muscular-skeleton.  The change is easily overridden by my usual posture but it does not feel to be a conscious control. My right and left dominant posture seems to be set by my perception. When I see the persona on the left side of others my body responds to engage that person from my left.

Uncomfortable

I believe I am correct about the left tongue and it's implications on how I learned to see the persona on the right side of others and by mimicking developed the lateralization in my brain related to communication. That being said so what. There has been quite a bit of pain getting to the place where I am and not of the good pain category. More of the stuff that makes me nauseous. It is interesting to feel movement in my head and neck that is somewhat alien but very rarely is it comfortable. When I try to talk with the left tongue dominant it is often slower and I have to keep working relatively hard to make sure I am doing what I think I am doing.

Walking the path

Walked the bike path again today. I have not been there in awhile. As it was Saturday many people were walking, biking and jogging. I am trying to see the persona in the left side of others. My habitual is to see the persona as existing in the right side of other people's head. The left side is usually not seen somehow on the periphery. To make the connection with the left side persona does not feel just to be an passive process. I almost have to imagine that the persona exists in left side of other person coming toward me. At that point often what feels to be a spontaneous smile on my left side is initiated. Many people respond to my left side initiated smile but I am pretty sure they are not seeing a left sided persona in myself on any level. Most people are friendly and see someone with a stupidass grin will provide the courtesy of responding. I am beginning to think that left and right persona is there in everyone but the way I relate to others determines what I see. My habitual has been always to relate to others as right sided even though I thought I saw the person as a whole  It existed so pervasively in me that I could not see it. Even when I began to recognize that I did not really see the left side of others faces I still only saw the persona existing in the right side of others. It takes an active creative process in my mind of seeing the persona in the left side of someone.

Relink

Differentiating the head and jaw

Probably should be entitled "Differentiating the right and left tongue" but at the time all I could feel was the resistance of something not cooperating equally. The tie in to what I see/relate too in other's faces was disconnected to the left head/throat/tongue/face/eye also. It is still not clearly defined for me but a long way from where it was a couple of years ago.

No left here

It seems impossible to me that the small muscles connecting to the hyoid would have such a large effect on my head and neck posture. When I engage the my left musculature I am always surprised at the strength that in my usual mode I cannot feel. I can override the strength completely when I switch back to my normal right side way of doing. Almost like the left side mode doesn't exist.

Lack of influence

Bone Remodeling

Bone remodeling (or bone metabolism) is a lifelong process where mature bone tissue is removed from the skeleton (a process called bone resorption) and new bone tissue is formed (a process called ossification or new bone formation). These processes also control the reshaping or replacement of bone following injuries like fractures but also micro-damage, which occurs during normal activity. Remodeling responds also to functional demands of the mechanical loading.

In the first year of life, almost 100% of the skeleton is replaced. In adults, remodeling proceeds at about 10% per year.^[1]

An imbalance in the regulation of bone remodeling's two sub-processes, bone resorption and bone formation, results in many metabolic bone diseases, such as osteoporosis.^[2]

The bone remodeling process goes on whether I want it to or not. I can influence it by exercising or lack thereof but I cannot direct the osteoclasts or osteoblasts individual activity. They respond to clues in the environment. It is interesting to me that we are always building and destroying bone.

Brain remodeling

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, is an umbrella term that encompasses both synaptic plasticity and non-synaptic plasticity—it refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses which are due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury.^[1] Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held position that the brain is a physiologically static organ, and explores how - and in which ways - the brain changes throughout life.^[2]

Seeing and relating to the left side of peoples face especially connecting with my left eye to their left eye seems to be changing my access to my left head/neck/tongue/throat. A great deal of the process feels to be not under my control similar to the bone remodeling. There may be a degree of influence but I am for a large part unable to control the rate of change.

Productive painful hangovers

Playing with sub-lingual muscles and structures on the left side of mouth and throat. It is a relatively new process in my 50 year plus life. It is still striking to me that I had no access to this area before. There has been a good bit of pain in getting these structures to move. For some reason on the occasional hangover the movements seem particularly painful but productive. I should be old enough to avoid something with the label 'Mountain Juice' but having a glass of wine with dinner prior it then seemed like a good idea at the time.

