Remaking: introduction
I remember being in a 5th grade music class when I learned a peculiar skill.
Does anyone know the name of that "dance" with the two long sticks? I never remember what it's called. Two people sit down with parallel sticks in their hands. They hold the sticks out wide and click them on the ground twice, then they bring the two sticks together to make them click in mid-air just above the ground. The dancer(s) step back and forth between the moving sticks. What's that called? It's sort of like a poor man's jump rope game. If you're too poor to afford rope, then there are always a few sticks laying around, right?
Anyway, the rhythm and the movement of bringing the sticks together/apart repeatedly, it got my 5th-grader mind to wandering. I eventually wondered what it would be like to "confuse" my left side sensation with my right side sensation in my body. Sort of like taking the sticks and then "throwing" each of them into the other. The momentum of clicking the sticks together and making my arms shake was enough to suggest what the sensation would be like. Wondering is apparently enough of a spur to make it happen.
I eventually concentrated on a spot on my ankle (which had a very light strain... I dunno, from earlier dancing?) and successfully swapped it to the other leg. I knew that the other ankle was in perfect shape, however, so I ended up losing the pain in the process. I felt no pain in either ankle. I experimented over the years, and as long as there was some bilateral symmetry to take advantage of, I could swap/lose various tactile sensations this way. For reasons I never figured out, it always cost me a slight bit of nausea during the process.
So I was about 11 years old when I discovered that I could consciously (but temporarily) reshape the way my brain processed stimuli. I didn't do anything particularly remarkable with the skill until many years later, when my old self faced dire circumstances and I needed to do something drastic in order to survive.
When I drop hints here and there about Remaking myself, I mean more than just changing my location and practicing new habits. I've done it once before in the past, and I hope to do it once again in the future too. This is what I mean by someday walking into the forest and losing my skill with language. I intend to explain the extent of Remaking sometime, but doing that means first remembering unpleasant times in my past, so I'll delay for a little while longer. :)
For now, I'll just drop another hint and point out that some researchers "found that a type of neuron implicated in autism spectrum disorders remodels itself in a strip of brain tissue only as thick as four sheets of tissue paper". They say that this example "sheds new light on the potential flexibility of cerebral cortex circuitry and architecture in higher-level brain regions that contribute to perception and cognition".
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/brain-remodel-1124.html
They're trying to figure out why these neurons are so plastic so that maybe someday they can start a Remaking process in other people too. It could become a tremendously useful regeneration treatment.
Does anyone know the name of that "dance" with the two long sticks? I never remember what it's called. Two people sit down with parallel sticks in their hands. They hold the sticks out wide and click them on the ground twice, then they bring the two sticks together to make them click in mid-air just above the ground. The dancer(s) step back and forth between the moving sticks. What's that called? It's sort of like a poor man's jump rope game. If you're too poor to afford rope, then there are always a few sticks laying around, right?
Anyway, the rhythm and the movement of bringing the sticks together/apart repeatedly, it got my 5th-grader mind to wandering. I eventually wondered what it would be like to "confuse" my left side sensation with my right side sensation in my body. Sort of like taking the sticks and then "throwing" each of them into the other. The momentum of clicking the sticks together and making my arms shake was enough to suggest what the sensation would be like. Wondering is apparently enough of a spur to make it happen.
I eventually concentrated on a spot on my ankle (which had a very light strain... I dunno, from earlier dancing?) and successfully swapped it to the other leg. I knew that the other ankle was in perfect shape, however, so I ended up losing the pain in the process. I felt no pain in either ankle. I experimented over the years, and as long as there was some bilateral symmetry to take advantage of, I could swap/lose various tactile sensations this way. For reasons I never figured out, it always cost me a slight bit of nausea during the process.
So I was about 11 years old when I discovered that I could consciously (but temporarily) reshape the way my brain processed stimuli. I didn't do anything particularly remarkable with the skill until many years later, when my old self faced dire circumstances and I needed to do something drastic in order to survive.
When I drop hints here and there about Remaking myself, I mean more than just changing my location and practicing new habits. I've done it once before in the past, and I hope to do it once again in the future too. This is what I mean by someday walking into the forest and losing my skill with language. I intend to explain the extent of Remaking sometime, but doing that means first remembering unpleasant times in my past, so I'll delay for a little while longer. :)
For now, I'll just drop another hint and point out that some researchers "found that a type of neuron implicated in autism spectrum disorders remodels itself in a strip of brain tissue only as thick as four sheets of tissue paper". They say that this example "sheds new light on the potential flexibility of cerebral cortex circuitry and architecture in higher-level brain regions that contribute to perception and cognition".
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/brain-remodel-1124.html
They're trying to figure out why these neurons are so plastic so that maybe someday they can start a Remaking process in other people too. It could become a tremendously useful regeneration treatment.