We MET LAURA!!! AND, create our own mini-biology lesson :)

Maury sent out a picture from where he and the family are in Florida.  He says the guy in his picture is Hulk Hogan.  I’m THINKING its real … But, with Maury you just can’t be sure L

Then we saw this … We’re eating crow for giving Maury a hard time he met Hulk … This guy is DEF Hulk!

Friday, October 12, 2012 @ 4:09 pm

Hi hi … it’s me … and we’re writing at an unusual time of the day for us.  It is now 4 pm.  Usually, this is the slowest time of the day for us, but we are just trying to calm ourselves.  We had such an exceptional day.  We had lunch with our Grandson’s Mom for the first time in about ten years and I just feel incredibly buzzed with excitement.  I’m thinking I have to keep most the conversation private because that’s the goal, but I also want to leave some memories of the experience here too.  We met at about 11 am and we talked for about 1 ½ hours.  The conversation went quickly and had a LOT to be interested in.  We talked and talked as if it had been a long-met craving.  I find absolutely everything she does with or without Austin (my Grandson) extremely interesting!  Oh Lordy did we get excited!!!

Laura has a Master’s degree now in School Counseling which she has done for five years, and she now has a new position working as a child counselor of an crises/abuse center.  She is also as part of that position doing group and program planning and meets kids individually.  It is just soooo gosh darn exciting.  If I had been free of abuse (but am not) I would have chosen Laura’s career because of its criticalness in the world’s history.  I just can’t say enough about the path she is taking.  I feel like I want to know everything all at once.  I knew that abuse counseling would have been too much for me because of its being very triggering.  But, people who can do it are Godsends in the lives of many.  She has her license of professional counseling!  OMG that is just so impressionable!  AND, she did it while raising OUR Grandson!!!  Just really bowled over!

I know … we got to get a grip on it again.  We’re just in a glow!  We talked about meeting again and into the future AND we set-up a date, Saturday October 27, 2012 to be meeting Austin.  We’ll meet at the same restaurant.  OMG … she just says so many terrific things about him.  He’s *giggling* umm trying (like his father), but is just incredibly smart and funny and GREAT!  All rolled-up in one.  Feeling so fortunate to be finally meeting him – ok, this is where the tears start-up again.  We’re hoping the time flies past until it is our turn to spend time with him.

After we got back we had to decompress a bit.  Did I mention exciting!!!   There will never be another meeting like it!  Just tremendously unique and with all the wondrousness of a simple budding flower!  LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, really not doing good here calming down.  SHHHH girls.  One thing at a time.  I guess we need to come back to walking on Earth.  We did get a chance to talk to Linda after we got back and so that helped a lot.  AND, we were talking about getting together with a couple of our quilting friends soon!  That’s a NOTHER excitement!  More on that later!

Got to meet Laura … Got to meet Laura!  Oh Lordy this is going to be a tough one.  Maybe we can sidetrack our excitement with figuring out our meeting last night with Dr. Marvin.  HMM?

Hehehe there was something new about that meeting!  It probably sounds a little funny, but after 13 years of meeting with him, we decided somehow between parts to taking a “laying down” position on his couch.  We NEVER do that.  We usually have a corner we like to sit and that’s about it.  He had been over on the computer, no bookshelves, no computer I think.  But, he was taking his time … and somehow the idea started in our minds that we would really like to lie down.  We looked-up and saw he was still busy … and we were thinking … Hmm, why not?  Then it was like man!  That be a pretty bold trick!  But, then again … WHY NOT!??  We didn’t understand why we wanted to do it – just that it was an inclination that was held down by little prohibition.  We kind of quietly nudged the things next to us – our electronics and keys to the coffee table.  Hmm, that was an experience too.  We ALWAYS keep them on the seat next to us.  But, we did it … which might have startled Dr. Marvin, because I think he looked up.  BUT, I think SOMEone told him we were definitely going to lay down.  He probably smiled and went back to his reading, but to US it was HUGE!

