Tag: community

What’s wrong now? Cycling through the agony and the ecstasy of the daily news.

On By Kay LorraineIn community, connection, distance, neurology, separation, unityLeave a comment
hands holding smartphone
I should know better than to start my day, checking my phone

Every morning I get up and ride my exercise bike for 20 minutes. Even if I don’t want to. Even if I’d rather be doing something else. It takes a real emergency to keep me from my morning ride. What started out as a way to wake myself up (I’ve never been a morning person, but the working world is unsympathetic to my plight), has become a daily ritual that’s helped me lose 25 pounds over the past 2 years — and keep the weight off.

Sometimes I’ll lift free weights afterwards, but my primary purpose when I get up, is to get on the bike.

That’s really when I do most of my news-reading and social media checking. I don’t have a lot of time, in the course of the day, to keep up with current events. I’ve got a full plate at work, and I keep busy with a variety of other activities that don’t leave me a whole lot of time for Twitter or Facebook or (especially) Pinterest and Instagram and the other outlets for social interaction. So, I read while I ride.

Some days, I really question the wisdom of starting out the day reading the news. I mean, seriously. It feels a little masochistic, considering all the … problems we’ve got going on. War, pestilence, crime, a whole range of sexual infractions, and the endless political battles over really core aspects of our lives, like taxes and insurance and who gets in and out of the country. sigh. (I’m too weary to capitalize that.)

What a way to start the day.

Then again, I’m asking for it. Nobody’s forcing me to keep the news tab open on my browser and refresh it, first thing when I unlock my phone. So, I have only myself to thank for the sinking feeling that accompanies the breathlessness that sets in when I’m having a really good ride.

And every now and then, I get rewarded. If I can manage to scroll past the irritants at the top of my feed, something interesting now and then crosses my path. Something in science or technology. Something that sheds light on the nature of how we’re built, and gets me thinking about what it all means. And on a semi-regular basis, something neurological comes up.

I’ve been fascinated by the brain for years, now. Advances in imagery, along with increased computing power and the increasing availability of research papers online, have opened up the whole subject for me. I’ve participated in a couple of online neurology courses from the University of  Chicago and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (thank you, Coursera), and I’ve picked up a bunch of textbooks and classics from my favorite site of all time — abebooks.com. And over the past 10 years, I’ve become comfortable enough with the concepts and terminology, that I recognize topics of interest to me at first glance.

Here’s something I discovered today:

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Microglia: The Brain’s First Responders

By: Staci Bilbo, Ph.D., and Beth Stevens, Ph.D.

Editor’s Note: New knowledge about microglia is so fresh that it’s not even in the textbooks yet. Microglia are cells that help guide brain development and serve as its immune system helpers by gobbling up diseased or damaged cells and discarding cellular debris. Our authors believe that microglia might hold the key to understanding not just normal brain development, but also what causes Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease … schizophrenia, and other intractable brain disorders.

Early in the 19th century, the nervous system was believed to be a continuous network— essentially one giant cell with many spidery extensions bundled to form the brain and spinal cord. The discovery that nervous tissue, like any other bodily tissue, is composed of individual cells upended this theory, but the idea of interconnectedness persists.

Indeed, one of the most surprising findings in the neuroscience field in recent years is the degree of the nervous system’s interconnection. We ’ve learned that its cells are intertwined not only with each other but also with those of the immune system, and that the same immune cells that work in the body to repair damaged tissues and defend us from infections are also critical for normal brain development and function. 1,2 Some of these immune cells, called microglia, live permanently interspersed with neurons in the central nervous system and play crucial roles in nerve cell development, brain surveillance, and circuit sculpting.

Read the rest of the article here

This is the kind of news I love to read. Something that shows how much more we’re learning about how our internal systems work. It’s important we learn this, for it reaches beyond our biology and actually affects how we think about — and understand — ourselves in a larger sense.

We leverage our knowledge about our physical systems all the time in our larger lives. We talk about “stretching” ourselves, thinking about extending our abilities and professional capabilities in much the same way that we think about stretching our leg muscles before a run. We talk about “growth”, getting a palpable sense of increase as we draw on our lived experiences about growing up and watching things around us grow. We use physical metaphors all the time to wrap our heads around abstract concepts, and we don’t think twice about it.

That’s just something we do to make sense of our world so we can interact with it, master some parts of it, or at the very least learn a thing or two.

So, it’s pretty exciting for me to read about new discoveries and developments on a microscopic scale. Because even though everything’s playing out on a stage so small you need advanced equipment to see much of it, it’s still  playing out. And all those minuscule interactions are affecting us on an all-encompassing scale — they make up the difference in mass with sheer quantity, just as successful crowdfunding initiatives collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from a flood of relatively small contributions.

