Ever since the President of Harvard Larry Summers on a sunny day in April 22, 2005 commented on sex differences between men and women and how they may relate to the careers of women in science the Heat has been On. Summers was forced to resign over the heat he drew upon himself. But the seminar at Harvard University was about the research on mind, brain, and behavior relevant to gender disparities in the sciences, including the studies of bias, discrimination and innate and acquired difference between the sexes. The Edge reports on one of the most vivid debates between Elisabeth Spelke and Steven Pinker – nurture vs nature in a battle between two great psychologists.

Further reading on the brain and gender

In Sweden gender troubles have been illuminated in many different fields and in general all large state organizations have equality plans to help facilitate a discussion and move toward less discrimination. But now the backlash is a fact: the universities of Lund and Göteborg have both in recent cases been the targets of policies implemented from above in order to secure a gender perspective on all research fields. People like Steven Sampson have raged against the idea of a gender certificate stating that it is a way of the feminist forces to issue their influence upon the rest of the university. And yes, surely it is an idea that is using the worst of leftist paternalistic strategies, but there is nothing principally bad with the idea of letting a power perspective influence research in various fields of the university.

But the question of the female brain and the strategies of erasing bias from our public sphere must be held at a reasonable distance from each other. You cannot make swift inference from a few MRI’s and connect it to an immediate policy decision where teachers at universities are forced to give equal time in the class room to males and females, as is the case in a recent report in Sweden. My view, as always, is that the cognitive research in this field must be expanded and the humanities must come closer to scientific knowledge. Science in turn must start a discussion of political bias in Academia in order to stop the slanted and patriarchal structuring in all forms of knowledge production and development.

An important point made by neuroscientist Melissa Hines when discussing gender/sex in the brain is that the once-established dichotomy between sex and gender is really impossible to sanction. Mainly because the supposition that certain aspects should be analyzed biologically (sex) and others socially (gender) is from a brain perspective wrong, the social brain and the physical brain cannot be separated.

Further reading to recommend:

Annica Dahlström one of the leading proponents of the nature assumption of gender says it all.

The sexual brain by Simon LeVay

Brain Gender by Melissa Hines

The NFL has recently released new stricter concussion guidelines.

The new policy states, in part: “Once removed for the duration of a practice or game, the player should not be considered for return-to-football activities until he is fully asymptotic, both at rest and after exertion, has a normal neurological examination, normal neuropsychological testing, and has been cleared to return by both his team physician(s) and the independent neurological consultant.”

This could be a really good thing.

I hope.

Gospodi Pomului

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
               at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward, and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed and luckier.
              —Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself VII

No seventeen-year-old can understand “to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” No sixty-four-year-old can understand it either.

For three days I’ve been pondering the unfortunate (“tragic”?) waste of time and energy engendered by conspiracy theories, especially the one that posits Dick Cheney, not Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as “mastermind” of events in New York City on 9/11/01. I’m not thinking obsessively: I have too much end-of-semester work. 

The more I think about conspiracy theories, the more bizarre they seem—but, at the same time, more understandable.

Effective arguing draws upon many aspects of reasoning, including the ability to seek out evidence and to evaluate an arguer’s claims empirically. . . .We frequently do not exercise sufficient care in evaluating theories and explanations. . . .we tend to believe any good story, even when evidence is unavailable or contradicts that story. ***

The Aksarben Coliseum (Google it) is gone. Dead. Destroyed. If  the Billy Graham Show or Frank Sinatra plays Omaha, they must book the Civic Auditorium or the Qwest Center. How can this be? The most important symbol of the social and economic fabric of Omaha is gone. Just like that! Gone.

Central High School

At seventeen, I first read Walt Whitman at Omaha Central High School, across the street from the Omaha Civic Center. For three years I rode the “Aksarben” city bus to and from school (except when I rode in the powder blue Ford Falcon my best friend’s mother sometimes let him drive; not only is Aksarben gone, Steve is dead). Aksarben (it was several blocks west of our street), to Central High School, to the Civic Center, to my first secret love (Steve—I’m still in love with him; he never married; I’ve always wondered what might have been had I not been a Baptist and he a Conservative Jew). And now Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Has Dick Cheney arranged all the changes beyond my recognition, and so much of it just plain dead? Gone. Destroyed!

Without an explanation to establish a reliable connection between cause and effect, we have no reason to believe patterns will persist. . . . if we come up with an alternative plausible story. . . .the new, competing explanation leads us to additional comparisons and tests. Lastly, the explanation’s promise of a stable connection between cause and effect improves our ability to abstract and transfer knowledge.***

I went to Aksarben three times in high school. My dad took me there for an Omaha Knights (no relation) hockey game; a friend’s father sneaked him and Steve and me and a couple other friends into the race track; and I attended the Billy Graham Show—my brother sang in the “massed choir.” I don’t remember souls being saved, but I remember one choir anthem (why an evangelical choir in Omaha sang it for the Billy Graham Show, I have no idea): Gospodi Pomilui, a Bulgarian orthodox hymn by G.V. Lvovsky. “Lord, Have Mercy.” I don’t know why my brother was in the massed choir and I wasn’t. I was the church musician. I can still sing part of that anthem from hearing my brother singing it—the words Gospodi Pomilui repeated about a hundred times, as fast as possible.

The Aksarben Coliseum is dead.

Walt Whitman’s poetry is not dead.

Mr. Simpson was careful not to discuss in class the overt sexuality (both same sex and other sex sexuality) in Whitman’s texts. Sexual connotations were, he told us, platonic, celebrating “self” not body. I’m sure he knew I was in love with Steve.

Many people seem unable to make the conceptual distinction between the explanations of mechanisms underlying claims and the evidence that helps us determine whether those claims and mechanisms really hold. . .overconfidence may arise not only because an explanation influences the search for and interpretation of evidence, but also because people believe that their explanation is evidence.***

Although I had not seen him for thirty years, I was broken-hearted five years ago when I learned Steve had died. I was mildly upset when I learned the Aksarben Coliseum died at about the same time. The fabric(s) of one’s life die(s). Whitman says, as he did when I was seventeen,

The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
            at the end to arrest it. . .

Death is not waiting at the end of life to arrest life? But surely Steve and the Aksarben Coliseum are dead. I need explanation. I don’t need evidence. I have the evidence. The Kings’ Hussars of Aksarben will parade elsewhere (the Qwest center?) at the 114^th coronation of the Magical Kingdom of Quivira next spring. Steve no longer teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Explanation is necessary. The evidence is that people die, that landmarks from the past disappear. The explanation posits conspiracy. The explanation will become the evidence of a conspiracy to prove Whitman wrong that “there is really no death.”

The power of explanations to lead to overconfidence and error is termed the “explanation effect.” When participants generate an explanation to account for some event, the perceived probability that this event will occur increases substantially. Explanations are so influential that participants continue to give them weight even in the absence of supporting evidence or when the supporting evidence has been thoroughly discredited. . . .***

Explain for me, please, “there is really no death.” I am anxious. I fear the evidence will overwhelm any explanation you can give. Your explanation will not hold up under close scrutiny. Because, whenever death happens, it will be a surprise.

When the event is unexpected, there are three temporal periods in the traumatic experience: the pre-event state of unpreparedness, marked by an absence of anxiety; the traumatic event itself, in which temporal orientations are ruptured and confused; and the post-traumatic state, in which dreams and memories of the traumatic event haunt the traumatized sufferer.****

Death is traumatizing, unexpected. Temporal orientations are ruptured and confused. Perhaps, because “to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” we will have dreams and memories of the traumatic event. The explanation becomes the evidence. Explain to me the 9/11 event for which you cannot give evidence. Your explanation will become the evidence.