It took a couple minutes to get comfortable and then we were just so gosh darn pleased with ourselves, you might have thought we were drinking … however, we were not!  He finally came back to sit down and there we were … we umm kept our feet on the floor.  We don’t know the rules of this sort of thing.  But, for the rest of the session somewhere between 20-30 minutes we talked from the horizontal position.  I think Dr. Marvin asked how it felt.  It took a couple of stumbly attempts to figure it out, but we were lead mostly to the feelings that it felt wonderful!  Sort of being in a cuddled position.  I don’t know the implications of having made this move, or how long it will take to repeat itself, but we’re thinking we’re moving into a whole new realm!

The two Casies we’re out with Casey and KC asking all sorts of questions on things biologically suited toward neurology of the brain.  Yeah go figure … it is an upcoming interest with us in that we are reading more about how different sequencing of events leads from one mental process to the other.  It has to do with the work we are doing reading Dell’s book.  There is just so much curiosity in our system and it is the most favorite thing we all do.  We like to figure things out. 

It strikes us very much that there is so much more information now than previous about how the chemical structure in the brain works after having been set-off by experiences – particularly right now with abuse and trauma.  We’re looking at it more that our brains enabled us to continue living when everything else would have exerted that we be dead by now.  I am still not at the point of feeling real comfortable with all that must have happened to divide our mind to its dissociative conclusion, but at this point, we are willing to take a little peak of that reality too.  One of the things we held onto strongly remembering is Dr. Marvin’s conversation on neurons, and brain structures like the thalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala.  We went over how that set of structures was sort of an old-fashioned switchboard and connected our emotions to other things … we’re not sure we remember what yet.  It’s like we just learned the brain has its own set paths and procedures and its feeling brand new to us – though I’m enough of a psych student to say that we must have some background information on this.  I remember at one point we took a Master’s course in cognitive psychology.  Pretty sure we looked at a brain then, because it was when we had purchased two coloring books because we had been interested then too on how everything inside works together.  One book is “The Anatomy Coloring Book,” and the other book is “The Human Brain Coloring Book.”  Someone told Dr. Marvin it was time to take them down again.

One of the nicest things about Dr. Marvin is that no matter what we want to think about he’s right there with us.  Yesterday we were trying to hold onto his conversation as if it were the last thing on Earth we would ever know.  Part of the discussion also was on the chemistry aspects of things like Dopamine, Serotonin, GABA, and Nortriptyline.  All of these were somewhere in our vocabulary with the exception of GABA, but we learned they were part of what makes the main neurotransmitters communicate between neurons.  Dr. Marvin was trying to tell us about what the neurotransmitters do, but for here we have to look back in Wikipedia.  Let’s see …

In REALLY light learning - GABA is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system … so medicines with it would increase GABA in the system to relax or act as anti-anxiety or anti-convulsive . 

Ok, that makes sense … then Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and it seems most likely to be associated with reward-seeking behaviors, such as approach, consumption, and addiction, but that gets also tied to motivate people to perform certain activities such as learning.  I wonder if part of why we learn is because of increases of dopamine making us feel good about finding things interesting and new.  I think Dr. Marvin said that schizophrenics have too much dopamine.  The Wikipedia says that dopamine is released by rewarding experiences such a food, sex, drugs, and other more neutral stimuli.  It is also asa dysfunction affecting autism and ADHD.  The article says that there is evidence that when a reward is greater than expected more dopamine firings occur which then increases the desire or motivation towards the reward.  There is a sort of warning in that dopamine is more affected by wanting than actually liking what is wanted.  It also has to do with an effect that increases the creative drive of generating ideas and in feeling contentment from social interactions.  In general the article says that we repeat behaviors that lead to maximizing rewards so that dopamine provides a teaching signal to parts of the brain responsible for acquiring new behavior – so, basically a reward system.

Hmm, just a note here.  We read a large section on anti-anxiety, particularly Risperidone, but we’re not real happy with what was learned.  I do now know that it is a “atypical anti-psychotic it is being utilized by our doctor as mostly toward anti-anxiety.

