woman vs men

It is reported that women display significantly greater activity in the affect regulating structure than men do during PET scan. The data indicate gender differences in empathic styles between sexes (Schore, 2001).Recent research shows that impaired orbitofrontal corelates to autism, schizophrenia, mania, unipolar depression, phobic states, posttraumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, alcoholism, and borderline and psychopathic personality disorders (Schore, 2001).Early traumatic experience of a baby will result in storing such negative experiences into implicit or procedural memory. It will later manifest in rapid emotional activiation and instability, reflect hyperarousal, and subsequent rapid escalation of intense nagative affect, self disorganized, explosively and implosively (Schore, 2001)

disassociation and reconnection

The state-regulating emotional experience mostly occurs in the preconcious mind mainly because the temporal sulcus (amydala) is not well connected to the orbitofrontal lobes. It means that the emotional response is not well connected to the executive function of the brain, and therefore, the brain is not able to control much about the emotional responses (such as depression and anger). This is mainly due to the fact the obitofrontal lobes of human being have evolved recently whereas the temporal lobes have been there since a long time.


The recent evolution of the emotional brain have started to integrate ideas and thoughts, and thus form 'empathy', a form of intelligent that a person able to understand how others' feel. A person with understanding of empathy usually has a superior skills in critical human functions such as social adjustments, control of moods, drive, and responsibilities, and all these factors are crucial in shaping the personality of an individual (Cavada & Schultz, 2000, p.205).

2nd Sept 2008

Today is the 2nd day of Hari Raya in the year of 2008. it is a rare opportunity to spend time with the family especially with the kids. I have so far finished 2 important books about attachment theory. In summary, maternity care is crucially important during the first two years of an infant, where the right hemisphere of the emotional brain about to develop.

In any event where care is not presence during the first two years of a baby, the right brain will be impaired and it may develop trauma. Such traumatic depression will be stored in the unconcious mind of the right brain. As a result of these unintegrated displacement in the psychological mind, it will develop a rigid character as well as inflexible behavior.

The rigidity of the personality will be reflected in day to day life, and it may also transfer to other generation within the family.

Rage and Aggression

The premise of rage, anger, and aggression are rooted in the early stage of human relationship, and later became reactivated in the later life. In Alexander and Der Heide (1997) article, it was high-lighted in a case study that one would trigger rage an anger is to protect himself from being hurt. It may be due to a series of humiliating events in his early life.

The unresolved shame and embarrassment would further disintegrate the human connection. Without human connection, it further undermine the flows of energy and information in any dyad relationship.

If a child is treated by a cold,icy, and withdrawn mother, the child is unlikely to receive an attune needs, and the chance of having a positive self esteem development will be significantly diminished. To make the matter worst, if the child is consistently receiving negative and rage information from his mother, he will be likely to establish a defensive mode to protect himself. With the on-going anxiety caused by the family, the child's affect synthesizing capacity will be compromised. 'Rather than becoming integrated into a complete sense of self experience, the unacceptable affects, together with the experience, the unacceptable affects, together with the experiences associated with them, are segragated from other affective experience' (Alexander and Der Heide, 1997). Such trauma experience will further result in fragmentation and disorganization in affective development of oneself.

Activation of an intense feelings like rage can serve to protect oneself from preventing the emergence of painful feelings of despair, worthlessness and hopelessness. In other words, the expression of rage and anger is to protect a fragile sense of self from disintegration in the face of the traumatic experience in the childhood life.

What is your Identity Please?

Korsakov disease may strike a person with high fever, and may later 'erase' the patient's memory by unable o recognize his family members, follow by a confabulatory delirium (Korvokov psychosis), which would continually creating a world and self to replace what was forgotten and lost. Such confabulatory will literally make a person to make up story in every moment of his life.

Neurological Deficit

A person with no repertoire of memory for she had never used his hand since she was born. She had never fed himself, never used the toilet by himself for over sixty years. This person, even though she has elementary sensory in his hands, has no power to integrate these sensation to the level of perceptions, an existential dilemmas with a pair of unless hands.

Oliver Sacks, a renowned neurologist had uncovered this mystery as he argued that this blind but intelligent lady could have been over protected and inactivated her hands all over her life. By surprise, Oliver suggested to the nurse to show less than the usual alacrity in feeding this woman. Amazingly and gradually, this woman is able to move her hands.

2nd Case from Oliver Sack's student, Dr.Jonathan Cole in (A Man who mistook his wife for a hat (1998):

"Many patients with phantoms suffer 'phantom pain' or pain in the phantom. A patient with persistent phantom leg pain, anaesthesia of the spinous ligament with Lignocaine caused the phantom to be anaesthetised briefly, but that electrical stimulation of the spinal roots produced a sharp tingling pain in the phantom, whist stimulation of the spinal cord higher up reduced the phantom pain".

3rd Case

The labyrinth in the inner ears consists of semicircular canals containing liquid which monitor the motion of the body. However, the balance of the body is controlled by the integration of 1) Labyrinthine, the proprioceptive and the visual.

A patient can still be in a balancing mode even the labyrinthine element to be lost before proprioception and the visual because this triple system, can compensate for others as long as our vestibular and the proprioception systems are still intact. We will not be tilted even we close our eyes.

Proprieception is able to compensate the defects from inner ears, the labyrinths.

4th Case

Global aphasia could render patients incapable of understanding words, but nevertheless, they would understood most of what said to them. This is partly because natural speech does not only consist of words, but it consists of utterance, which is suffused with tone, expression, facial, emotion, and body language. Though understanding of words can be destroyed, one cannot lie to aphasia as the expression that goes with words, the spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked.