My Knights

Explanation is what I seek, not evidence or acceptance. A conspiracy. Death, and Aksarben, and Steve, and Whitman are in it together. If you explain well enough, your explanation will become the evidence, and I will not die.

I never pretended that one can insert reality into the past and thus work backwards in time. However, one can without doubt insert there the possible, or, rather, at every moment, the possible inserts itself there. Insofar as unpredictable and new reality creates itself, its image reflects itself behind itself in the indefinite past: this new reality finds itself all the time having been possible….*****
_____ 
*** Brem, Sarah K., and Lance J. Rips. “Explanation and Evidence in Informal Argument.” Cognitive Science 24.4 (2000): 573.
**** Muntean, Nick. “‘It was just like a movie’: trauma, memory, and the mediation of 9/11.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 37.2 (2009): 50+.
*****Bergson, Henri. Oeuvre, 1991. Quoted in Muntean.

But maybe it’s also a tip of the iceberg of god knows what other kind of parasitic stuff is going on out there. And in a larger sense, god knows what other unseen realms of biology make our behaviour far less autonomous than lots of folks would like to think. (Robert Sapolsky, “Toxo”, video on www.edge.org)

Parasites can change our behavior. Not in a chaotic way but in a way which enhances their survival. It seems like a synopsis of The Matrix or of some kind of zombie movie. It’s not, as Robert Sapolsky explains in the latest issue of Edge.

Mind shifters

I love neurology stories like those of Sapolsky, just for the sake of shaking things up once and a while. It seems like every time I dig into recent brain research, my paradigms shift.

The latest shifter came from the scientist above. Sapolsky has done research on Toxoplasma, a parasite well known for being tremendously dangerous for fetuses.

A cat’s ass

The parasite can only reproduce itself in the rear end of a cat. Now how does this parasite ends up there? Amazingly enough, when it infects a rodent like a rat, it rewires some specific circuits in the brain so that rats end up getting attracted to cat pheromones instead of being afraid of them. These rats go after cat feces and are more likely to end up in the stomach of a cat, where toxoplasma will find it’s way back to the cat’s rear end in order to reproduce itself.

Amazing, isn’t it?

What’s truly amazing is that this rewiring happens with a kind of surgical precision. These infected rats are still afraid of all the other stuff they’re supposed to be afraid of.

Parasites and us are related

Scientists have found out that toxogenome shares a version of a gene which turns out to be the critical enzyme for making dopamine, a neurotransmitter that’s all about reward and anticipation of reward. In short, toxo has the mammalian gene for making this stuff.

If these parasites are so neatly designed for pulling the plugs in our brains, then it’s not surprising to hear they may help us to explain some issues in human behavior. Sapolsky mentions for example that toxo may make humans engage in radical behavior, such as speeding which brings him to saying the words which I’ve mentioned above.

Parasites or paranoia?

Sapolsky’s theory is interesting and scary at the same time. Especially when you hear Sapolsky say that these parasites know more about how our brain works than we do. I doubt whether “knowing more” is an accurate way to put things. It’s like saying a snow crystal knows more about symmetry than we do. Instead of internal intelligence, it’s the systemic constellation which has enabled this crystal to appear in its symmetry. I kind of like to believe that it’s the same with the toxoplasma and our brain.

What does this mean? It means that if you start looking for some kind of ingenious controlling system and knowledge within the parasite, you’re likely to be confronted with a complexity which may be impossible to explain. If you look at it from a systemic perspective, say zoom out in time and space you can actually begin to understand why these relationships between the parasite and our brain started to emerge. It doesn’t have anything to do with the parasite being smarter than us. It’s more about things happening this way because their design allows them to do so.

Who knows?

Watch the video here at Edge.org.

The latest study of the possible link between cell phone use and brain cancer found no definable evidence of that link.  However, there have been many calls by highly regarded physicians, researchers and government officials warning of possible effects over time.  The main concern is that cell phone use among the young, especially teenagers, did not really take hold as a social phenomenon until the late 1990’s. They postulate that exposure from long phone calls, the types most likely to be made by teens and young adults, over a 10-20 year period will have a deleterious effect on health.  Long term exposure to even low levels of radiation, we know, is not a good thing. So there is reason for concern.  That being said, legitimate epidemiological  studies in the United States, and now in Scandinavia have consistently failed to find a causative link between cell phone use and brain tumor development.  Additionally, this latest study confirmed, as earlier ones have, that no statistically significant increase in the incidence of the most common types of brain tumors has occurred over the past 20 years or so.

Still, we know for sure that the most observable risk of cell phone usage is while driving. The link between cell phone usage and driver distraction is clear and as a cause of accidents cannot be refuted.  It still amazes me to see how many persons, of both sexes and all ages, drive with one hand while holding a cell phone to their ear with the other.  More and more states and municipalities are outlawing cell phone use in school zones all together, as well as enacting hands free statutes. Hands free devices are cheap and ubiquitous so it is unclear why drivers are unwilling to use them.  It would seem that much as with mandatory seat belt laws which came about in the 1960’s and 1970’s there is resistance to telling folks how to use their cell phones.  Nevertheless, the most immediate and definable risk from cell phone use is while driving. So please – get a head set, ear phone, hands free device of some type, they are not expensive – and USE IT.  A car accident will kill you long before the brain tumor will . . . ben kazie md

Analysis of data on 60,000 people diagnosed with glioma and meningioma in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden revealed that the incidence of brain tumors…were stable, decreased, or gradually increased, starting before cell phones became popular. They also found no change in incidence of brain tumors…during a period of rapid increase in cell phone usage.  The new study, published in the Dec. 3 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found no cell phone-related increase during this study period. Researchers from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden say they found that the incidence of brain tumors in the studied population of people from the four countries remained stable, decreased, or showed only a gradual increase that started before the introduction of the wireless devices between 1974 and 2003.  Mobile phone use in those Nordic countries rose dramatically in the mid-1990s, the study says.  Lead author Isabelle Deltour, PhD, of the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology of the Danish Cancer Society, and colleagues say they found no change in incidence trends of brain tumors in data going back to 1998.  They mentioned several possible reasons for their finding:

• The induction period relating cell phone use to brain tumors exceeds five to 10 years;
• The increased risk is too small to be observed;
• The increased risk is restricted to subgroups of brain tumors or cell phone users;
• There is no increased risk of brain cancer by using cell phones.

Four-country study finds no cancer link to cellphone usage – http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2009-12-03-cell-phones_N.htm

Cell Phones and Brain Tumors: No Connection? – Study Finds ‘No Observable Effect’ of Cell Phone Usage on Brain Tumor Incidence – http://www.webmd.com/cancer/brain-cancer/news/20091203/cell-phones-and-brain-tumors-no-connection

No increase in brain cancer as cellphone use rose – http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/12/cell-phones-brain-cancer.html

Brain Cancer Study Casts Doubt on Cell Phone Danger – http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/BrainCancer/17308

No Increase in Brain Tumors Seen From Cell Phones – http://healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=633702

Study finds no brain tumor link with mobile phones – http://www.nationalpost.com/life/health/story.html?id=6559bda9-5535-4a40-a119-689fc868767c

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Neural tube defect: an opening in the spinal cord or brain that occurs very early in human development. the neural tube does not close completely.