I just want to look at a few more things – the first being serotonin.  Wikipedia states that serotonin contributes to feelings of well-being and happiness.  It helps to regulate mood, appetite, and sleep and has other cognitive functions including memory and learning – it also states that several classes of antidepressants modulate serotonin at the point of synapse.  It is another neurotransmitter and is known to regulate gaining, learning and memory.  It is also known to go down as people age.  The Wikipedia also states that serotonin is involved with the perception of food availability AND also of social rank.  I wonder if that has anything to do with our perception or fear in running out of food or not having food - as a remnant of my past where food was not given as a way to control behavior.  In general I had very low social status in the house.  If someone like my mother or father had increases of serotonin, they would act or behave like dominant animals.  It is also said to inhibit the fleeing reaction in subordinates – or I would then assume those with lower social skills.  The article says hat social experience alters the proportion between serotonin receptors that have opposing effects on the fight-or-flight response.  Dominant people have a predomination of 5-HT2 receptors and the subordinate animals have 5-HT1 receptors – the 5-HT1 shows a negative correlation with aggression.  The article also states that a mutation in the gene that codes for the 5-HT2A receptor may double the risk of suicide.  Hmm, have to talk to Dr. Marvin about that.  Can these things be found out through tests?  It says that serotonin levels are affected by diet and that some foods produce a lower ratio of serotonin and some produce a higher ratio of serotonin.  Increasing serotonin to secrete more insulin for a long period may also trip Type 2 diabetes.  Lastly the article says that serotonin released while consuming activates 5-HT2C receptors on dopamine-producing cells halts their dopamine release, and thereby serotonin decreases appetite, but when drugs block 5-HT2c it makes it so the receptors make the body unable to shut off appetite which will make someone increase weight.

Ok, one more thing … I know I keep saying that.  Just to get down basic neurotransmitters story which was one of the things Dr. Marvin was trying to help me understand is that they are chemicals as discussed above that transmit “on/off” signals from a neuron to a target cell across the synapse.  They are released with sufficient action potential or electrical potentials… they then travel across the synapse to bind with specific receptors and reuptake pumps bring them back to the axon terminal to regenerate, or something kinda close to this.  Ok, this is new too .. there are several ways to classify neurotransmitters and GABA is an Amino acid … and the rest including dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine (which is adrenaline – didn’t know that), histamine and serotonin.  Peptides and others are too complicated for me yet, but are also neurotransmitters. 

Oh oh … this seems important … the article says that the most prevalent transmitter is glutamate.  It is a fast excitatory synapse jumper in both the brain and spinal cord and can modify the synapse and is well over 90% of the brains synapses.  The article says that modifiable synapses are thought to be the main memory-storage elements in the brain and that if excessive glutamate is released (and we’re thinking here of Dr. Marvin talking about abuse), then it can lead to excitotoxicity which causes cell death.  We talked to Dr. Marvin last night about something we read that abuse can kill gray matter brain cells and so shrink that area of the brain especially memories.  That’s when we started to get really concerned – and we asked him if there were tests that we could order that would check out the functioning of our brain.  He said that we could get a MRI and that the result would be read by a professional and might tell us something about how our brain is functioning.

Anyway other than that … the next most popular neurotransmitter is GABA which is for fast inhibitory synapses of more than 90% of the synapses that don’t use glutamate.  Excitatory increase the likelihood that the target cell will fire an action potential, but not all neurotransmitters are excitatory or inhibitory.  It says that most sedative/tranquilizing drugs act by enhancing the effects of GABA.  Dopamine again plays a critical role in the reward system, but dysfunction at this level could lead to Parkinson’s disease (too little) and schizophrenia (too much).  Serotonin is produced and found in the intestine (approximately 90%) and the rest is found in the central nervous system.  It regulates appetite, sleep, memory and learning, temperature, mood, behavior, muscle contraction, and function of the cardiovascular system and endocrine system.  It is thought to have a role in depression (lower concentration of serotonin in cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue). 

