Since SD is about neurological pathways not working correctly, you likely are quite right about fear. Neurological pathways are the reason for the yawning and laughing phenomena; they use different pathways than regular speech and those pathways seem to overwhelm the speech pathway. Real anger can do it, too. Talking while crying can do it, too. I'm truly sorry our other thread was intimidating; we would have loved having you join us. Looks like, now, we'll be joining you. Maybe we can find a way to be scary or make you really mad!

All the best,

Linda

AB; 3 years

no botox; alternative phonation

This is an interesting thread. It is strange that laughing yawning and anger seems to alter the neurological pathway. Wasn't there another state of emotion as well. I just can't recall what it was Linda. Can you remember?

Regards

David

First, consider the four basic human drives (which were recently described this way in a public lecture by a renowned physiological psychologist so I assume I can repeat it here), the four Fs - fear, fight, food, and reproduction. Fear and fight are what we've been discussing regarding stage fright and anger. These instincts are more basic than emotions. Many people have mentioned that various foods affect their SD symptoms in various ways, but the food instinct is about hunger. I've never heard of anyone having their symptoms affected by hunger, so I'm not continuing on this path of discussion since we've already shown that there is not complete correspondence between basic drives and SD symptoms.

The laughing, yawning, sobbing phenomena are related to neuromuscular pathways that seem to dominate the regular speech pathway. Again, this is not about emotion. Identification of other neuromuscular pathways that, when stimulated, demonstrate this dominance or disruption seems worth thinking about.

Ida has brought up two really interesting points - the occasions when our voices behave in unexpected ways, and the fact that botox is less beneficial for her than it used to be (which I've not read about before). I hope others will share their experiences on both of these topics and maybe all of us can benefit from empirical deduction (and item 1 in particular probably has lots of space for some good laughs).

In the meantime, Ida, I hope you will focus the strength you must have since you overcame stage fright to managing this thread so lots of people will have the opportunity to share their thoughts and it won't get closed down.

And, to the dear moderator, I hope you may choose to view the attempts of some participants to anger you as their attempt to give you a better voice day.

Best to all,

Linda

Let me respond to your second point fist, the point about the varying quality of your voice. From what I read, it seems we all have that. It is not unintuitive that spasticity would be inconsistent (in a way, spasticity is ABOUT inconsistency).

Regarding your query about what can we learn from flight and fight instincts, you raise an interesting idea. Let's start by assuming that doing everything in a pit of snakes (or whatever else you might be afraid of or want to kill) is not practical. What is the alternative? One idea is that people can learn to achieve and/or control various brain states with biofeedback. When in college (about the time dirt was young), I was involved with some experiments using biofeedback to learn to fall asleep quickly and easily. It worked great and has been valuable to me throughout my life. The question is, could we learn to get to the brain state of flight or fight with biofeedback? Would we want to? Or, are there other ways to harness this benefit of this state? I wish I knew. Ida, we could be rich.

The other thought I had about this was relative to your being an actress. You must be a good one given your years of experience and overcoming stage fright. You mention you intentionally winged a role to try to be scared; if you are doing that, I think you are way past stage fright. But could you imagine it? Could you imagine adequate anger? You are the actress, you tell me. Can you harness and train and control the concept of fear you used to have to your advantage? Myself? I probably would do better with imagining the anger thing. But, then, I'm just a stubborn old girl from Texas. We've got lots of snakes here.

I agree wholeheartedly with you about our doing some our own analysis. If we share and gather all of our empirical and anecdotal data and work with it to the best of our abilities, and the doctors do the same with all of their information, our chances of having a relaxed discussion about the problems we used to have can only improve.

Also, in thinking more about this. We shouldn't stop following the idea of harnessing what we do with yawning, laughing, etc. Some of the concept of harnessing laughing is how I learned alternative phonation. Alternative phonation certainly isn't a cure, but it may be a move in the right direction - figuring out how to use pathways that do work to perform the function of the broken ones.

I don't mean to be repetitive, but some people may have not read the postings when I have previously said the human body is amazing in the way it can respond to training. Additionally, the brain can be remapped for some motor skills. I agree with you, Ida, that "something could be done with this info."

meeting time: Thursday, November 21 at 7:00 p.m. CST

meeting organizer: Sally McKee, 713-796-2001 x 138, Smckee@pdg.net

Speaker: Leslie Solomon, Licensed Professional Counselor and Biofeedback Specialist, Tarnow Center for Self Management. (From the Houston phone book, the Tarnow Center address is One West Loop South, Houston, Texas 77027 and the phone number is 713-621-9515.)

Regards,

Linda

Don't feel intimidated please. We really were only having a bit of fun and unfortunately we strayed away from the SD thing enough for the thread to be closed down. I trust this will not be the case on this thread. Maybe the fluttering of the eyes to the moderators may work with you but it never has with me.

Thank you anyway for starting up this most interesting thread which I hope to contribute to later when I have a little more time

Regards