Spina bifida occulta: a developmental birth defect involving the neural tube: incomplete closure of the

neural tube. The least dangerous form of spina bifida, in which bones in the spine fail to close. However, the skin is intact and there is no sac visable on the back .

Meningocele: a congenital anomaly of the central nervous system in which a sac protruding from the brain or the spinal meninges contains cerebrospinal fluid but no nerve tissue.

Myelomeningocele: a congenital defect of the central nervous system in which a sac containing part of the spinal cord, cerebrospinal fluid and its meninges protrude through a gap in the vertebral column; frequently accompanied by hydrocephalus and mental retardation.

Spina bifida occulta:

Normal closed vertebrae canal and presence of posterior spinous process:

The Emory Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), is funded by the National Institute on Aging. Through this grant, Georgia and surrounding states are provided with outstanding clinical, research, and educational programs on normal age related memory loss, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.

Neurodegeneration is a common theme of many nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, head trauma, epilepsy and stroke. These disorders are devastating and expensive, with annual costs currently exceeding several hundred billion dollars in the United States alone, and current treatments are inadequate. Adding to the urgency of the problem is the fact that the incidence of these age-related disorders is increasing rapidly as population demographics change.There are several possible internship opportunities including both basic science research as well as clinically relevant projects.

Job Descriptions for 2010

Laboratory-based “bench” projects:
We are offering two basic science internship opportunities that will provide opportunities for hands-on work on the practical aspects of basic science research using state-of-the-art techniques and technology.

1) Brain abnormalities in movement disorders (Offered by Dr. Thomas Wichmann)
The student will help postdoctoral fellows or graduate students with the practical aspects of studies that investigate the effects of electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia or thalamus on the neuronal activity in the basal ganglia in awake monkeys. These studies often involve microinjections to identify pharmacological steps involved in the observed stimulation responses. The studies are part of a larger research program that aims to identify abnormalities in brain activity in movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.

2) Neurophysiological investigations of learning and memory in behaving primates (Offered by Dr. Beth Buffalo)

Clinical-related investigations and practices:
We are offering four more clinically relevant internship opportunities.  The first two may involve some direct patient interaction and will involve data analysis of patient data.  The third internship described below will focus on educating the public on Alzheimer’s disease and on recruitment of community members into research studies.

1) Cognitive Rehabilitation in patients with mild cognitive impairment (Offered by Dr. Benjamin Hampstead)
Memory deficits are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and its clinical precursor, mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Our group is investigating the use of various memory rehabilitation techniques in healthy elderly, MCI, and, possibly, AD. An especially novel aspect of this research is our use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study rehabilitation-related changes in brain activity. Students will have direct patient contact and will assume responsibility for administering and scoring a neuropsychological screening protocol, performing the memory rehabilitation, and entering data into a secure database. Exposure to fMRI procedures including paradigm development and data collection, analysis, and interpretation will also be available. Numerous didactic experiences exist including grand rounds, neuropsychology case conferences, and brain cuttings. Students will discuss their research progress during bi-weekly laboratory meetings, which also provide a time for relevant research literature to be reviewed and discussed. Opportunities to shadow both neuropsychologists and neurologists may also be available.

2) Analysis of sleep phenotypes in Alzheimer’s disease (Offered by Dr. Donald Bliwise)
This project involves secondary data analyses of questionnaire data derived from Alzheimer’s patients and their family members regarding sleep habits and sleep disorders. Alzheimer’s patients often have profound difficulties with sleep, ranging from day/night sleep reversal with excessive sleeping during the day to vivid dreaming experiences at night. Our AD Center has been routinely collecting data on such events in the hope of eventually correlating such behavioral phenotypes to polymorphisms in neurotransmitter systems involving serotonin and norepinephrine in AD patients. The first phase of this project is to systematically collect such behavioral data and examine factors that may influence the expression of the phenotype (e.g., medication, stage of dementia)

3) Cognitive Rehabilitation in patients with mild cognitive impairment.  (Offered by Dr. Melanie Greenaway)
We are investigating the use of a memory/notebook rehabilitation technique in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (often thought to be the precursor to Alzheimer’s disease).  Interns will participate in recruitment, database management, and assessment of subjects with MCI and their care partners.  Interns will receive exposure to neuropsychological assessment, cognitive rehabilitation, clinical trial implementation, and database management.  Interns would also have the opportunity to participate in additional neuropsychological based studies into cognitive changes in the geriatric population, including Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, or Parkinson’s disease.

4) Community-based AD Education and recruitment of research participants for AD-related research projects and clinical trials (Offered by the ADRC Team)
As a member of the Emory Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) team the summer intern would learn about clinical research studies on memory and thinking.  The internship will focus on writing three (or more) human interest stories about why ADRC research volunteers participate in research.  These could be print stories (possibly video stories) which would be used in future ADRC newsletters and/or  on the ADRC website.  The intern would need to have excellent interpersonal skills in addition to interviewing and writing skills.

Desired Qualifications
For laboratory projects: excellent computer skills, strong quantitative skills, sound critical thinking abilities, ability to organize and manage multiple tasks and duties simultaneously, prior laboratory experience desirable, but not mandatory.

Strong interest in basic science research, exposure to or interest in learning statistical analysis, strong interest in basic science research, particularly neuroscience.

For clinical/community-related projects: strong computer skills, strong written communication skills, ability to organize and manage multiple tasks and duties simultaneously, excellent interpersonal skills, sound critical thinking abilities, Dreamweaver and/or HTML experience desirable but not necessary.

Interest in education, learning, sleep, neurobehavior, cognitive psychology and/or statistical analyses; OR exposure to or interest in cognitive psychology and/or neuropsychology and statistical analysis; OR strong interest in dementias and the geriatric population, interest in neuropsychology and therapeutic interventions, interest in working both face to face with subjects as well as doing behind the scenes computer data basing work OR interest in community education efforts and establishing best practices for research participation recruitment.

No language requirement.

Abstract: Fear is experienced by ever human in the world, but most people do not understand the real reasons for fear to arise.

Studies and experiments of fear began in the early in the 1900s. They used Ivan Pavlov’s dog’s experiment as a base. In Pavlov’s dog’s experiment, Pavlov related food to a bell, but scientists studying fear is relating an object such as a rat to an unpleasant noise. John Watson experimented by banging a pot whenever a child, Albert, sees a rat. The studies showed the same effects as Pavlov’s dogs did, but there were too many environmental factors not addressed.

Now, scientists today perform more controlled experiments on rats, such as associating an electrical buzz to the opening of a light. The rat, now relating light to pain, has an irrational fear to light. But, this has yet to relate to any real life applications In the 1980s, Caroline and Robert Blanchard who worked at the University of Hawaii, started studying fear. They put wild rats in cages, and surrounded them with cats, gradually bringing the cats closer step by step. At each step, they observed how the rats reacted. This experiment revealed that the level of threat is directly proportional to the fearful reaction of the rats.

This is also demonstrated by a modern experiment. Scientists built a Pac man like videogame into an MRI. There is a maze, and two enemies, one that is quick and one that is slow. At first, no fear is shown within the testing person’s brain, but as the slow enemy closes in, the person eludes the enemy by curving around. But, when the quick enemy starts following the player, the player starts to panic, causing him to start bumping into the walls more often. The scientists observe the brain activity.