For me, seeing new research (which is so new it’s not in any textbooks) about how microglia interact with and support the nerve cells of the body… doing things nobody thought they could (or would) do… gives me a palpable sense of potential that’s absolutely massive. Those glial cells may be tiny, but the implications of their activities has real impact. And as our understanding about the literal jobs they do continues to deepen, we create new metaphors that parallel that knowledge — and widen how we think about the rest of our world as a result.

Scientists now realize that certain kinds of cells they’ve been discounting / dismissing for years actually serve a vital purpose that lets other cells function at their best. Where else might that be true in our lives? What else have we been discounting, that actually matters? The shift in our thinking might not be obvious, and it might not be instantaneous, but I’m convinced that it does happen. And it’s such a subtle process, we don’t even realize it’s happening.

I hope you’ll read the rest of the article  and have that same sense of discovery and wonder.

Because our bodies really are amazing.

And so are we.

The daily news notwithstanding.

… and yet, we’re so distant from each other…

On By Kay LorraineIn community, connection, distance, separation, unityLeave a comment

woman at festival with crowd in the backgroundAs much as we may want to connect, it seems as though there’s always something keeping us apart.

We feel separate from the group. Or we don’t feel like the group even knows we’re there. We do what we can to find our place, to contribute, to belong… But somehow, we often feel as though we’re doing it all wrong.

Nobody really knows us.

We’re not sure anybody even cares.

And the rest of the world goes on without us… try as we might to keep up.

Sometimes, the harder we try to fit in, the harder it is to find a place that really works for us.

It’s the ultimate irony, really — we’re built to want to connect… we long to connect — and yet, it’s so easy (and often so natural) for us to feel disconnected, cut out, left alone.

Certainly, we all feel this, now and then. Some of us feel it more than others. But it’s something pretty much everybody has in common — and again, how ironic, that the very thing that sets us apart from each other, is one of the things that connects us.

I’ve thought about this a lot, over the past years, piecing together one clue after another, certain things made more sense… and of course, other things made less. And the thing that’s struck me, time and time again, is how we dance this intricate dance between separation and connection… joining and splitting up… merging and dividing… in countless ways in our lives and in the world.

It really is remarkable. And when we really dig into the true nature of our separation, our distance… and the ways that they actually connect us, the more wondrous and wonderful the human condition seems.

Not just seems. It is.

Everybody wants to connect

On By Kay LorraineIn community, connection, distance, neuron, separation, unityLeave a comment

woman at festival with crowd behind her

And rightly so. Being with others makes us feel safe, secure. Community anchors us in the midst of a confusing and overwhelming world. Having others around us, orients us to what matters to them, and what matters to us. And if we’re paying attention, we can usually learn something new from people we talk to.

Even strangers.

Especially strangers.

I have to say, some of the best discussions I’ve had with people have been with people I’ve never met before. I find it easier to talk to them, than a lot of other people, at times. There’s no emotional baggage, there’s no interpersonal history to contend with, there’s just two people filling the space between them (for however long) with ideas and information (for whatever purpose).

Last week, in fact, I had a great conversation with the car dealership shuttle driver who was giving me a ride home while my van was being worked on. We’d never met before, and we’ll probably never cross each other’s paths again, but we had a great discussion about the area we lived in, its history, and routes we drive (or avoid) for our commutes.

You wouldn’t think it was such a life-changing experience, but it was genuinely a great time — lots of interesting info and tips exchanged, ideas swapped, jokes told… Come to think of it, that was the kind of conversation that makes a real difference. It was the kind of exchange that enriches your life and also gives you valuable context for the world you live in. Learning more about the area you  moved to… getting inside information on what roads are terrible at what time of day… finding out about what’s going on in the area…

Yep, those actually are life-changing experiences.

And we need them. We crave them. So much, that we’ll go out of our way to find them, and we’ll seek them out some more.

When the shuttle driver dropped me off, he asked if I needed a ride back to the dealership to pick up my car at the end of the day. I told him no, I had already lined up a ride.

I was good.

Penultimate draft of Beloved Distance is DONE

On By Kay LorraineIn brain, community, connection, distance, neurobiology, neurology, separation, unityLeave a comment
Beloved Distance proof copy cover
Beloved Distance – coming in 2018

I just finished the next-to-last round of edits on this book. I started it in the beginning of 2016, which isn’t so terribly long ago. But it’s taken me a lot longer to finish than it probably should have.

It’s not a long book. Roughly 150 pages. With a pretty straightforward (albeit radical) premise:

We crave Unity and Connection, believing that Separation is an illusion.