 Like playing with a sore tooth there is a sense if I get the left side more independent from the right there will be some more pain while experiencing the joys of the hangover. I should leave it alone but the small movements seem particularly accessible and therin lies the rub.  Moving the left tongue and throat structure independent of the right involves the structures of the head and neck. I do not know if my ideas are correct involving the hyoid, skull and spine but once involving the movements of my left sub-lingual  structures there is a corresponding change in sensation of the larger structures. My belief now is that I could not differentiate my left tongue and throat from my right tongue and throat in terms of movement. I think the function of speech and communication and mimicking what I see in others led to the right side dominance with the left side subordinate. I intensely dislike hangovers and I rather be less productive without the pain.

Habitual process

"My left sublingual muscles were in a sense unknown to me and minor play with them seems to influence the more immediate structures first which then have an influence on structures and musculature progressively far away.  I feel I kept them more contracted through out my life in comparison to the right."

Pick a side

The more I think on this statement it feels partially correct and partially wrong. Relaxing my sublingual muscles on the left and I immediately get an echo of a similar movement in my left erector spinae. There is no direct connection and the sequence that I am postulating through the hyoid to the styloid process of the temporal bone from there subtly affecting the skull on the axis and then through the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine. The mechanical connections feel to slow and too minute to effect the change I feel. However looking at my body mechanically has in it it's own deficit of thought. I am much more a creature of habits. I have a habit of contracting and inhibiting all the muscles that link in that chain partially because of the function of relating to other people. I make the link right eye to right eye and the subtleties of what I do fall in line without conscious thought. I do not have to be communicating at the moment to have the preference of my usual. I imagine most people do what I do to some degree with as large variability on the range as there are different postures. 

Pick a side

Playing with my sublingual muscles and hyoid I find a discrepancy between the left and right side. An idea that Moshe Feldenkrais advanced was that to control the variations in movement some structures will be held relatively stable with other muscles relatively free. My left sublingual muscles were in a sense unknown to me and minor play with them seems to influence the more immediate structures first which then have an influence on structures and musculature progressively far away.  I feel I kept them more contracted through out my life in comparison to the right.

Unlike the elephants who lateralize their trunk control to either side I feel I must have picked the right side in response to how I perceived the people around me using their right side. I can not see the sublingual muscles but I think the the feedback of their right eye/face mouth to my right eye/face/mouth created the input to start the preference of communication to the right side. Once picked the development of the right progressed over the left side. The intrinsic muscles of the tongue are known to me in my understanding of how to move food around in the mouth so in sense the blog is misnamed. However somehow My Left Sublingual Muscles Too  seems an inferior pick. 

"There should be no advantage at all for preferring one hand or one foot because our world demands from us that both sides should be able to perform manipulations equally well," says Matthias Konstantin Laska, PhD, a biologist at the University of Munich who studies side preferences in new world monkeys. For example, a monkey grabbing for a banana would benefit from being able to choose the hand closest to the food, he notes. Additionally, localization of an ability to a particular area of the brain means an animal is more vulnerable to having that skill knocked out by a stroke or brain damage, notes Franziska Martin, PhD, a biologist at the Free University in Berlin.

Such apparent disadvantages to side preferences, notwithstanding, new research on elephants by Martin suggests there are also some benefits. She finds that limiting precise movements to one side of the body--and subsequently one-half of the brain--may lead to better muscular control, leaving the ambidextrous with less dexterity than animals who specialize.

Trunk to mouth

Standard deviate

My sense is many if not most people use their jaws more efficiently with both sides cooperating more equally. There may be many people who encapsulate both eyes equally in their view of other people. I can only really say that I did not see both eyes but only the right. I still have to make myself look for the left eye and many times I will still not be looking at it. My habits of movement run almost on the instinctual level where I often do the opposite what I think I do. Having access to my left tongue and jaw now in a way I never did, I think came from work that is not normal in how most people learn to use themselves. Yet I feel many have the access I now have just in the natural process of learning while growing up. I may just have been a few standard deviations shy of average.