At first, the threat is only potential, like finding traces of the enemy, but no enemy. There, most would react cautiously, but as there is no enemy in the line of sight, no erratic response is provoked. Then, one could sight an enemy far away. Then, they would stay stock still, hoping not to be noticed start inching away slowly. The most active threat is the enemy closing in. Here, one would either flee immediately or fight back. These are all categorized within two types: One where you react with strategic actions, and one where panic takes over. The forebrain controls the midbrain from taking over, and controls the actions with a level of intelligence, for example deciding which way would be the quickest escape route, etc. As the enemy grows closer, the midbrain turns on, and the forebrain loses control, and panic reigns.

Conspiracy theory

. . . .research indicates that people generally feel that others are more gullible than themselves [the Third Person Effect] and that others should therefore be protected from potentially damaging attempts to change their attitudes and behaviors. ***

(Disclaimer: Last night, the “History” [sic] Channel broadcast another prophetic program on the pyramids or Nostradamus, or some combination of the two. This morning, I woke up ready to write on the subject (or my need to write on the subject woke me up; sometimes I know what I need [the emphasis on NEED] to write about before I begin, sometimes I don’t). 

I wonder what one must do these days to be “committed” to a mental hospital. I know in 2006 I had to move from suicidal ideation to actual thoughts of suicide (and figuring out how to do it) to end up (I am grateful) in a place where all of the doors from the inside said, “WARNING! Elopement Danger!” The doors were locked, and a few mysterious (that is, a mystery to the rest of us) people had keys. Of course, I was not crazy, simply in a depression caused by all those misfirings in my brain. 

The world is coming to an end in 2012.
The Bush administration perpetrated the events of September 11, 2001.
The CIA assassinated John F. Kennedy.
The Freemasons wrote the United States Constitution.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was the work of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The government has been hiding the truth about Roswell, NM, since 1947.
The Priory of Sion knows the truth about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. 

If you believe any one (or all) of these theories, YOU ARE NUTS! 

Why would any intelligent person believe them? A couple of years ago, a friend mentioned innocently (we were having a fairly serious conversation about our spiritual journeys) that he was having a crisis of faith and had all but given up any belief in Christianity. We were in the sumptuous living room of a friend—the fruit of his lucrative work as some sort of computer genius. Our host regaled us for an hour with the story of the Holy Grail and the children of Mary Magdalene and Jesus (straight, I think, from The Da Vinci Code). It was a lesson in the “truth” about Christianity, not “what-if” or “isn’t this fun to think about.” He believed every word.  

David Ray Griffin, a brilliant and highly respected theologian and teacher, will come to your church or your large public hall and regale you with the “truth” about what happened in New York and Washington, D.C., on 9/11. He, too, is dead serious and believes every word he says. His “truth” is that Dick Cheney and friends (mostly Jewish) planned, set up, and carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—that even those who watched (and/or filmed) airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers are mistaken, that planes never crashed into those buildings (how could they have? no parts of them were ever found). Having met Griffin years ago at the graduate school in Claremont, California, where he taught, I cannot fathom how he came to this. 

Conspiracy theory

Being intelligent has nothing to do with believing idiotic ideas. 

I once knew the widow of Rear Admiral Robert “Fuzzy” Theobald, author of The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Background of the Pearl Harbor Attack. He was long deceased when I met his widow, but the cadre of believers in his assertion that Franklin Roosevelt invited (perhaps orchestrated) the attack on Pearl Harbor was alive and well in Massachusetts. The first time I heard about Theobald’s conspiracy theory was long before when I was in college. My freshman English teacher, Mrs. Halsey, was related to Admiral William “Bull” Halsey (I have it in my mind that she may have been his widow, but that seems far-fetched; I don’t want to start another ridiculous “theory” here). At any rate, she regaled us with the story of Theobald’s book one day and made it clear how absurd it was—as part of our education in the difference between writing well and writing “truth,” whether in fiction or non-fiction (she is partly to blame for this writing). Admiral Theobald’s widow, a brilliant musician (who had stopped playing by the time I met her) and musicologist, certainly believed every word of his book. Here are two preeminent naval officers (one of them successful throughout his career and the other relieved of his duties after some military failures) and two brilliant women. One of the men and one of the women believed until their deaths that FDR plotted the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the other two did not. 

The Mayan Calendar!  I used to be amused by and slightly interested in the dire predictions of the end of the earth in 2012, based on the prophecy of Nostradamus and corroboration by the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. However, if the History and Discovery Channels have one more two-hour “special” preparing us to die in 2012, I will sell (or give away) my TV. 

Humans are, by nature, experts at finding patterns whether they are real or not.****

Conspiracy theorists are humans acting as humans do—attempting to find patterns where none exist. Since the Third Person Effect is fully operative (“…people generally feel that others are more gullible than themselves…”), those who are convinced they are not gullible, that they have either figured out the truth or are among those who are intelligent enough to figure out the truth, set out to protect the “gullible” by announcing the “truth.” 

Robert Theobald, David Griffin, my friend of the Da Vinci Code conspiracy, and countless others want to establish patterns that explain why the world is the way the world is. One of the most amazing aspects of this nonsensical need to force the random world into a pattern one can see, understand (and, perhaps, manipulate) is that it takes a certain amount of intelligence to accomplish it. Explaining the world is not for dummies! And, in fact, a certain amount of education as well as intelligence is helpful: 

[Research] here was to show why a priori theories, that is, preconceptions and mental stereotypes due to education of culture, are not only misleading because they are erroneous; they also make people unable to interpret new contradictory facts; in other words, they make people blind to the outside world. ***** 

Robert Theobald was a committed conservative free-market isolationist of the Pre-World War II variety. His stereotypes due to his “education of culture” misled him to believe that liberals of the FDR stripe had to keep their political power base from slipping, so they must have been responsible Pearl Harbor. David Griffin, opposite from Robert Theobald, is a liberal free-thinker, and is misled by his conviction that the Neo-Conservatives could be up to no good for this country, so, to make sense out of that conviction, he must believe a theory that fits his educational culture. 

I only wish these people would stay off TV long enough for me to get some sleep.

Truth

While going through the New Scientist’s website this morning, I stumbled over an interesting article that eluded to the nature of human social interaction, and how scientists are beginning to deeply penetrate the way the human brain/mind complex develops social constructs that allow us to come together within civilized structures. No doubt, if you have read Susan Blackmore’s “The Meme Machine” then you will probably have noticed how this ties in beautifully with what Blackmore discusses towards the end of her brilliant critique i.e. that all altruistic behavior is naturally selected for within evolutions flow… And that the resulting interactions are probably better “described as a single, complex system rather than as two systems interacting.”

But I digress…

YOU know how it works. A student volunteer sits alone in a soundproof booth, watching a computer screen and waiting for moving dots to appear. When they do, he or she has to decide whether there is a walking man hidden somewhere in those dots. If there is, and he is walking left, the volunteer has to press the left button. It’s a tricky task, and most of the time people end up guessing.

In our view, this kind of traditional experiment has a serious limitation: it does not take into account the influence of social interaction. On the surface, of course, no social communication is involved, as the volunteer is alone in a room. But dig deeper, and you’ll find plenty. For one thing, the man hidden in the dots is a social stimulus, although not one that can interact. Such experiments involve social communication at another level, too. Any participant brings his or her baggage about what psychologists are like and how volunteers should behave.

