Bestial tails

I am using the left side of my face, sublingual musculature, and throat in a seemingly more independent way from my right sided similar structures. There is more inclusion of the muscles on the left side of my head in a way that I never previously felt. However, my tongue is still the most undefined for some reason in it's left sided aspect. It often feels like it is moving in my play but then I switch to my right sided normal way of moving and it does not appear to be the same structure. I don't know why. I have been reticent to bring this point up because with a blog named My left tongue too it's sort of inherent in the name I know what I am talking about if I am correct.

I am also feeling more clearly the difference in seeing a persona existing in the left half of someone else. Again seeing someone left sided I feel changes how my body/posture relates to theirs. I normally relate right sided to right sided and when I 'see' the persona existing in the left there is a global postural shift in myself to put my left side in a subtle position of advantage.

Are there similar examples in the animal kingdom? Not exactly but maybe some hints.  Elephants that learn to lateralize trunk control to half their brain and monkeys who orofacial control is related to the Broca' area. Sea mammals that are able to stay awake with half their brains and dogs that wag their tails in different directions on how they perceive other dogs.

a few links

Whose monkey's uncle

Beached Beluga

Why do elephants have trunks

The dogs wag

Double dribblin

My daughter's boyfriend showed me a video of Steph Curry doing a two handed drill. I did not pick up on it at the time but it seems to be an ad for special training glasses. What interested me was his ability to use both his hands in completely different patterns of use. He uses both hands at different times for juggling the tennis ball and alternately dribbling the basketball. It reminds me of the two hands writing video of a girl writing two different languages at the same time.

 I often have trouble walking and chewing gum so the work on differentiating my left tongue doesn't seem to do anything for my coordination, but it does make me again wonder if my one sided dominance is a functional orientation rather than a structural impediment.


Jemblog

Baby flippin

A recent article article in Scientific American talks about the prime window in how we learn to speak. Baby talk again has it's place in developing speech in a certain time frame. What was interesting to me is the importance of social cuing in learning language. IMO I feel that the social cues on the right side of face in most people(the left visual field of the viewer) are more expressive than the left side of face(the right visual field of the viewer) which lead to a greater muscular control in my right side as a mimicker. The article talks about how infants' attention coalesce around often repeated sounds. I believe my visual attention coalesced around the right half of other's faces to the extent that I still really do not see the left half of a person's face unless I specifically look for it.

"The study provided evidence that learning for the infant brain is not a passive process. It requires human interaction-a necessity that I call "social gating"...The experience of a young child learning to talk, in fact, resembles the way birds learn song"

"These ideas about the social component of early language learning may also explain some of the difficulties encountered by infants who go on to develop such disorders such as autism. Children with autism lack basic interest in speaking. Instead they fixate on inanimate objects and fail to pay attention to social cues so essential in language learning."

'Social gating' sounds similar to open instinct to me.

A recent discussion on Democracy Now( turn off sound if not interested in discussion) has Andrew Bacevich, scholar and retired soldier, discussing recent political events. It appears evident to me that he has more visual cues displayed on the right half of his face than the left. As an infant I think there would have been more connections to be made with and mimicked that would help establish the dominance of the one cerebral hemisphere. It would also suggest that my trying to learn to perceive and use my 'left tongue' is a lot larger and probably more difficult than I had originally thought.

Antibiotics and chronic back pain

I worked in a hospital that did many complicated back surgeries. Some surgeries lasted ten hours or more then had a second procedure scheduled. Many times the operations did not seem to help in the long run.

This article on antibiotics and back pain I found interesting.

Drug addiction and connection

I am more than a bit of an introvert so engaging people has always been hard for me. It's not that I don't really like and need people, I just often feel the need for alone time.

The book Quiet is a nice exploration of the world of the introvert.


Interesting video below on some surprising facts about drug addiction


Drug addiction and connection

Left, Right Paradigm

(Politics aside) In the clip below Ralph Nader offers his views on the world but what struck me is how one sided his use of his head in communicating is.  The right eye blinks far more often and more completely, the lines on his brow much more developed on his right and his use of lips and speech more developed on the right.  In the more subjective realm his eye seems much more alive to me on his right and the whole right side appears much more empathetic to me.  Not too many years ago I would have never noticed the use of the left side of face focusing solely on his right side. I am not demeaning Ralph in any way and find him to be a very admirable man.

Ralph

Nature is nurture sometimes

Thinking about an old post.  Nature can sometimes be very cruel but when I think of the parent child interaction it is often about the developing bond between them. There has been the debate forever about nature or nurture having the greater impact on our development. An old movie The Wild Child that relates the story of a french doctor who takes a child supposedly raised in the wild and tries to civilize him. It makes more sense to me that it was an abandoned autistic child who was raised through infancy and was either lost or abandoned at a certain age. However, going down my line of thought if the child for some reason could not see the persona expressed and was unable to learn to mimic those behaviors presented what kind of child would he be?

The movements that I am developing left half of my head/ throat/ sublingual tongue have a semiglobal relationship that are too complicated for me to have consciously directed them.  I may be discovering them but I don't think I could have imagined the relationships. I am often trying to hear TV talking heads speak and attempting to make sure I mimic the words in my left tongue/sublingual musculature and throat. I think I am successful some of the time. The control that takes over my head is then different. For a long time these movements were painful but now contain a mixture of pain and a sense of tautness and fullness that was before unimaginable. They are still largely spastic and poorly controlled. If I attempt to try for too large a movement it is easy to switch back into my usual way of doing things than do what I intended. There is a true 'left' feel about them. I think what I am doing is outside normal development and in a sense will never rise to the proficiency that I achieved based on the interactions of my early nurturing.