One more … a new one here, but it says substance P is a neurotransmitter action that is responsible for transmission of pain … that’s like absolute no good … it is in the central nervous system.  Ok, one last last thing we should know … after a neurotransmitter is done, it is broken down and either recycled or diffused and eliminated through the kidneys or destroyed in the liver.  Going to leave a teaser here … the next part we want to learn about is how the regulatory system works as to calming down emotions when the body/mind systems are overloaded.  Ok, girls?  Done GOOD!  Nice concentration!

I think that’s enough learning about bio-chemistry for the day.  I think Dr. Marvin would like that … hmm, thinking he must be part of our motivational system … so we must have let through some dopamine into the system through just THINKING of him.  Hehehe.  Ok, that’s enough of that.  Hopefully, if Dr. Marvin you read this … please correct any information that we misunderstood.  PLEASE!  I think we’re going to get this stuff at this point of our life.  Enough at least so when we reread Dell’s book on dissociation we’ll come up with some more and more informed discussions.  Ok, that’s probably true … we’ll try to have one on your more Freudian couch.  We’re thinking we’re on to something here!

Ok, 8 pm … taking a break here.  We also took our medicine. 

Wow … it is now much later in that it is 10:45 PM, so we’ve been away from our entry for almost 3 hours.  For the majority of the time we were talking to Linda and she even went through a hard process for her of leaving comments in the blog.  YAY!  We’ll know that she READ US!  AND, we’ll know maybe a few of her thoughts … Always looking for responses from our work.  That includes you too!  After that we hung around FB a little and posted some pictures (HULK HOGAN) and then we reread what we’d written, and now now is now.  Don’t you love how that works?

I guess I am feeling a little tired, but I don’t want my writing time to be over.  I don’t know either whether or not we finished the conversation with Dr. Marvin.  I know toward the end with about 12 minutes to go, we asked him to tell us when there was 3 minutes left, because when we laid down we had trouble reading the clock.  That didn’t seem to be any problem … and there were those few moments in-between where we could sit up and readjust to having to leave his office again.  Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like something we want to do. 

We were pretty excited that we might be able to remember some of these thoughts – especially on biology and we DID IT!  At least enough to gain some perspective with that added to Wikipedia.

Ok, I suppose then Dr. Marvin’s appointment is pretty much written out as to what our experience was.  I don’t know if you got the full just – or we got the full just of laying on his couch.  We were surprised with how comfortable Dr. Marvin was of it, but it seemed also he knew that it was a new experience for us.  He’s always SOOOO patient with his patient!  I think one of the things that we’re thinking now in trying to remember those feelings more clearly was that he was – even though still on his side of the coffee table – appearing much higher/taller than we were.  Also because we were asking something that was easy for him, but difficult for us to understand, and sometimes we just get in those curious time of asking questions it’s like a game to fill-in-our own blanks.  I remember we said something about if those parts knew then maybe it would branch into knowledge also more knowable to all of us.  I think we’re going to need repeating some of this and also storytelling it into other experiences that we’re having so we can cement it to our thought processes.  I really believe that it takes some time … some say like 23

Let me look …

Oh my gosh … this is so cool … it fits into our new learning theories.

Quoted from Wise Geek at http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-muscle-memory.htm#lbimages is that:

Muscle memory can best be described as a type of movement with which the muscles become familiar over time. For instance, newborns don’t have muscle memory for activities like crawling, scooting or walking. The only way for the muscles to become accustomed to these activities is for the baby to learn how to do these things and then practice them with a great deal of trial and error. Gradually, as the baby becomes a skilled walker, he falls less, is able to balance, and finally is able to incorporate other activities into his life such as running.

Although the precise mechanism of muscle memory is unknown, what is theorized is that anyone learning a new activity, or practicing an old one has significant brain activity during this time. The walking child is gradually building neural pathways that will give the muscles a sense of muscle memory. In other words, even without thinking, the child is soon able to walk, and the muscles are completely accustomed to this process. The child doesn’t have to tell the body to walk; the body just knows how to do it, largely because neurons communicate with the muscles and say, “walk now.”

Ok, this is me again … the article was so good and we did reference it so for ease … we are going to paste the rest of it here because it wasn’t very long … hold on … This is it.