The problem is that these hidden social interactions remain out of focus in the experiment. Our aim at the Interacting Minds project at the Danish Neuroscience Centre in Aarhus is to develop a new kind of experiment that is focused on such interactions.

…continued here…

If you would like to see where I sourced this article from, please click here.

Seizure Types

1. Partial (focal) Seizures

involves a limited portion of the brain

may start on one side of the brain and travel only a short distance before stopping

foci = start location of abnormal electrical activity

• Simple partial seizures: small, local, limited focus but progress to a generalized seizure
• Symptoms:
• precise location – vague
• auditory or visual hallucinations
• smell or taste things not present
• emotional experiences of joy, sorrow or grief
• arms, legs or face may twitch

• Complex partial (psychomotor or temporal lobe) seizures:
• Show sensory, motor and autonomic symptoms with some degree of altered or impaired consciousness
• Total loss of consciousness may not occur during a complex partial seizure
• a brief period of somnolence or confusion may follow the seizure
• some seizures are preceded by an aura that is often described as an unplesant odour or taste
• Seizures may start with a blank stare, may fumble with or try to remove clothing
• most pts will not pay attention to verbal commands
• pts may act as if they are having a psychotic episode
• After the seizure pts do not remember the incident

1. Generalized Seizures

• not localized to one area
• travel throughout entire brain on both sides
• the seizure is through to originate bilaterally and symmetrically within the brain

• Absence (Petit mal) Seizures

• most often occur in children
• last only a few seconds
• involve a loss or reduction of normal activity
• Staring of transient loss of responsiveness are the most common signs
• there may be slight motor activity with eyelid fluttering or myoclonic jerks
• due to subtlety these seizures may go unnoticed or be mistaken for daydreaming or ADD.

• Atonic Seizures

• may be referred to as drop attacks
• pt may stumble and fall for no apparent reason
• Episodes are short lasting only a few seconds

• Tonic-clonic seizures

• seizures may be preceded by aura
• some pts may perceive a warning sign described as a spiritual feeling, flash of light or special noise

Tonic Phase

• Intense muscle contractions indicate the tonic phase
• a hoarse cry may occur at the onset of a seizure due to air being forced out of the lungs
• clients may temporarily lose bladder or bowel control
• breathing may become shallow with moments of apnea

Clonic Phase

• alternating contraction and relaxation of muscles
• seizures usually last 1-2 minutes

Postical State

• afterwards the pt becomes drowsy, disoriented and sleeps deeply

1. Special Epileptic Syndromes

• special epileptic seizures include the febrile seizures in infancy
• reflex epilepsies
• other forms of myoclonic epilepsies
• Myoclonic epilepsies often accompany other neurological abnormalities or progressive symptoms

• Febrile Seizures

• typically cause tonic-clonic motor activities lasting 1-2 minutes
• with rapid return of consciousness
• Occur in conjunction with a rapid rise in body temperature
• usually occur only once during any given illness
• most likely to occur in the 3mo-5yr age group
• preventing the onset of fever is the best way to control the seizures

• Myoclonic Seizures

• characterized by large, jerking body movements
• major muscle groups contract quickly and pts appear unsteady and clumsy
• Pt may fall from sitting position or drop whatever they are holding
• Infantile spasms exemplify a type of generalized, myoclonic seizure
• distinguished by short-lived muscle spasms involving the trunk and extremities
• The spasms are often not identified as seizures by parents or healthcare providers because the movements are much like those the normal infantile Moro (startle) reflex

• Status Seizures

• medical emergency
• occurs when a seizure is repeated continuously
• can occur with any type of seizure
• usually generalized tonic-clonic seizures are exhibited

characteristics:

• generalized tonic-clonic seizures are prolonged or continuous
• the time in breathing is affected by lengthened muscle contraction
• may result in hypoglycemia, acidosis and hypothermia due to increased metabolic needs
• lactic acid production and heat loss during contraction
• carbon dioxide recension also leads to acidosis
• if untreated, status eptilepticus can lead to brain damage and death
• medical treatment involves IV administration of antiseizure medications and ensuring an open airway.

Alzheimer’s Society is reorganising its management structure in order to deliver more services to more people in a greater number of locations. As the number of people with dementia rises the charity has reviewed its structure as part of a programme called ‘Fit for the Future’ to ensure it can extend and expand current services to offer consistent support for people with dementia regardless of their location. The new arrangements will make it easier for PCT and Local Authorities to commission Alzheimer’s Society services making them available to a greater number of people. © Alzheimer’s Society

• Full press release

NICE has launched a consultation on its draft quality standards for the treatment of dementia and stroke; once published the new standards will represent a benchmark to inform aspirations for high quality care across the NHS. The consultation is part of a pilot programme of work, which will include further topics on venous thromboembolism prevention and specialist neonatal care which are due to be released as drafts in the New Year. © National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

• Full press release
• Dementia quality standard
• Stroke quality standard

What does this have to do with religion?

My cats are useless. Being useless is not, in itself, bad. (Ralph Vaughn Williams once wrote an essay that landed him in much controversy in which he said the chief glory of music is that it’s useless. I understand that.) They’re not cuddly, they don’t catch mice (on the fourth floor of a mid-rise?), and they don’t “fetch” or play any kind of game. They are somewhat like my writing. 

A friend wrote in an email yesterday, “Your blog is sometimes confusing to me. Can I write that in safety?” I’d be surprised if anyone understood any of what I write. I hope what she meant is that she doesn’t want to jeopardize our friendship. My writing, like my cats, is most likely useless. 

My cats are sitting in front of some pictures in frames I have stacked on the floor. Either something is behind the pictures (a mouse?), or they liked knocking the whole pile over and want to do it again. They are useless. Joanie, who is usually at my feet when I’m writing, is watching picture frames. Chachi and Groucho, one of whom is usually on the chair beside me when I’m writing, are staring at picture frames. 

Go figure. 

My writing is, I suppose, my personal version of staring at picture frames. I started writing compulsively (OK, I didn’t realize it then, but looking back on it I know) when I got sober twenty-three years ago. I bought my first computer in 1988 to write my dissertation, and I’ve never looked back. The amount of crap I’ve written (and cannot throw away) is staggering. 

I’ve been staring at picture frames. The only reason I pretend I’m a scholar is to get material to write about. I teach college writing because it used to seem like something useful to do with writing. All my life I wanted to be a “writer,” so I wrote. But then I got drunk. It was a good substitute—and for other things, like making a living, learning to have relationships, and—most important—being oblivious to seizures. 

Am I or am I not hypergraphic? Or am I just a garden-variety (bad) writer hoping to accomplish something? Like a star-struck teen-ager headed to Hollywood to be rich and famous? My colleagues write books. They work long, hard hours at it. But their writing seems to be “work.” Publish or perish and all that idiocy. They could, I think, if they didn’t have their jobs, walk away from it. Oh, they might be curious and want to study and write because that’s what scholars do, but, as far as I know, they’re not up at five A.M. writing before they do anything else because it’s necessary to get the day started (and sometimes to keep it going). 

However, the question I really meant to think about this morning is religion. 

I read too much of the wrong stuff.

           …an increased tendency to report spiritual and religious experiences
          and beliefs (hyperreligiosity)… manifests either as a deepening of
          religious and mystical feelings, or as overt extravagant religious
          behaviour out of keeping with personal and societal norms….
          Religious delusions are also commonly observed….***

This article is about refractory (resistant to treatment) epilepsy. I dunno. But I still have ridiculous seizures. Sometimes. Staring into this ridiculous monitor causes something that might be a seizure. I have other lights around so the vibration is not all I’m seeing. Remember when computers had black backgrounds and gold letters? Mine were green. They said it would help. (Or were the normal ones green, and mine were gold?) 