Supra live stupidity

My wife's disease has given me plenty of opportunity to annoy MD's with my stupidity.  She was taking a medicine that control's the volume of pee she makes and was taking it according to her main endocrinologist's recommendation. Since she had partial pituitary function, it was dangerous to take too much of the medicine as she would retain water driving the volume of sodium down in her blood. If she did not take the medicine she would pee out her water leaving too much sodium relative to her water volume in her blood causing hypernatremia. It is still safer in her condition to undertake the medicine as her thirst drive will cause her to drink water. She will be running to the bathroom every thirty minutes but will maintain the proper level of sodium as long as she drinks to replace the water lost. The endo wrote her prescription for many years at the greater dose in case she needed it but with the verbal instructions not to take it if she was not thirsty. It worked well when she had her normal level of mental functioning and did not have memory loss. I did not understand any of this and when I took her to one of her many visits to the ER I could not explain to the doctors why my wife was not taking the prescribed dose. She was adamant about not taking the morning dose when I offered it.  I don't know for sure but in the ER they replaced quite of lot of normal saline fluid and when she started peeing that night her sodium levels probably went through the roof. I wonder if  Doc's sometimes do not take the particular lab needed if they suspect what is happening as a way to cover themselves.. The amount of water she was peeing would have given them the clue they needed and in their haste to correct the problem the 2nd year resident gave her the hemophiliac dose of the medicine. The dose was about 30 times her normal. The next day when I arrived in the ICU the resident laid in to me real hard and basically accused me of altering her meds.  I already had been accused of possible abuse by a MD seen a psychiatrist who seemed to be setting me up for drug habit and had a wife who was really sick with an undiagnosed condition. There was not much I could say at the time. My own stupidity about her original disease was responsible for my inability to tell the resident why she had not taken the prescribed dose..

The idea that I was altering my wife's meds followed me around the hospital for many years on top of the possible drug use and the possible physical abuse. Several years later the point was brought up by both her primary MD and her rheumatologist. Her rheumatologist laid in to me again about giving her the pee medicine the wrong way.  (The funny in a bad way thing is I had just taken her out of the hospital with an early discharge the week before because the hospital was screwing up her sodium for the umpteenth time. Often it felt Keystone Coppish with one doctor saying one thing and another care provider doing something else). The rheumatologist brought up the point that her 'Lupus' was very rare and hard to diagnose. I was trying to agree with her and mentioned that her endo always said that she benefited from supra-physiological dosing of steroids.  Growing up in Long Island, NY we have a habit of taking the 'er' and make the 'a' sound and taking the 'a' and making a 'er' sound. So Mr Parker becomes Mr Parka and the parka you wear becomes parker. So what the rheumatologist heard was 'super'-physiological and put it in the chart to further alert future docs that we got a live stupid one here. Super physiological just sounds dumb and in my opinion reinforced the original belief that I was probably altering her meds. It puts an additional layer of complexity on a very complex problem. The tragic thing is her primary endo used the term supra-physiological in a letter to them many years prior and just before her major admit to the hospital. In my interpretation it would indicate to them that it was always an autoimmune condition. Even with the positive antibodies for Lupus her condition was not diagnosed for over a year later by outside doctors.

So it was with great trepidation that I am going to use the word supra again. There is a term supra legal suggesting the legal issue is above/outside the law.  I think the work I am doing with my left tongue is 'supra' normal. I don't think it is needed for my 'normal' functioning. I am beginning to think that the development of my being right or left handed could have gone either way but it was based on my relationship to what I perceived in my environment. My working on the left tongue therefore would be outside my normal development. So the rheumatologist was also right. I am definitely a supra live stupid one.

The power of speech

Went for another drive and working with singing with the left tongue throat. The difference that I feel in the musculature in my left head neck and paraspinal is one that I never could imagine.  I do not have complete easy control but almost like toughened rope I am getting some of the strands to relax. There is a power in the uncoiling that is very surprising. I have brought up the issue of my left being a slave to the right and that seems to be more correct now than ever. My left side muscles feels to have existed largely to make the right side functioning easier. The more distal muscles as in the left hand seemed to have their independence to a much larger degree compared to the muscles of the posterior neck on the left for example. Again my accessibility to the area seems to come from the higher function of speech than directly trying to feel and imagine the structures themselves.  I don;t have a good understanding of why my left sublingual/anterior throat muscles would have such a wide reaching influence. Differentiating the smaller left and right muscles feels to be tied to of how I perceive how another's persona exists in their body. The larger musculature of the trunk then appear to get their cues from the smaller.

Anti dentite

Went to the dentist yesterday for my teeth cleaning. In the past when I have sat in the chair and opened my mouth I get resistance on my left side and I am unable to keep it open for long as it begins to ache. My belief is that I was opening my mouth with my right side dominant and the left not participating fully or correctly, (almost in opposition to what it should be doing). In my normal activation I am to stupid to open my mouth with both sides contributing relatively equally. Yesterday there was a definite improvement but still not what I think what most people achieve quite easily. It did not ache throughout and I felt for the majority of the time the left side was cooperating instead of doing what it did before. I think the improvements came from me trying to generate sound/speech with the left tongue/throat but not from the conscious attempt to fix the imbalance of the musculature. The function of speech attempted with the left tongue/throat changed the usage. There has been a significant amount of pain with my efforts and I do not see a practical way to share this with others. The pain/time ratio to benefit still feels to be way out of whack for it to be easily adopted.

