Month: March 2006

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Creative Nonfiction First Full Draft

[Dining Hall Conversation piece (forthcoming)]

[study about facial recognition and AD/HD (forthcoming)]

[Sorting piece (forthcoming)]

Attention: What you are focused on — how long you can maintain that focus — Hey, come back here! And how much control you have over it [see this post with more material on Attention (that stuff is not yet in my own words however)]

Imagine a television set that represents your mind, the current program is your state of focus. If you are concentrating on doing laundry, that’s the channel you’re watching. The picture is vivid, the lines sharp — and you are able to interpret (mostly) without issue the elements of the images before you. Now, you hold in your hand a remote control. Your remote is of normal shape, size, color, and composition. Its face has two buttons; one for channel up, and one for down (and maybe some numbers? Sure, why not! (That way if you’re watching one thing you don’t have to go through all the other channels sequentially)). Even better, you have one button for each channel… This is no ordinary remote control, no siree, this has the latest technology so every time some new “opportunity” for focus enters your radar, up pops a new button. Now your average human being watches one channel, then maybe changes to another channel by pressing a button, and then when that program is over they change to a different channel, or wait to see what’s on next, and so on and so forth.

Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction First Full Draft”

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Creative Nonfiction Continued: Attention

Attention: What you are focused on — how long you can maintain that focus — Hey, come back here! And how much control you have over it [see this post with more material on Attention (that stuff is not yet in my own words however)]

Imagine a television set that represents your mind, the current program is your state of focus. If you are concentrating on doing laundry, that’s the channel you’re watching. The picture is vivid, the lines sharp — and you are able to interpret (mostly) without issue the elements of the images before you. Now, you hold in your hand a remote control. Your remote is of normal shape, size, color, and composition. Its face has two buttons; one for channel up, and one for down (and maybe some numbers? Sure, why not! (That way if you’re watching one thing you don’t have to go through all the other channels sequentially)). Even better, you have one button for each channel… This is no ordinary remote control, no siree, this has the latest technology so every time some new “opportunity” for focus enters your radar, up pops a new button. Now your average human being watches one channel, then maybe changes to another channel by pressing a button, and then when that program is over they change to a different channel, or wait to see what’s on next, and so on and so forth.

AD/HD inattentive subtype
The remote is broken. The channel up and down buttons are sticky — sometimes they get stuck. Your TV changes channels indefinitely. Or even better, other times they don’t work at all. You’re sitting there watching a program vital to your social survival such as “What your spouse did today” or even “What cars are coming at you at 70 mph on Soldiers Field Road during Rush Hour”. Suddenly a new program pops up, “Watching a seagull circle overhead” or even “Zone out and think about something else” (always a classic)

So, your TV just freaks out and changes the channel once it sees something it likes. You mash the buttons on the remote desperately; maybe you manage to switch it back– but only briefly, before you notice it’s happened again.

You’re lost in the program forever. Seconds become hours become days… waiting for boredom to breathe life back into your remote, allowing you to seize control once again.

Enter psychostimulants
Methylphenidate methyl a-phenyl-2-piperidineacetate C14H19NO2 Molecular weight: 233.31. Bioavailability: 11-52% when taken orally. dextro,levo-methylphenidate 50:50 racemic mixture: Ritalin® (Ritalina®). dextro-methylphenidate: Focalin. Also Concerta® (time-release), Metadate®, Methylin®, Rubifen®.
Adderall

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AD/HD

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder is a neurobiological disorder.
People with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder tend to have inordinate amounts of trouble maintaining attention-discipline, may be impulsive, and especially at younger ages are often hyperactive — uncharacteristically so for their age and level of development.

There is no way to diagnose AD/HD without a frame of reference.

There is no value judgment, just a comparison and then an observation.

Right?

Right.

Individual A is an aberration, though they belong to an identifiable sub-group with defining characteristics

AD/HD does not imply lower levels of intelligence — on the contrary.

AD/HD has been associated with certain personality traits that can be seen as other defining “symptoms”: High energy, creativity, alternating extreme empathy/unempathy, strong sense of intuition, trouble/frustration making self understood…

Panksepp says a growing intolerance of childhood playfulness has led to more and more children being labeled with AD/HD

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Attention

From wikipedia:

Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one thing while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (e.g. the cocktail party problem, Cherry, 1953). Attention can also be split, as when a person drives a car, puts on makeup, and talks on a cell phone at the same time. (Never really try this, however.)

Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Of the many cognitive processes associated with the human mind (decision-making, memory, emotion, etc), attention is considered the most concrete because it is tied so closely to perception. As such, it is a gateway to the rest of cognition.

The most famous definition of attention was provided by one of the first major psychologists, William James:

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.” (Principles of Psychology, 1890)

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Memory

From wiktionary:
memory (countable and uncountable; plural memories)
(uncountable)

  1. The ability of an organism to record information about things or events in the brain with the facility of recalling them later at will.
    Memory is a facility common to all animals.
  2. A record of a thing or an event stored in the brain of an organism.
    I have no memory of that event.

And from wikipedia:

Memory is the ability of the brain to store, retain, and subsequently recall information. Although traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In the recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a new branch of science that represents a marriage between cognitive psychology and neuroscience, called cognitive neuroscience.