What’s religious experience anyway? Is my religious tendency “increased?” Do I want so desperately to believe in a power greater than myself that I’ll do anything to create her? Why do I like High Church Episcopal worship drama? I make the sign of the cross when I absolutely do not believe that God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit is paying attention. Is my religious behavior “overt[ly] extravagant…or out of keeping with personal or societal norms?” Of course not. I’ve never seen an angel, and God has never spoken directly to me. I don’t have mystical visions. Lots of people are High Church ‘Piscopals.

Lots of people

My problem with religion is like any other skeptic’s: skepticism is not unbelief. So one goes through the motions of religious practice without believing in what one is doing (especially if one is an organist and has precious few other venues for performance.) 

I have no point here, by the way. You’re reading the musings I can’t not write. It’s time to make sure I have everything under control for classes today (Right! under control!). It’s time to exercise for thirty minutes. It’s time to vacuum the carpet? But I’m stuck here writing—not about just any old thing, but about religion. I want to know for sure that my constant daily hourly minutely prayers are being taken note of by someone, something, that I can make conscious contact with. I don’t think such an entity exists. But I keep praying, and putting up the banners at my church, and making sure the candles are lit and the music is ready. Why? Does it have anything to do with epilepsy? No. It’s normal skeptic-as-believer nonsense. I want to break away from it, but I can’t. 

“Spiritual advisors” tell me in times of a crisis of faith, one should keep praying, and the crisis will pass. OK. I’ve been praying since I was two years old, and the crisis has never passed. It has nothing to do with epilepsy. I’m chicken. If I give up praying and practicing my all-too-elaborate religion, something will happen to me. Religion is not the opiate of the masses. It’s their insanity. Why, after billions of years of life on this planet, after Lucy the Australopithecus who lived perhaps 3,000,000 years ago, after hundreds of thousands of years of history of folks like us, would God (or whoever dreamed this all up) suddenly reveal herself to the creatures she had made and then, after killing off a million years worth of them, “save” the ones who were left, and do it in a span of (perhaps) two thousand years? 

I know, I know, these are such sophomoric questions I should have answered them when I was a sophomore. I did. Or I should have spent my life searching (reading, sitting at the feet of gurus) instead of drinking, making music, and being wrapped up in religion. Now I have no backlog of Buddhist writings to help me find God. Oh well.

*** Wuerfel, J., et al. “Religiosity is associated with hippocampal but not amygdala volumes in patients with refractory epilepsy.” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 75.4 (2004): 640+.

Adam Smith Abounds

When I play the piano or organ, I have the guarantee that I will not have a seizure. Or, if I do, I will not feel it. I will not be aware of it.

Yesterday and the day before, I spent six hours preparing a booklet in Spanish of Biblical meditations for Advent. I hate Advent. If there is a spiritual dimension to life (which, as anyone knows who’s read any of my recent writings, I am quite skeptical about), it is utterly destroyed in the month leading to christmas. This destruction is one of the greatest mysteries I know. And the fact that it bothers me is an even greater mystery.

I don’t get it. And I am not smart or disciplined enough to say anything about it that some one else has not already said. The supposed birth of God in human form (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” and all of that nonsense) ought to be, if one could really believe it, the single most frightening event since the first chemical reaction among H2O and other chemicals somewhere in the vast earth-covering ocean became one cell of what we, in our vast wisdom, call “life.” This terrifying possibility is reduced, in Texas at any rate, to a frenzy of bottom-feeding that totally ignores both the mystery of life and the awesomeness of the possibility that “God” became a living, breathing, yelling-obscenities-at-the-christmas-merchants-of-his-day part of the fabric of the “highest” form of the life that one cell started sometime in the last 6,000,000,000 years. And in Texas (I can’t vouch for any other place), even people who have never thought about the possibility that one cell (or maybe a trillion trillion cells all at once) sprang to “life” out of the liquid muck celebrate this season of “the Word made” flesh and are willing to go to the mat (or at least to the Supreme Court) to make sure that we call it “Word-Made-Flesh” season rather than what it is: capitalism run amuck season.

If my dad’s cousin sends me one more idiotic mass-email about calling this season “Christmas” instead of “The Holiday,” I will find him and personally. . . .

We, of course, have Adam Smith to thank for all of this nonsense. When he invented the “invisible hand” that guides our every move, he codified in one fell swoop the inviolable principle that “greed” (which is what the “invisible hand” is—not my idea, but I don’t remember where I first read it) will be the byword of our social contract—if, indeed we have one. Americans are convinced (as part of the ridiculous “metanarrative” under which we all live) that we have a written Constitution that determines the workings of our society (at least the “political” aspects of it), but everything we, as a people, do, say, and think, is controlled by the “invisible hand” of greed. Look at the so-called “economy” for the last two years. It has been absolutely in charge of our resources and thinking—including the “political” process that is supposedly governed by the Constitution—and everything else we do.

Even I, who refuse to own a credit card because those little pieces of plastic tie one without recourse to the “invisible hand” of greed, have not, as is obvious, been able to escape the insanity of Adam Smith’s intellectual nonsense.

Oh, silly, undisciplined, TLEptic me, I digress. Who first said that? Everything we do is a digression.

I spent all of this time making a Spanish-language booklet of Biblical mediations for the yearly orgy of Adam Smith-ness that I hate. I have good reason to hate it (except, of course, my more spiritually evolved brothers and sisters would tell me that I shouldn’t waste the time, energy, or spiritual capital “hating” anything). I am caught in a paradox from which I cannot extricate myself.

When I play the piano or organ, I have the guarantee that I will not have a seizure. Or, if I do, I will not feel it. I will not be aware of it. This is the time of year when friends most want me to play the piano or organ, I think because real music, made by a living, breathing human being—whether the Word was made flesh or not—is one way people can wrench themselves away from their abject discipleship to Adam Smith and at least pretend they live in some dimension other than greed.

So I am caught in the conundrum, the Catch-22 of wanting nothing to do with living in our social contract of greed but knowing the time of year when Adam Smith is most worshipped is the time of each year when I could, if I gave in to the temptation, be most likely to go for hours without any strange electrical misfiring in my brain.

So what’s wrong with greed? I don’t know. I made the foolish decision somewhere along the line that I don’t want any part of this greediness. The fact is, of course, that it may be my mental “disorders” that brought about my decision in the first place. Another conundrum. My Bipolar Disorder and my Temporal Lobe Epilepsy prompted my decision to try to avoid the feeding-frenzy of greed , but the feeding-frenzy accounts for the time of year when my own greatest delight is useful to other people and I can be freed from the misfiring of my own brain more now than at any time of the year.

The real paradox is that I spent all of that time, instead of playing the organ or piano, making a little folder of meditations for the season I hate, in a language I have to work much too hard at to understand or communicate in. I am part of a community who speak Spanish—at my church (the greatest paradox of all—I doubt I will ever sort that one out), and I was trying to give them a gift. As if anything I would give anyone would be other than a cruel hoax.

OK. I love that community.