Only the Hyoid

Only the lonely Chris Isaak

I am trying to hit the notes that Chris sings with my left tongue/ throat. I am very monotone and unable to hit the pitch he sings throughout. (Yet in my mind I sound good:). I can feel echoes of my attempts to sing all along my spine on my left. I don't know of any structural connections between the activation of my tiny throat musculature and my lumbar region.  The attempt to activate the song in the left tongue throat seems to recruit muscles far from the site of sound. Most of my focus attempt seems to center around my hyoid bone on the left. There are many muscles that connect to the hyoid and to get the freedom for the vibration necessary the muscles need to be inhibited/relaxed. Inhibition is often looked at in therapy as the higher neurological function. My developing sense of this region suggests I often fix it comparatively to the right side musculature where I normally allow sound to be generated. To change the stabilization of the left muscles in order to improve the sound there feels to be an effort to reorganize my muscular skeletal habitual posture. I am incapable of changing through the power of thinking/imaging alone. I seem to need the functions of how it sounds and work from there with my mentations. The sensation I get from this exercise I find quite remarkable.

PS I know on some level the vocal cords/folds are the main origin of sound and pitch. The surrounding structures feel more to enhance enunciation. I am unclear of any differences between my right and left vocal folds but my understanding is there is often asymmetry.

The importance of being 'right'

Seeing another persona existing in their left side of head and attempting to communicate with my left tongue seems to be giving me the ability of accessing and changing my left posterior neck musculature and from there the orientation of my habitual spinal musculature activation. There is a posture that I have adopted in my life that twists me to the left and puts the right side in a slight position of advantage.  However it does not come form the habit of exercise, handwriting etc but from my perception of the persona I see that is communicating to me. Some of the importance of being 'right' comes from the activity of seeing 'right' and the understanding of my being 'right' as in accordance with another.

The lives of others

Flipping the bird autistic

"It is the chaffinch, however, that provides an illuminating example of the open instinct. In Denmark the chaffinch begins to sing about February 15. Poulsen raised males in isolation. By the middle of January they were beginning to twitter and in two weeks were producing an abbreviated chaffinch song, imperfect of pitch, imperfect of rhythm. [23] When Chaffinch Day came in the middle of February, he freed them but allowed them at first to mix only with linnets. They imitated the linnet and succeeded in producing some of its notes. But then they heard a chaffinch. Immediately they perfected their chaffinch song, nor did they imitate the linnet ever again."

The Territorial Imperative

If the study above was done with a large enough group of chaffinches I wonder if there would be an occasional  bird that would either stay stuck in the linnet song or unable to process the chaffinch song. Would we then have an autistic bird?

How to create an autistic monkey

The left tongue's territory

A bird does not fly because it has wings; it has wings because it flies.

The Territorial Imperative

The statement feels like the inverse of the logical or backward reasoning. My immediate response is of course the bird flies because it has wings. However the statement strikes a similar chord with me and my argument for the left tongue. The age old question does function dictate structure or vice versa . I have a left tongue in it's wiring but I perceive it as one tongue with a right and left side. I do not sense a left tongue and a right tongue co-joined. I see the other persona as existing in their right side of head and I respond to it with my right side. My right eye crosses my midline to their right eye. I know the left eye is there on my periphery but I do not engage it nor does my left half of face initiate emotion in concurrence or opposition with their left half of face. The initiation of movement is a prerogative of my right side of head. I feel my brain lateralization of speech/communication is enhanced by my perception of others and the need for efficiency instead of the brain lateralization existing solely a priori.

."It is the chaffinch, however, that provides an illuminating example of the open instinct. In Denmark the chaffinch begins to sing about February 15. Poulsen raised males in isolation. By the middle of January they were beginning to twitter and in two weeks were producing an abbreviated chaffinch song, imperfect of pitch, imperfect of rhythm. [23] When Chaffinch Day came in the middle of February, he freed them but allowed them at first to mix only with linnets. They imitated the linnet and succeeded in producing some of its notes. But then they heard a chaffinch. Immediately they perfected their chaffinch song, nor did they imitate the linnet ever again."