There are several ways of classifying memories, based on duration, nature and retrieval of information. From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory:

  • Encoding (processing and combining of received information)
  • Storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information)
  • Retrieval/Recall (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in some process or activity)

>and a quote: “Memory is but the storage of fragmentary but ‘relevant’ features” – Walter J. Ong
Read on for selections from the OED definition…

Continue reading “Memory”

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Starbucks: The Present Moment [3/20/06]

I’m sitting in a Starbuckstm, my eyes are fixed on the trail of ink left by my rhodium nib. My ears dart back and forth, from the the Starbuckstm brand Musak to the clang of a nearby cellphone. “A dysfunctional group, or a core group…” A meeting. A child eating, a cookie. A barista laughs, “It really is!” he chortles. “A life coach” “Cause I know a lot of people who are stuck…” Tamborines, the scent of coffee, the buzz of refined sugar and amphetamine derivatives dancing their dance with my neurons. My savory soup of neurotransmitters churning away inside my braincage. The pungent air holds the snarl of coffee. I’m wondering how the corporate bozos at Starbucks calculated that this “music” would make anyone want to buy coffee. it makes me want to buy an ice pick and a smile. Everyone else is writing more than me. not really, but my brainvoice is telling me so. I snarl, and with a wimper it retreats back into the damp cave from whence it emerged. The grind of beans splintering floats above the din. It isn’t quite a din. the music continues. How many cycles do I waste on hating it? how many process moments — bits of ethereal phytochemical liveliness? My mother wishes she could ask them to turn it off.

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Pieces?

Rafalovich 410
3/20/06
Culturally approved. Broken. Inside. Outside. outsider. The thought that somewhere there is a world where everyone is like me, appreciates — relates, understands without reading the latest literature. That normal really is relative, no matter how hard I try to think otherwise. In the end, it is our culture, and society that dictate how we must be and how we should act — What we can or must wear say think do. Don’t go squawking down the street like a chicken — that’s crazy! But then I think of the social obvliviousness, that humans have evolved with. It’d be like a dog not “getting” that it’s supposed to sniff the butt of another dog, or whatever. We create our own norms, our own rules — are there cultures without rules? “difficulty with rule-based behavior”. How is it not a disorder? An inability to deal with the situation. Though I suppose some can’t do math, the rules too convoluted or abstract or whatever……….

Bigger focus

“Neurology offers a biological explanation which distinguishes between the ‘maladjusted’ child and the AD/HD child.” (Rafalovich, 411)

flashback: ms. whiteside

I remember those afternoons in strange detail. A soft knock on the doorframe punctuated the murmur of learningvoices, Ms. whiteside’s dark brown face smiling slightly, but warmly in the doorway. I rose to leave while she quietly asked our teacher if she could borrow me for a little while. We made our way down the dimly lit hallway, lined by pegs and cubbies and construction paper and into her office, hidden away in a corner of the main lobby.

I must have spent hours in that office with Ms. Whiteside — hours that I enjoyed, as she would put me to a task and then silently watch, observing details I could not fathom,. She would give me colored blocks, and ask me to assemble certain shapes, or tell a story about a picture. I was intrigued, and maybe confused at times by the simplicity of the tasks, but I completed them with no less fervor. Ms. Whiteside’s measured gaze never hostile or intimidating… I vaguely remember her checking a timepiece, perhaps recording all the times. She probably had a file. Come to think of it, she must have written everything down… Yes, she was always writing, in pencil in even measured hand on yellow legal paper, it seemed she wrote far more than what could possibly be taken from my simple tasks…

Then there was Dr. A. We would sit in his office playing games — he’d casually ask how everything was going, and I’d quickly dismiss the question without lifting my focus from the game. I’d tell him everything was fine, and we’d finish our game. Sometimes we played Stratego.

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I Don’t Remember

And now to cap off a night whose productivity was so low it cannot even be measured, I leave you with some writings I did over break with my Mom and some of her friends.

“I Don’t Remember” 3/20/06
How many times have those words passed from my lips? I don’t remember exactly, surely thousands. My Kimberly reassured me, told me not to worry, that she’d remember for me. The hours she spent copying, transcribing each word — well, most words… leaving out the worst, and the best — each day of those early days, each moment, each throb of the heart as it sputtered to life, the fumes of yesterday still pungent, unburned, waiting to explode in a new direction. I lay on my thin mattress, the knotted boards below pressing up through the foam, my sweetheart’s three latest letters in hand. I’d open one, read it through, drink in every word no matter how it made me hurt, or sigh — wince or blush. Give away emotion under that veneer of everything’s bueno. Todo bien. Each letter holding an entry from her journal. Her place of venting, rushing, bubbling, open and closeness. Her memories open to me — flowing across the thousand miles between us. The thousand miles between today and those days only months, years ago when it all began. “I don’t remember,” I could no longer speak those words. She had given me hers. My own memories now sketches where they had been only white-blackness, a swirling soup of places, words, memes… blended and blurred and fused into a chaotic oblivion.

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Movie

Completely unrelated, but I was cruising around the blogs and found a link to some other site, where a writer had just posted a great review of the upcoming film, V for Vendetta. It sounds like it could be quite intriguing, and suffice it to say he gave it an “A”.

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