The aspect of Adam Smith’s Gospel of Greed that most repulses me is that, in greed, any given community can smugly reject any other community. As if we’re not all descended from that same chemical reaction billions of years ago that resulted in “life.” Feeding frenzies are also hatred frenzies that “…express an imagined difference and sameness, elaborated from actual or apparent differences such as race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, class, or gender. The cultural work of representations of boundaries is to enhance the differences and make them a part of a community’s self-conception, or ideology. The symbols of community themselves are heavily invested in signs of difference no less than commonality.”**

If the “Word became flesh,” then it became all flesh, not just Anglo Americans who live on the plastic they can slide through a machine at Target or Bloomingdale’s. **

**Morgan, David. “The look of sympathy: religion, visual culture, and the social life of feeling.” Material Religion 5.2 (2009): 132+.

Sicilian Mariners

Twentieth-century philosophers (especially those who think about thinking and writing) have written incessantly about “metanarrative.” The first time I heard the word in a graduate seminar, I boggled my mind asking, “Why can’t they just say ‘the big story,’ or, as Most Normal Americans would say, ‘the big picture’?”

The word “metanarrative” is a big word academics made up to sound smart. It’s like “homosexual,” a ridiculous pastiche of parts from two languages slopping around in languages resembling neither of the originals. Trying to sort out meaning is as fruitful as trying to figure out which of my cats knocked the philodendron off my kitchen counter while I was out.

(Today my “thesis” is more obscure than usual. My personal narrative begins and ends in confusion. Read on.)

I entertain myself finding word origins. This is not for “academic” purposes. I like to try to figure out what people are saying in reality—especially if they don’t mean what they say.

Meta-: prefix meaning 1. “after, behind,” 2. “changed, altered,” 3. “higher, beyond,” from Gk. meta (prep.) “in the midst of, among, with, after.” Definition of the third meaning, “higher, beyond,” is “due to misinterpretation of metaphysics as ‘transcending physical science.’”

Philosopher/academics add meta- to:  narrative, 1432, from L. narrationem from narrare “to tell, relate, recount, explain,” literally “to make acquainted with.”

“Metanarrative” means a (story, telling, recounting) that’s “higher” or “beyond” some other story.

“Metanarrative” is the Greek “big” coupled with the Latin “to tell.” I (who live in total untidiness) think it’s an untidy way to invent a word.

(I’m getting to my thesis, but I’m like Johann Gottfried Herder; see below.)

The French aren’t much tidier. They use métarécit.

They’ve used the Greek meta-, and added to it the Latin recitare “read aloud, repeat from memory,” from L. re- “back, again” + citare “to summon.” We can take our pick, “the narration (of a BIG story)” or “the recitation (of a BIG story).”

Shall we look for “the BIG one that got away?”

The BIG one got away

One day the semester of that graduate seminar, I was walking across campus. It must have been close to Christmas time (or not). I was humming an old German (not Greek, Latin, French, or English) Christmas carol sung to an Italian tune (see what musicologists know?). I learned this carol in high school German class in about 1962. It came to me that I could change the words, and

      O du fröhliche, o du selige,
      Gnadenbringende Weihnachtszeit! 

became forever etched in my mind as: 

     Metanarrative, metanarrative,
     Gnadenbringende Weihnachtszeit! 

From a carol in praise of “joyful, holy, Grace-giving Christmastime” to a hymn in praise of the “Grace-giving metanarrative.”  (O du fröhliche has five syllables with the first syllable accented as does “metanarrative,” so the words can be interchangeably set to the tune). Most Lutherans in this country, since a hymn about Italian fishermen strays too far from the metanarrative of Lutheran piety, know the tune with the words “Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing.” Obviously Italian Catholic Christmas words would not do for Lutherans, but the bouncy (folk) tune from Sicily (named “Sicilian Mariners”) is too much fun to jettison. 

Greek, Latin, and Italian to German, English, and the universal language of the academy, to say nothing of Christian Protestant versus Catholic theology. Now there’s a METANARRATIVE! 

We each have a story we tell ourselves about where we came from—because we remember it, or others have told us, or we’ve dreamed it (or perhaps consciously made it up), or it’s what really happened. Yesterday I found myself in the middle of a group of people almost none of whom I knew. Most of them were related in some way—brothers, sisters, cousins of brothers-in-law, mothers-in-law of brothers. It was Thanksgiving dinner. The host had also invited a few of his friends. I was there because he is a kind and gracious and generous man (my narrative about him, whether or not he knows it, is part of his story). 

I was chatting with someone who was not a member of the extended family, but was obviously close to our host. I asked if she “had known him forever.” She said they were in college together. I don’t know how long ago that was, but more recent than my college days. “I guess that qualifies as ‘forever,’” she added. In the narrative of her life and the host’s life, it is forever. 

I, on the other hand, have known him for only about six months. Is that “forever” in his narrative? One might not think so, except he and I have similar stories, and we have experienced similar shame and misery so deep and change and recovery so dramatic, that, based on our differing but congruent experience of grief and joy, we have become part of each other’s narratives in way that even his oldest and dearest friends cannot be for him—or most of mine for me. 

One of the few (always and continually) joyful aspects of the story I know, invent, tell myself about my life (oh—go ahead and say it, my “metanarrative”) is the layers of meaning I discover, mostly through other people. 

A tune arises from anonymous Sicilian fishermen. Johann Gottfried von Herder, a German philosopher (he studied with Kant and taught Goethe) tears himself away from the frigid north of Europe and travels to Italy. When he returns to the Land of Luther, he remembers the Sicilian Mariners’ tune (1788). (He was my kind of thinker. He wrote to his wife, “I have too little reason and too much idiosyncrasy.” He helped sow the seeds of Sturm und Drang in Germany, the romantic wildness that probably describes my thinking.) Another German Lutheran writes words that fit the unusual meter of the tune. The song becomes a favorite German Christmas Carol. Lutherans in 19^th-century America learn it, and it becomes one of their favorites. In 1962 Gretchen Schutte, teaching high school German in Omaha, Nebraska, teaches the carol (she is German Catholic, not Lutheran) to her (mainly Baptist and Jewish) classes. I discover the tune in many places, including set to non-Christmas words in Lutheran hymnals. One day I think of it when I am pondering metanarratives.

A metanarrative is born. Oh, I know, I know. That’s much too trivial to be a metanarrative in the Jacques Derrida or Victor Vitanza sense.

This is an extension of my recent mediation on the problem of God. The problem, as I see it, is mixing all of this purely human stuff up into some kind of “forever-ness.” God did not introduce the Sicilian fisherfolk to the German theologian. God didn’t inspire the 20^th-century philosophers to add “big” to “story” or “narrative.” God didn’t bring my Thanksgiving dinner friends and me together. We have to believe those things, those “big stories,” in order to believe we’re alive and well and living on Earth. Derrida and his ilk might agree with me about that.

But then they go right on making up their own “metanarrative” about how the “metanarrative” is not real, and they get trapped into their own avoidance. The only true philosophers or social critics or academics are people we’ve never heard of because they are living on mountainsides contemplating the universe, not metanarratives. Or, perhaps, they’re carrying on Jane Goodall’s work unraveling the only metanarrative that matters.

The only metanarrative that counts

Ischemic Stroke: sudden loss of function resulting from disruption of the blood supply to a part of the brain. Neurons die when they can no longer maintain aerobic respiration.

• Event usually the result of long-standing cerebrovascular disease
• early Tx results in fewer symptoms and less functional loss

5 different types

1. large thrombosis – 20%
2. small penetrating artery thrombosis – 25%
3. cardiogenic embolic stroke – 20%
4. cryptogenic 30%
5. Other – 5%

Large artery thrombosis strokes: due to atherosclerotic plaques in the large blood vessels of the brain. Thrombus formation and occlusion at the site af the atherosclerosis result in ischemia and infarction.