The thing is, Separation and Distance are very much an in-built part of our lives, and we can’t reject them without rejecting our fundamental selves.

But if we look within at how our microscopic neurology handles separation we can learn some useful lessons on how to productively deal with Distance on a macroscopic scale.

Heady, perhaps. Yeah, that’s my thing. But it’s worth the effort in thought and consideration

Anyway, I’m pleased with how the book has wound up. The Conclusion is particularly satisfying for me. It just has a good feel. Complete. Wrapped up. Concluded — with an invitation for where we can go with this new understanding of ourselves.

Now I need to type up the handwritten edits, get the galley formatted properly, and forward review copies to my waiting readers (some of whom have been waiting patiently for months).

But first, lunch and a nap are in order.

And a shower 🙂

Three days to read and write about applied neuroscience… sweet!

On By Kay LorraineIn brain, community, connection, distance, neurobiology, neurology, separation, unityLeave a comment
Blausen 0843 Synapse Types
Source: Wikimedia

Well, the Thanksgiving holiday has turned out to be a lot busier than expected. I was probably being unrealistic, in any case. If I’ve been too busy to regularly work on Beloved Distance for months, I’ve certainly been too busy to work on other necessary things, as well — which means…

Backlog.

Plenty to do, errands to run, chores to catch up on, in the time I have off for the week.

Which means less time than I’d like devoted to writing.

But I’m probably just being greedy. Jealous of that beyond-my-control thing called Time. Not to mention a little unrealistic.

But truth to tell, I actually have gotten more work done on the book than I’ve done in months — maybe a year. It just doesn’t feel like it, because I feel so far from the conclusion. I’ve got the Introduction and first two chapters (of 8 total) pretty well sorted out. I’m now working my way through Chapter Three — which I have to say is really getting me pumped, because it’s all about what drew me to this work, in the first place.

What fascinates me? Neurology. Neuroanatomy. Biochemistry. I got into this subject over the past 10 years, as neuroscience has leap-frogged ahead in a series of really amazing advances. Technological / imaging progress has been paralleled by an ever-increasing body of scientific literature — some of it even Open(!).  And then there are the kind researchers who have forwarded me copies of their papers, when I read the abstracts but couldn’t afford the $35 to buy the whole thing outright. I’ve had a steady “drip” of neuroscience in my life, for years now, and the fact that I don’t actually make my living at that type of science (I’m a technologist), has definitely freed me up to explore areas that many a self-respecting PhD with a reputation to protect would never dare enter.

Such fascination. There are some amazing brain / neuroscience projects going on, these days, including some very cool free courses available online from places like MIT and Coursera. Of course, you have to have free time, to do a course justice — even the online ones — and with my packed schedule, it just hasn’t been possible to dig deeply into them.

But at least I have imagery. And maybe that’s for the best. Because reading all the words and listening to all the talks points my attention in a certain direction (as it should). But finding the ever-evolving imagery piques my interest in visual-spatial ways that and get me thinking, “Hey! Wouldja look at that!”… and that sends me off in a glorious reverie of ever-deepening appreciation of just how intricately and amazingly we’re put together.

Looking at neuro images, and then thinking about what that tells us about our lives and the way we work — and could work better — has morphed from a passing interest to a persistent passion… a continuously burning flame that never seems to fade. I might get distracted by things like… oh, earning a living (yeah, that)… and I might not have as much time to write about it as I like, but I always come back to it.

And when I do, it lights up parts of my life that tend to go a little dim in the crush of existential necessity.

Beloved Distance is an exercise in this fascination with our neurological makeup, and what it means for our interpersonal lives. It’s about neuroanatomy. And politics. It’s about separation. And connection. It’s about how the dualities of our lives interplay back and forth with each other in an ongoing feedback loop of longing, deprivation, fulfillment, and transformation. It’s about our innermost cellular secrets, and the public dramas we can’t help but stare at like some awful train wreck, shaking our heads, wondering, “Why? Oh, God — Why?!”

I find this line of inquiry so fascinating. I’d say my fascination is almost beyond words, except that I’ve got about 150 pages worth of words about it, so far. 😉

Bottom line: The closer we look at things that can only be seen with an electron microscope, the more we can learn about all that stuff that’s larger than life and obvious to anybody who’s paying attention. Beloved Distance is about how we function in relationship, from the smallest scale to the largest. And the more I study the pictures in my Neuroscience textbook (by Bear, Connors, and Paradiso), the more it holds and strengthens my interest.

This is seriously fascinating sh*t, and I really hope I can convey this to my readers.

It’s not just fascinating. It’s essential.

And it’s fun.

Okay, back to reading my textbook and getting my numbers trued up.

More to come…