Left me alone

On more occasions I can have the left side of my head relax. It feels my 'usual' is to pull back on the left side of my head. It is does not feel to be necessary but does feel it is a learned behavior with several factors. One I look to connect with other peoples right eye with my right eye. Two I think there is a slight advantage of freedom in speech for the right side if the left side is more stabilized. Three I think there is a social element of fear of being hit by a right hand causing a pulling back of my structures on the left.  I think there is a social learned element in my posture as a whole. The way I relate to people has a large defensive fear component. In a way the posture itself probably provokes the reaction I seek to avoid. There have been many times in my youth that I was bullied being small and a very late maturer.  I felt I did nothing to cause the bullying but thinking about it now I wonder how much the postural element provoked the dominant primate response.

I defer to people a great deal as usually I am more afraid of their anger than I am in being right in the current situation. I also have the sense of powerlessness in the presence of the dominant personality that I adopt both on the emotional and structural skeletal level. Hopefully being able to access my left side habitual tendency to pull away on a very fundamental level will give me more freedom of response.

Rockin and rollin

Driving and attempting to sing with my left tongue/jaw/lips/throat again today. Key word is 'attempt' on many levels. I think I saw a hawk fly by listen for a moment and then decide to end it all.  Where it feels like things are moving to is that the cavernous aspect of sound created on the left side needs relax supple muscular structures to sound more correct. In order to create that very subtle amount of relaxed space the right side needs to be a little more stabilized. It feels like I am slowly being able to switch my habitual orientation of my jaw and mouth structures.   It does not seem to make sense but there feels to be more torque put on the cervical spine than I would imagine possible and from there through the thoracic down to my lumbar spine.

An older post where I was not feeling some of the differences as strongly as I do today  Then as now a great deal of conjecture on my part

rocks for my head

I left my TMJ

We have been taking long aimless drives in our car around the SF bay area while playing music. My favorite currently is Tony Bennett. His most famous song is I left my heart... but we have been mostly listening to his recent duet albums.  My wife often falls asleep and I try to croon along with Tony initiating with the left tongue/throat/lips/jaw.  I have had a borderline left side TMJ problem for most of my life with the left upper quadrant of my shoulder neck and head feeling tight with occasional soreness. During my body awareness work I have tried to relax most everything in my body yet this area seemed the most stubborn in it's refusal to cooperate.  There is a remarkably different feel in this area developing. The feeling that it is beginning to relax lengthen and work properly. There has been quite a bit of pain getting to this place and also the feel that I may hurt myself badly quite easily.

The relaxation and lengthening feels to come from the attempts at singing and talking with the left structures. My body is responding more to my inept tries to improving the sound instead of mental efforts at attempting to relax. It suggest like most things I am not smart enough to change by thinking but by attempting to improve the appropriate functional activity.

Screwy, Good morning

Attempted to say "Good morning" a bunch of times using the left half of my head to initiate/coordinate the sounds as I passed people on the path today. I don't think I always accomplished it. Often when trying to vocalize with the left I wind up doing the usual way and say things with the right side dominant. There feels to be a tentative connection to the ways I see the person I am talking to. Normally, I feel I view the the person as right side dominant and I verbalize to that side with my right side. It seems to be more than just my seeing the person as right side dominant but more in terms that I feel that persona exists in his/her right side.

The attempts to vocalize with my left side feel to change the orientation of muscular-skeleton. It is unexpected to me as the structural connections do not have the power to cause the changes I am feeling. Function seems to dominate over structure though my structure provides plenty of resistance to the change. To vocalize with left side dominant feels to require both more space and relaxation of the left side vocal structures and my body seems to make an attempt to accommodate that need with subtle postural changes far from the throat, tongue, head and jaw. The subtle postural changes can be painful and often seem to be dangerous in that I can screw up my head,neck and back real good in pursuing them.

Why the right knee?

Right knee

Apparently, women find men that move and twist their torsos and nod and shake their heads whilst grooving to be the best dancers. And, while they aren't so keen on fancy footwork generally, moving your lower body quickly (as opposed to slowly) is the way to go -- and bending and twisting your right knee is a particularly effective move to showcase your dancing skill.

Who is in charge?

The left side tongue, jaw and side of face are again sore from overplaying with the movements. I am trying to search for analogies for me to use. If I did not use my left hand independently as if fused to the right wrist getting it to move would create soreness once detached. I imagine it would feel similar to the sensations I am now having. My left face and tongue were doing something my whole life but I am not sure what. My best guess is that I used it in a undifferentiated sense in subordination to the right. The new use of my left tongue, jaw and side of face feels foreign and unrefined but not any sense there is a different personality involved. It is still the same old me that seems to be in charge.