Small Penetrating artery thrombotic strokes: affect one or more vessels and are the most common type of ischemic stroke.

Aka lacunar strokes because of the cavity that is created once the infarcted brain tissue disintegrates.

Cardiogenic embolic strokes: are associated with cardiac dysrhythmias, usually atrial fibrillation. Emboli originate from the heart and circulate to the cerebral vasculature, most commonly the left middle cerebral artery, resulting in a stroke. Embolic strokes may be prevented by the use of anticoagulation therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation.

The 2 remaining categories of ischemic strokes are cryptogenic with no known cause and others causes such as cocaine, coagulopathies, migraine and spontaneous dissection of the carotid or vertebral arteries.

Pathophysiology:

Martin, Glenn and Porth, Carol, Mattson. 2009. Pathophysiology Concepts of Altered Health States. 8th ed. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. Philadelphia

3020702    โรคทางระประสาทในแผนกผู้ป่วย 1    Clinical Neurology I

อาการ และอาการแสดงของระบบประสาทที่พบบ่อย การตรวจทางห้องปฎิบัติการ การวินิจฉัย การสืบค้น การรักษาและการติดตามผลการรักษาโรคทางระบบประสาทในแผนกผู้ป่วยใน

(Neurological, systemic symptoms and sign, diagnosis, investigations and treatment of common neurologic disease for in-patients.)

(3020702 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

3020706    การวินิจฉัยโรคทางประสาทวิทยาด้วยไฟฟ้า 1    Electrodiagnosis in Neurology I

ประโยชน์ เทคนิค ข้อบ่งชี้ ข้อห้าม และการแปลผลการตรวจ วินิจฉัยโรคทางประสาทวิทยาด้วยไฟฟ้า

(Usefulness, techniques, indications, contraindications, and interpretation of neurological electrodiagnostic tests (EMG, EEG, EP))

(3020706 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

So, I’ll be honest–this blog is probably going to be extremely boring.  I’m not one to write boring blogs, but this one is really being written out of necessity.  Now, I could just go ahead and write this out on paper…but since I’m a geek, I figured one online would be more interesting.  In addition to that, I figure that, for at least SOME people, it could be informative as well, which is always good.

Here’s my little intro, and a description of my whole ordeal up until this point:  Hi, my name is Renae, I’m 20 years old, and I get migraines.

And not just those “oh my god, my head is KILLING me” migraines–I mean, I DO get those–but I get optic migraines as well.  Most people don’t know what these are (honestly, neither did I until about 5 months ago), so I’ll explain.

Basically, an optic migraine is kind of what it sounds like–a migraine with your eyes.  But the ones that I get (and this is, apparently, how they usually occur) don’t have any pain associated with them.  I’ll basically get a horizontal lightning bolt-like flashing in my eyes…kind of like when someone takes a picture of you, and you get the camera flash stuck in your eyes.  It makes it so that I can still see, but I can’t focus on words very well, and it lasts for about 15 minutes or so.
If you have a very severe one–which I did, in April of this year–it can even affect your speech.

I work in customer service (doing troubleshooting and taking orders for kitchen appliances over the phone), and in April, I got my first–and so far, only–severe optic migraine. 
I had gotten optic migraines before, but only with the flashing in my eyes.  I associated it to dehydration, and didn’t really think anything of it.  I would just drink a lot of water, and of course, after about 15 minutes, it would go away.
With this one, though, I was in the middle of talking to a customer, taking their order, and I started slurring my speech and mixing up my words and syllables.  I was trying to tell them the total of their order, and I just couldn’t get the numbers right.  I don’t remember what their actual total was, but, for example, if their total was $56.22, I kept telling them their total was $26.52, or “25. 62″…that sort of thing.
Eventually, I concentrated extremely hard, got their CORRECT total out, and put them on hold…at which point, I proceeded to freak out.
Everything in my head felt okay–I was able to comprehend everything that I was saying and everything that was going on around me–but for some reason, it was like my brain had been rewired, and I couldn’t say out loud what I was thinking inside my head.

After talking to my supervisor, and telling her what was going on, they called the paramedics.  By the time they got to my workplace, the optic migraine had ended, so when they checked all of my vitals, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for an increased heart rate (which is to be expected, granted the circumstances).  I opted not to take a ride in the ambulance (which can cost a lot on a medical bill, depending on your insurance), but had my boyfriend pick me up and take me to  the ER, just to make sure that I hadn’t had a mini stroke or seizure (or possibly something worse). 

The ER doctors examined my eyes, gave me a CAT scan, a basic blood test, and a urinalysis, and the results?

Nothing.

They said that everything came back completely fine, but they suggested that I go see my PCP the next day for a follow-up, which is exactly what I did…and she couldn’t find anything, either (although, I DO have to give her SOME credit–she said she really didn’t know what it was, but that there was a possibility that it was migraines…or a mini seizure). 
So she referred me to both an ophthalmologist and a neurologist, and she also told me I should get an MRI done, since a CAT scan isn’t as in-depth as an MRI.
If you’ve ever had a neurologist appointment, you’ll know that it’s not an easy feat to accomplish.  You have to schedule the appointment at LEAST a month in advance.  So, I wound up getting the MRI the same day I saw my PCP, and saw an ophthalmologist a week or two later.

Results from the ophthalmologist?

Again, nothing.  She said I had no disease in my eyes, and couldn’t understand why this had happened to me, but said that I should definitely see a neurologist.

Finally, the neurology appointment came, about 2 months after the whole ordeal started.  I go into the office, sit down, and wait for the doctor.  She comes in, looks over my MRIs, and tells me that she doesn’t see anything abnormal on them.  I described to her the symptoms that I had, and after about two seconds, she told me that I get “complex migraines” (another popular term for “optic migraines”), and proceeded to explain to me what they were.

So, after thousands of dollars in medical bills and two months of thinking I might be dying, I found out that I got migraines.

Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off.

But definitely glad to have an answer.
The neurologist, Dr. Lara Katzin (an extremely nice woman), told me to pay attention to these migraines over the next few months, see if they become more frequent, and she scheduled a follow-up appointment with me.

Which brings me to the reason why I have started this blog.
The follow-up appointment was this past Tuesday (Nov. 24), and yes, I have been getting them (along with traditional headache-like migraines)  more frequently.  I started out getting them maybe once or twice a month, and now I get them about once or twice a week.  Dr. Katzin prescribed a migraine medication to me (don’t know the name of it off the top of my head, and I don’t have the paperwork in front of me…if anyone’s interested to know what it is, just leave me a comment, and I’ll get back to you later), and suggested that I start a “migraine diary,” seeing as optic migraines, like traditional migraines, can be triggered by different things such as lights, sounds, and smells.  That way, I can see if there’s something triggering them, so I can possibly control them (and therefore, not have to be on medication).

And, here we are.
My Migraine Diary.

I’ll be documenting each one that I get, and what I was doing at the time, to see if there is any kind of pattern to it.
I figured I would make it public so as to try and help people, like I said before.  Because I’m sure that there are people out there who, just like me, get optic migraines, but don’t have any idea what they actually are (which can be pretty terrifying).

If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask–I’m an open book, honestly, and I’ll tell you all that I know!

-Renae