WellCookedFetus said:
I think "focus" is the word, Alpha start a vote who thinks the answer is "focus"?
Possibly. Proprioception refers to the self-body image. But, I'm not so sure it has to do with a conscious manipulation of it. I don't know if there is a 'specific' name for it. Focus seems as good as any.
QQ said:
Excuse me If I ramble a little. This has been a rather emotional moment for me.
Not at all. Rambling is perfectly acceptable in my book. But, I'm a convicted rambler.
The pain that i experienced was felt on the left side of my skull just above the joining of the nape to the skull ( approximately 1 inch above this join)
Close to the ear? Behind the ear? In front of the ear? Sounds like parietal/occipital. Possible involving some of the temporal. I am unsure of how these superimpose precisely in the skull. I'm used to seeing brains deskulled.
Also, not entirely sure if pain would actually be an indicator of location. The brain doesn't feel pain,
I have intuitively realised for years now that it is part of our primary will which exists on the right side and approximately the same height.
That's quite the intuitive leap. May I ask what led you to this conclusion? I'm not entirely certain what part of the brain you're referring to, but I personally feel that it's likely that the will would be more in the frontal. The inhibition centers. Will being more about suppressing undesired thought and action rather than causing desired thought and action. This is a thought that just occurred to me. I'm surprised I never considered it earlier. Language without this inhibition is a free-flowing nonsense factory. With it, we are able to direct out thoughts along productive lines. I haven't spoken of the frontal lobes inhibition abilities in this thread, have I? Oy, so many brain threads...
From what I have deduced...intuitively for men we have two main will centres..the left being female and the right being male. So the left and right sides of the brain have a will each...as you have elluded to in another thread ( nexus)
Sort of. It's a bit more complicated, but sort of. And, I suppose if you wanted you could call them male and female, but you have them backwards, IMO. The left being male (rational, analytical) and the right being female (emotional, spacially-oriented). I don't necessarily like this genderfication of the hemispheres though. Leads one to a specific way of thinking that I feel is not entirely accurate. And, you're also forgetting the limbic system. There's another will. And also the autonomic system has it's own bit of will. And the body has it's own will, reflex action and the like. We are composed of far more than two wills. But, perhaps we could agree on two
thinking wills. Although the 'thinking' of the right is alien to our awareness.
The will centre as I call it governs where and what we point to with our minds and imagination. Where as the right side does the actual moving.
Hmm. Not so sure about this either. Both sides do their own moving. As is evidenced in the split brain studies. When the hemispheres are connected and functioning properly, they communicate to some degree. Things are passed back and forth and this is how you can consciously move your left arm. This movement center is a vertical slice directly behind the frontal lobe. Right behind Broca's expressive speech area (which is immediately adjacent to the movement centers for the face, the mouth.) and Exner's writing area (immediately above Broca's area.) Sandwiched between the primary motor and the parietal is the primary sensory. The secondary sensory is the superior parietal and the angular gyrus is the inferior.
Crap, I'm undoubtably just confusing the shit out of you. I'll try to find a good picture of the brain.
By the way, are you right handed or left handed? Some few lefties actually have their lateralization reversed.
My peronality changed incredibly from a light hearted flipant carefree kid to a serious, philosophical teanager who whilst hopeleess at school managed to become quite proficient at music.....( have worked professionally )
Interesting. This may lead to the temporal. Read this:
"Patients who have had trauma (gend: as in seizure or cva's) to the temporal lobes have heightened emotions and see cosmic significance in trivial events.......they tend to be humorless, full of self-importance and to mantain elaborate diaries that record quotidian events in elaborate detail. Some are sticky in converstation, argumentative, pedantic, egocentric and curiously are obsessively preoccupied with philosophical and theological issues."- Ramachandran, p. 180 - Gendy in the Kaballah.
Well, shit, that didn't read quite like I remembered it. Some of the characteristics might apply. QQ, you realize that once Gendanken get's back and realizes the specimen we have in you, you won't be able to shake her. You're lucky you're on the other side of the globe from us. If you lived close by, we might come swooping in with tests and questions. You'd never get any peace.
Anyway, the music thing is interesting. Music is actually handled by both sides of the brain rather than just the right. It is mostly in the right, but certain aspects (rhythm and tempo) are handled by the analytical left.
I entered the reals of research into telepathy and various other esoteric studies. I came to realise many truths about our physical and metaphysical existence simply becasue the subliminal nature of our existence became exposed as this condition allowed.
The telepathic center of the brain resides right next to the right side will centre (outgoing) where as on the left side resides the telepathic centre ( in coming)
Perhaps the temporal scarring took time for the religious obsession, manic pattern-finding, to begin in earnest. Pardon me, QQ, but I don't believe in these phenomena. I feel that if they existed, there would be no denying them. They would be proven and utilized in everyday life. As they're not, I feel that they are errors in judgement. The interpreter mechanism at it's finest.