Talking bad

Playing with my head

The image of a glass pane sliding down into my body comes from Moshe Feldenkrais. I took the existing idea and modified it to play extensively with the tongue, jaw and relationships. I don't know if he used the glass pane to get people to feel the difference of the left and right side use but I can come up with no other reason. The training in his method is very experiential. With four years of training I still could not talk about it in a way that that I could make other people see the sense in it.  That may be largely due to shortcomings of my own communication skills and not what was being said.

What I feel to be unexamined about the head is the functional relationship between the left and right side.I am getting a totally new experience of using the musculature of the back of the neck coming from my work with the left eye, face, tongue, anterior throat. It is suggesting to me a reversal of how I think about the pain in my neck. I can now feel a difference in how I can use both sides of the musculature on the posterior side of my cervical spine but that came about from my self study of the anterior structures used in my attempts at communication.

Structured Calisthenics

The difference the way I perceive the left right discrepancy may have a large cultural component. There was an old youtube clip of the Iraqi's doing exercise under US troop guidance.  There is a certain degree of prejudice implied by the clip but they are of course as competent in using their bodies as any average American. The question then occurs to me why do they have such a "foreign" reaction to our calisthenics? My sense is they do not see what I see when I watch the exercise. I would not look as good as the troops but I would actively be searching them for the cultural structured cues to imitate. Like yesterday in the park it feels to be for me a very right side mode activity. I would quite likely look as silly to them doing activities that are Iraqi in origin. I doubt I be able to visually discern the differences that would mark me as a foreigner.

Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception

Thus, it appears that differences in judgment and memory may have their origins in differences in what is actually attended as people view a scene.

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/35/12629

 

Playground differences

Went to the trail today. The playground area was fill of kids on monkey bar type apparatus updated with a different feel than when I was a kid. Bill Cosby had a cute bit on playgrounds. Being a Saturday many parents were there. A dad was pushing a bunch of kids on the thing that goes around and I felt myself shift very much into the right sided mode as if to relate to him and his facial cues. As soon as I felt it I tried shifting into my left sided mode just to get a feel of the differences. The right sided mode almost has a sense of being able to understand commands in a physical sense. In recalling the sensation it is almost like I turned on not in anyway sexual but a heightened sense of how can I cooperate with the activity. The sort of feel I got playing a team sports. I had to be aware of not only my teammates but what the other team was trying to do. Shifting to the left mode seemed to turn it back down a notch. As if I had more of a feel of interest what others were feeling than how to cooperate with what they were doing..

I played a great many sports growing up The old saying "The older I get the better I was" has some truth. Playing with lefthanders always seemed to have a slight different feel. Like they were more independent from the rest of us righthanders. I think they could be as adept as a righthander in reading the cues necessary for sports. It may be just that they were different hand dominant, but going into a very subjective sense they often seemed to have a sense of being  "cooler".

Old link

Painful

The left head, neck and tongue movement picture is still changing.  In a strange way it almost feels like someone else is making the movements. I often play with it long enough that there is quite a bit of pain. I suffer from the illusion that if I keep playing with it long enough I will break through the restricted feeling but I don't know. It is feeling more and more like I have two separate movement images of the head and I was only aware of the right. I identified the movements through the right side image with the left neglected or never developed. I may or may not be correct in my thinking and I am very unsure if there is any benefit for me to continue to play with this. The pain would be a good indicator not to.

The easier paths

I worked with a stroke patient at one facility. The MD had left a gastric enteral feeding tube in place even though he was eating as the patient was not expected to improve much. He began standing with nursing staff at bedside by pulling on the bedside rail. He then worked worked with several of the therapy staff who had not had extensive stroke rehab experience. I did not either but had much more than the other therapists for stroke rehab.  When I started working with him he was very unbalanced, and unable to transfer without two people assisting. After several months of us working together he was able to leave the facility. He was walking a couple hundred feet with a quad cane and was able to manage minor steps up and down stairs. I was never able to help him become fully independent with standing without use of the rail however. It was hit and miss, with me usually giving tactile cues, as he did not need the physical assistance as much as the guidance. Most of the people who assisted him in his daily tasks used the rail to facilitate his transfers for increased safety. There is a debate in rehab with those who a employ a pure "neurologically" based rehab and those who are more generalists in the way they progress patients. The problem of letting a patient cheat and use the rail to stand at first by pulling with their good arm is that they become very good at standing in that pattern. If a rail is not around they can lose the ability to rise their body above their feet.  My feeling if I was a better more experienced therapist I could have helped him more with coming to stand independently as I would have been better at finding the key that would have led to the understanding that he needed.