On the contrary, Agnosia patients who have lost their expressive, emotion, feelings, timbre, and the entire character qualities but words are perfectly maintained. For example, a patient may lose the ability to detect if a voice was angry, cheerful or sad. One has to compensate this word expression deficit by looking at the faces of the people while they talk.

Agnpsias are associated with disorders of the right hemisphere while aphasias are associated with the deficit in right hemisphere.

5th Case

A disease of excess, an opposite of deficit, are inherently hyper active, generative, and monstrously as well. It can be over-growth, abnormal, over excited, tended to disintegration and uncontrolled, over-powered by impulse, image and will, possession by a physiology gone wild. Oliver quote in one of his studies:

'I have too much energy...Everything is too bright, too powerful, too much. It is a feverish energy, a morbid brilliant'

Disconnection of Relationship in Couple Relationship or Family Relationship

According to the attachment theory of Daniel Siegel (The Mindful Brain, 2007), a cold and distant pair of parents created an emotionally isolated childhood which may have the long lasting effect on the adulthood. Without the attunement of emotion, the child is programmed to see things through the lens of left mode of processing, and slowly adapts into a culture of a deprived caring environment. The absence of emotional communication in the child's family has further deprived his right hemisphere from interactive nutrients and move his/her development toward the left hemisphere of logical and linear thinking under the sense of his/her internal world. As Decety and Chaminade (2003) affirm:

Our ability to represent one's own thoughts and represent another's thoughts are intimately tied together and have similar origins within the brain. Thus it makes sense that self-awareness, empathy, identification with other, and more generally, intersubjective processes, are largely dependent upon the right hemisphere resources, which are the first to develop.

With the insufficient of the right hemisphere emotional development, one may turn into rigidity for couple relationship. When it happens, the couple relationship may go strain. One is able to repair the impaired relationship by practicing mindfulness, a form of internal attunement which enables the brain to be flexible, reflective, receptive, self-observant, reflexive, COAL (curiosity, openness, acceptance, an love), COHERENCE ( Connection, openness, harmony, engagement, receptivity, emergence, noesis, compassion, and empathy, FACES (Flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable) (The mindful Brain, Siegel, 2007).

Mindful awareness promotes neural integration. One needs an integrated mind to stay a healthy life.

1st April 2008

I didn't realize that today is April Fool until my daugther fooled me a while ago. Being a fool can be a blessing sometimes especially human race is driving at the edge of competitiveness. We are always trained to program ourselves at all times so that we are able to be competitive. As such, most of the time, our perception is preoccupied with the top down approach from our neuron network. That what we called a bias mind.

To disengage from a top-down approach, one has to practice a mindfulness mediation, a term coined by daniel J.Siegel. "Activation of the middle prefrontal region (orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices) is able to de-automate and disengage us from top down influences, such as prior expectations and our own emotional reactions' (Siegel, page 110 The mindfulness brain, 2007).


Lazar (2005) found those who practices mindfulness have thicker middle prefrontal region and insula region. When there is a bodily limbic reaction, it triggers to our mirror neurons network, and later transmitted to insula, a gateway to middle prefrontal region.

Siegel (2007) claimed that 'Mindfulness involves a curious, open, accepting, and loving (COAL) stance toward awareness of awareness'.

Siegel (2007) continues to argue that 'Mirror neurons and superior temporal regions create representations of intention by responding to goal-directed actions or expression. Since brain is an anticipation machine, this superior temproal regions activate with 'biological motion' that move with human intention.

SIMA (sensory implications of motor action) acts as resonance circuit that enable the brain to prime itself for the next anticipated event. SIMA links the mirror neuron systems, perception and motor action together for synchronization and coordination in our social life.

SIMA can be in a form of priming, not a prefrontal planning process, Stern (20030) called it 'Horizon of Future". It is not a pre-plan, but a moment by moment awareness, and the timing is reported in an order ot 10s of milliseconds. SIMA creates a state of neural integration with mental sensation of coherence, and this is what Siegel suggests "intrapersonal attunement'.

Finally, compassionate is about feel to feel, and emphatics is about mind to mind understanding.

清明节 2008

Earth, wind and fire created space and life, and life created time. As long as there is life for a living being, there will be time for the living being to die. Time is a gate for a life to enter into this world, and time also prepares that life to exit.

Every year of this time, I will treasure my 40 years of past sweet memories with my Grandmother. For three consecutive years since the passing of my late grandmother, I would be standing there with my family members in her graveyard to remember her goodness and kindness that she had done for the family, in exceptional to me. Without her, I would not have enough inspiration and courageous that made my life so complete. The 40 years of teachings and attachments were beyond words. Yet I never had enough time with you before she passed away. The only thing that she left for me was the unforgettable sweet memories that embedded forever in my mind. The unmeasurable love and care will always carry with me, and that will be the greatest gift and strengths that i will pass on to my children.

Gramma, I love you, and I always will.

20th March 2008 Journal

It has been almost nine months since my last blog posting in 2007. Without realizing how time flies, today is already 20th of March 2008.

6th of March was the 3rd anniversary of my late Gramma. I went for a prayer for my late Gramma with all the family members at 11am. Even though it has been 3 years, she always has been so vivid in my mind. She had always been so kind and gentle to me, and she always will be in my mind.

I will be flying to Sandakan with Bryan on 25th of March and be back on the 26th of March. It will be a busy week for me. By Saturday, Bryan will be able to finish the GIS/GPS tracking systems, and we will see if we can make it working to increase the efficiency and productivity of our supervisors. We have to make them believe that this is a tool to monitor the road systems, a tool for accuracy and creating evident for work done in terms of inspecting the roads inventories so to ensure the safety of the public.

The Fujitsu notebook works fine, especially it is a good devise for CNN radio. Speaking of which, the CNN radio just board casting the distress in Tibetan demonstration, it is a worrying trend.