An example of just one experience was I woke up one night in bed and couldn;t move my right leg. When I finally did I realised it was broken below the knee and the pain was incredible......but I also realised it wasn't my leg that was broken. It belonged to someone else and I knew who it belonged to.
Thus after this and similar experiences I realised that empathic responses where possible at this level.
Or perhaps (more likely IMO) you experienced a loss of proprioception. Not only did you lose the proprioception, but you lost even the awareness of it. You didn't know, and you didn't know that you didn't know. This happens when certain areas of the brain are damaged. Areas whose functions are to report damage or nonfunctioning of it's partner. In the absence of direct data from relevant portions of the brain, we confabulate. It wasn't your leg, it must have been someone else's leg. Empathic and telepathic phenomenon. Error.
So I just kept on having similar experiences until I controlled this ability. At this time I had virtually no voice, no ability to express my concerns or experiences.
Could you think? In words that is. There is another thread going on about whether we can think (logically) without words. I tend to believe that words (language of some kind) are integral to the process. Without them we can know, but we can't know we know.
And the most wayward ability is this proprioception.
The ability to control what you point to. the direction your focus takes.
I have attempted to exercise this in my poor attempts at meditation and relaxation techniques. I shift my awareness about my body. Starting with the skin on the top of my head and circling around my body. Working my way down. It's a workout and I am always distracted in the attempt and have to redouble my efforts to maintain the small focus. Do you attempt to focus this ability towards muscle groups? I.e. moving the muscles of your little finger while not moving any other muscle in the hand? That would come in quite handy for a musician, wouldn't it?
Even now I have great difficulty reading as I can't fully control the co-ordnation of imagination to sight to comprehension.
Well, that explains why you haven't heard of proprioception until now. Gendanken and I were discussing this amongst ourselves a bit and were surprised that you hadn't heard of it already. We've been bandying the term about quite a bit lately. It was originally brought up in the Look of Other Eyes thread in which you were taking part. I actually hesitated posting the bit from Sacks in this thread. Thinking that perhaps that quote had inspired your curiousity in this area and wasn't needed. I posted it anyway so that anyone not following the other thread might learn of it. Good thing I did.
JohnConnellan said:
I think a lot more important than that is our (also intrinsic) autonomic nervous system.
More important how? To living certainly, but not to our thought processes. And, the cortex has greater control over movement than the ANS. The cerebellum seems to have more to do with balance than conscious muscle movement. I could be wrong. The books I have been reading haven't dealt much with the cerebellum.
In animals such as reptiles, the brain stem and cerebellum dominate. For this reason it is commonly referred to as the "reptilian brain". It has the same type of archaic behavioural programs as snakes and lizards. It is rigid, obsessive, compulsive, ritualistic and paranoid, it is "filled with ancestral memories". It keeps repeating the same behaviours over and over again, never learning from past mistakes ... This brain controls muscles, balance and autonomic functions, such as breathing and heartbeat. This part of the brain is active, even in deep sleep.
http://www.ezls.fb12.uni-siegen.de/mkroedel/paul_maclean.html
QQ said:
this prepriorception extends also to the autonmic nervous system in the most part at a very deep subconscious level. The ability to slow and speed the heart, cause hormonal releases that effect strength and other factors are all proprioceptive.
I think you're carrying proprioception too far. It is a feedback system. Not a control system. It is the homonculous within our minds. It is what our mind's eye can focus on and say "See! I have a body!"
You also mention the members of the limbic system in regards to proprioception. You must remember that the brain is a series of onion peels. A series of structures that are built above, below, and through each other. The limbic system, while it undoubtably lends it share of functioning to the system, is below the neocortex. Makes me wonder... Do reptiles have proprioception? Primitive mammals with nearly no neocortex? Humans are the only animal with an angular gyrus, but other animals do have the primary and secondary sensory centers. Hmm. Interesting thought.
Getting long again. I'll leave you with a quote.
The President of the United States is lying in bed, waving his right hand at his Secretary of State in a gesture of dismissal. The President is alert and seems intelligent. He is talking forcefully, angry at his subordinate, who has suggested that the President is ill and perhaps should delegate some of his duties to others until he recovers.
Indeed, the President's left side seems to be totally paralyzed -from a recent stroke. His left arm lies limp. The President cannot walk because his left leg will not function. However, the President seems blissfully unaware of this disorder, steadfastly denying that there is anything wrong with him. It is, of course, this denial of his illness that has particularly upset the President's personal and official families. They have tried to reason with him, pointing out to him that his left arm is lying there, paralyzed. But he denies that it is his left arm. Indeed, he is somewhat puzzled about what a strange arm and leg are doing in his bed with him.
http://williamcalvin.com/Bk1/bk1ch7.htm
Some of what is said on this page (the whole book is actually online) seems... wrong to me. Strange effects for temporal lesions. Effects I wouldn't think would occur to damage in the areas they're mentioning, but Calvin is an accredited neurologist. Perhaps I misunderstood some things. After I read more in the real world, I'm going back to this site to give it a more thorough working over.