In my own movements I feel once a efficient moving pattern is established it can become habitual. Once habitual if I want to change what I am doing I have to recognize what I am already doing. How I find what I am doing often is far more challenging than the actual change. The simple act of me looking for another person's right eye I believe established my habitual head postural position. It exists whether or not another person is there for me to relate to.  I was not looking for this 'understanding" of my eye influence on my head but found it more by accident after many years of following other cues provided by studying the works of Moshe Feldenkrais. I believe I did not relate to the left half of people's faces in my past. Now I often consciously look for it first and it allows me to feel the difference between my usual and what I am trying. As I pay attention to the discrepancy, what I usually do becomes clearer in it's artificiality. It is still my normal mode of moving and relating to people by a vast margin..

I have always had the view that I have one tongue and throat with two sides now I feel I have both a left and right tongue and a left and right throat. To be more exact the musculature of my left under tongue and my left anterior throat had no sense of differentiation. I could not access that area to relax what it was doing habitually. Now it feels I have some control and it immediately relates to how I use my posterior head and upper and lower back musculature. At this point I am not able much to change how I usually function as with my former patient my predominate habits are the much easier paths.

Skeletal reorganization

I have spent an inordinate amount of time playing with the left tongue/face head connection and I have progressed very little in terms of a objective discernible difference. However if I take a retrospective look on my subjective perception of what I am feeling there has been a tremendous change. Today I went to a farmers market and was talking to a peddler of a certain ware and he was working hard to sell me his product. I was trying to make the left eye to left eye connection and it feels like it requires a musculoskeletal reorganization to facilitate the connection. It is just not seeing the left eye but to get my left face to mimic/empathize the emotion expressed there needs to be greater muscular range and expression for my whole left side of body. I suspect there are many people who incorporate both sides in normal conversation but I was not one of them. Using the musculature in the left side of my face in this way is a new activity for me. I am not sure exactly what I was expressing in the left half of my face before. My best guess it was a semblance of the right but unable to initiate the actions on their own. My normal of what I feel in my left half of face reminds me of what I said of the girl in this link. Almost like a lower neurological processing of expression.

She appears to be using her the left side and mirroring the movements partially with the right when she talks.

Taking it from my left chin

I often open my mouth without thinking and regret what I say. I think I do it with the right side dominant and the right side perspective. The left side perspective did not exist until very recently. I believe it ties into the function of communication and the left side role was to stay out of the way and support the right side dominance. To put the right side in a slightly dominant position I keep the left side musculature slightly contracted and undefined with the right with greater play and definition. The left side play and perspective did not exist and to maintain the imbalance it involves far more than the jaw. My smaller muscles are supported by the larger musculature like links in a chain the extends far from the point of my left chin. Playing with my left chin position from the left perspective I get strong connections to my posterior neck and lower back. I am not able to maintain the sense of opening the left jaw from the left perspective as most of my muscular habits are from the right side perspective. I can play with it in a very limited range and fatigue quickly compared to my normal right side dominant movements. There is a sense of vulnerability as I feel I can easily hurt and strain muscles that are out of the normal positioning.  It feels like I could much more easily screw up my neck than get any benefit.

Left audio persona

I have been listening to many podcasts using my left ear only. I can hear fine and make out the words without problem. I am not sure that I can hear and see the persona on someone else's left side at the same time however. It again feels to be an active not a passive process. I think I need to both see and hear that the persona is communicating from his/her left side. Seeing the persona on the left is still intermittent and I have the sense that it has a separate audio component. When I try to combine the both I think my comprehension of what is being said goes down. There also feels to be a postural adjustment that like visually seeing the persona on the left I have to hear the audio persona coming from his/her left and my spine/head makes the subtle adjustment to position myself in relation to the speaker.

NY Times article

reaching-my-autistic-son-through-disney

Good article. It shows the difficulties with simplistic claims like mine. The fear and anxiety of the author comes through strongly as well as the plight of his son lost in his dark maze of autism.  It is highly improbable that I have anything pertinent to say about the brain and mind when it is tremendously unfathomable by some of the brightest in the world. For me to think that I have anything useful to say about it is folly at best.