Muscle memory thus becomes an unconscious process. The muscles grow accustomed to certain types of movement. This is extremely important in different types of training for sports. The more often you do a certain activity, the more likely you are to do it as needed, when needed. If you’ve kicked thousands of field goals, exercise physiologists assume that the likelihood of being able to kick one during an American football game is pretty good through muscle memory. You don’t have to think, “I need to make this kick.” Your body already knows how to do it.

This is one of the reasons that with many activities that involve the body’s muscles, like playing an instrument, learning appropriate technique is always stressed. You want your muscle memory to reflect the correct way to do things, not the incorrect way. Your muscle memory can actually play against you if you’ve constantly been practicing something the wrong way.

Music teachers often make this contention. It’s a lot harder to teach someone who’s been playing an instrument for a few years because the first step is breaking them of all the bad habits they’ve acquired, which are now part of the muscle memory. Similarly, if you learn to bat, throw, kick or pitch wrong, your muscle memory has to be overcome, and new neural pathways formed to be a better athlete.

Most top level athletes and performers in a variety of fields believe that muscle memory is best developed when the same activities are practiced over and over again, with any corrections of form that are needed. Continual practice may mean you can make that perfect golf swing every single time (or almost), or hit a high note every time if you’re a singer.

It does appear though, that despite practice, attitude can interfere with muscle memory. Nerves can lead to clenched muscles that can’t quite perform, as they would probably do if you weren’t thinking about it. A sense of being unable to perform as you would wish may also affect muscle memory. The processes are still complex, and the “confidence factor” needs to be taken into account in future studies on muscle memory.

Ok, back again.

Basically, without getting too much into music or sports, but basically any kind of learning … the process of doing something over and over again to teach the muscle memory is important in becoming automatic - like certainly we don’t think too much about how to type when we are writing because it is just engrained in our memory.  I would have to think all learning processes are like that where if we just focus on doing something the same over and over again that it becomes more natural.  I see like when Rich follows his normal weekly program, there is just one time or another he will let me know he’s going grocery shopping.  He has processes to tell him when and why and to get what, but he doesn’t put too much thought in it … where we on the other hand who DOESN’T practice the skill of grocery shopping become very discombobulated at just having to leave out of the house.  Simple things like getting dressed can be a real mental strain, but maybe that is because we practice being overwhelmed for such a long time.  Maybe then there is something to say about overthinking areas that have caused us problems … we just have to get up and move GENTLY to walk through new processes until our brain is remembering that we do the new thing.

We will take into mind this last article where it suggests that thinking that you are not good enough or be able to perform would affect your performance.  Maybe then the brain goes into this secondary task analysis where you can do it once or twice, but find that it is too stressful to continue pushing … at least that’s how we are operating.  We’re thinking here of all the practices we’ve started with Rich and Dr. Marvin around.  I think they must say to themselves … sure she’ll try this, but after a short while she’ll be wanting to try something new all over again.  We don’t seem to get as much out of practicing as we do looking for new systems of thought.

Ok, one last note ... it is the next day so we are going to post this entry and move on, but before we left we were studying memory aid systems and we downloaded one program called FullRecall.  We didn't experiment with it a lot, but apparently it is like a note card.  You can type in any question for something you want to remember and then you type in the answer and repeat building as many cards as you would like - though this might be the system that maxes out at 500, but you can open more databases.  But, anyway the beauty of the system is that it works with algorithms so that when you respond in the quizzes of trying to answer your questions (remember) then you are given a way to grade yourself like 0-5 ... When you reach 5 which is something like remembering well or easily, then the algorithms don't ask you those questions as frequently and then correspondingly to not remembering well those questions come up more frequently.  They are supposed to randomize too so that your mind is used properly.  Wow ... really happy with that program.  Maybe we can think of ways to use it in remembering things about our outline for the new book.  I would love to remember more where people are at and be attached so that I can match multiples with their circumstances.  I think it would be more personally fulfilling.

Ok, that's enough for now ... see you around the turn!

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