“More fools know Jack Fool than Jack Fool knows.” 
― William Shakespeare, King Lear


The video is embedded but comes up in a bigger player here. Watching both sides of Owen's face when he drops into character he makes a pronounced shift to the right side of his face/mouth. I did not see as much as a shift when he seems to talk as himself. Watching the early shots in the beginning of the video I get a sense of fear as though he is looking for any kind of feedback and not seeing it.

Good mentations

It is still surprises me how much I do not see the left eye/ face even when I plan to make the connection. I will start talking to someone and find myself talking and relating to the right eye/face of someone else. It often takes a deliberate recognition I am not doing what I think I am doing.

I have had different reactions when I make the left eye to left eye connection. Many are positive, some are negative and I do not know if I am reading something into this that may not be there.

However to jump into the lake of speculation I feel there is a difference in the way I connect and people respond with the left eye. When I am in the left eye mode I seem to get out of my usual rational/worried mode and make a more personal connection. It might be just the difference of making the connection creates a placebo effect within myself, but I do not feel this to be the case. In replaying the way I felt and thought afterwards there seems to be a difference in the way I am mentating. A more immediate sense of the other person with my anxieties on the periphery.

*Further thoughts (jumping into the ocean of speculation)

Going back again to this post and this article how would my brain respond to essentially different signals through the amygdala. How I think I viewed someone's face was always right eye to right eye with my left eye seeing more the periphery on the right side of the other person. I am postulating that my left amygdala remains somewhat inactive/reflexive in my normal communications with others. Seeing and processing the left side while using the left eye to initiate leads to a more refined processing/reaction on my left giving me a different feel of the interaction (and conveying  a more relaxed feel to the person I am communicating to.)

Self esteem an interesting read

Just a read

Body language

Pentagon studies Putin's body language

Second article

No talk of a left tongue or seeing the left half of someone's face but exploring some of the same territory.

"A Pentagon research team is studying the body movements of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders in order to better predict their actions and guide U.S. policy, Pentagon documents and interviews show...."

Last September, Rende, Connors and Colton published a paper in the academic journal Frontiers in Psychology that detailed the uses of movement pattern analysis to determine leaders' decision-making process. Such analysis, they wrote, "offers a unique window into individual differences in decision-making style."

While Connors declined to characterize her current work, she has written previously about Putin's movements, including what she identified as an irregularity in the way he walks. In a 2005 interview in The Atlantic magazine, she said Putin's physical problems "created a strong will that he survive and an impetus to balance and strengthen the body. ... When we are unable to do something, really hard work becomes the way."

No left head

It is beginning to feel like I had no left head before. It was not just the tongue but a single representation of the head that was right side dominated and the left subordinate. My previous left head 's "job" was to support the right head dominance and did not develop the motor control independent of the right head. The obvious problem with my current understanding is explaining how I could feel the left side of my head through out my life and do somethings independent of the right such as moving my tongue along the edge of my left teeth.The only explanation to me that has some rationality (besides me being a crazed wingnut) is that the right side dominance and the left side subordinance precludes the usual sensing of the relationship. If a specific function is needed it developed for my left otherwise my right side movement image is how I understand the majority of functions.

Clueless

Watching people in the real world and on the tube it is still amazing to me that I did not see/perceive the left half of other peoples faces. It suggests a one dimensionality of myself that I would never have guessed. I have to make a deliberate attempt to see the left half. I can focus on the left eye/face of others by either doing my normal which would be the right eye dominant or putting my attention in my left eye and making the connection with it. My sense of myself now is that I never clued in to many important hints that the left side of face was suggesting. It's not that I know what other people are thinking. It is more similar to looking at a piece of art and paying attention to what emotions are evoked.  It seems to allow myself relate to people in a more friendly way in many situations. However I can still be my immediate reactive self very easily and it often predominates.

Going back to this article  I am not sure I completely understand it. However I think my right eye to right eye/face connection is first and foremost a threat assessment. My dad's behavior was very volatile varying from tenderness to violence. My own survival may have been felt to be predicated on distinguishing between the two extremes. Seeing the left was always a secondary behavior which I do not seem to have developed. My left side posture feels to be crippled and to a degree twisted in expectation that the right hand may come out of the blue to hit my left side. If I watch a person who has the expectation of being hit by someone much more powerful there is often a cringing of the side that will be hit. My expectations may have developed postural habit formations which I feel is much more than just the visible skeletal position. To allow a relaxation of my left side to come forth to meet see and perceive does not feel to be my usual mode of behavior. It also suggests that I cannot generalize my habits to others