Dorthy's Basket: Anterior Cingulate Cortex, 24-hour mind, infinity, Shermer, Outlast, HV playlist
& a healingvrse report card
Dear Companions,
A bee landed on my salad in the city, and with the way things are going, I wasn’t sure if I was being exposed to Monkey Pox or West Nile Virus.
The thing about a vaccine-induced breakdown is that accumulated stress makes you vibrate like a Nokia. A few successive hits, and suddenly you’re an Apollo capsule burning through the atmosphere at Mach speed. By the time I went in for a blood draw, I was straight up q-quaking.
In the span of a week, I had two TMS appointments. 2 four-hour car trips. An endometrial biopsy. My daughter’s birthday. A lunch the day prior. Family politics. Dodging Covid left and right. Switched folders at the doctor’s office. Several sessions on a wellness project. A progesterone-induced, liquifying rage that also made my uterus feel like a crushed beer can. And that damn bee.
Honestly, this list might sound like a nightmare to most people, but I’m taking it as a humble brag. Look at me—no hands! Last year, this would’ve knocked me flat for a month. Two years ago, I couldn’t even visualize that. I even managed to squeeze myself into a mermaid costume (sweating bullets in purple fabric, but still), my first costume in years. And despite two semi-public breakdowns at the toddler party, plus needing migraine meds 3x, I still pulled off a decent participation score—contributing bagels, coffee, cold brew, and other ideas.
So, I rated myself:
🤮A for effort. 💀D for temperament.
🫶An overall solid C.
Here’s a few things that surfaced in the blur of all that.
WHAT I’M STUFFING INTO MY EYES
I like to think that my dreams are not just a byproduct of healing but stimulating it somehow. I found this concept in Tao Lin’s Leave Society book (a solid recommend for anybody healing). His Substack is interesting—self-deprecating and full of insights. He can be depressing, but healing can be depressing. He points out stuff like this:
On the first day of 2020, Wikipedia's page for phytoncide was 519 words; Old Europe, 1,760 words; imagination, 3,365; turmeric, 3,574; vitamin K2, 4,187; Catalhöyük, 4,250; forest, 6,849; Xanax, 7,529; Disney World, 8,424; statin, 11,115; nuclear weapon, 11,520; glyphosate, 16,837; CIA, 20,893; Apple Inc., 33,535.
The book 24-hour mind explores the relationship between sleep, dreaming, and emotional regulation. It discusses a study on those with post-divorce clinical depression who didn’t get treatment.
The dreams of those who didn’t recover after five months were brief and simple; the dreams of those who recovered had complex plots, many different scenes and emotions and a blending of images from past, present and future.
I can attest. In the first year of my sickness, I could hardly string two scenes together. If I did, it was just a piercing nightmare. In the second year, I finally opted for some meds that as a side effect, helped me to sleep. A quantum vanishing. Dr. David Hansom, a spinal surgeon and pain expert won’t even do surgery on people with chronic back pain unless they are getting solid sleep fire.
But now, I have been having more complex dreams. Even with large bodies of water again, which began around 8 years old after I drew clay from a lake under the direction of my dad, after I stepped on a beehive.
I also seem to be circling back to bees now, don’t I?
I read this dude Luis’s post about how a meditation practice can leave you feeling mid. For the full thread, check out his post called, Stopped Suffering.
WHAT I’M STUFFING INTO MY EYES VIA SCREEN
♾️Circles, calculus, Planck scale, black holes
Speaking of circles, I watched Trip to Infinity, reviewing the principle of infinity from the perspective of math, philosophy, cosmology and physics. If we agree infinity exists in math, do we think it exists in nature? And even if the universe is infinite, will life make the distance? These types of thoughts will either imprison or liberate, but they are bound to change your mood. When I asked the only math PhD required to respond to me whether he believed in infinity, his response:
Yes. And not just one infinity. Many. Read about Georg Kantor.
While on the topic you might also look up the Apple in the Box experiment or the Boltzmann brain hypothesis that suggests that, in a vast and random universe, it might be more probable for a single, self-aware brain (with all its memories and experiences) to spontaneously arise from random fluctuations than for the entire universe as we know it to come into existence. Again, perfect distractions.
🍄Survivalist show of the week
Outlast (specifically season 2) on Netflix surprised me. You may feel compelled to forage for mushrooms. You may learn something about the human condition, and the inherent challenges posed by teamwork. Reddit says, Skip Season 1.
WHAT I’M POURING INTO MY EARS
Michael Shermer Podcast talks with leading scientists, philosophers, historians, scholars, writers and thinkers. I really enjoyed walking on the beach listening to his interview with Dawkins.
Belief and atheism
I’m in the middle of one on atheism with Will Gervais, who believes atheism is the default mode of humans, not belief. One of his most notable areas of study is the societal distrust of atheists, exploring why, in many cultures, atheism is often viewed with suspicion.
Anterior Cingulate Cortex
I tolerated about half of the episode of Huberman on Rogan, but I did enjoy the discussion on the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, which is heavily involved in processes that blend decision-making, self-regulation, emotional and physical pain. Bingo.
Huberman said:
when neurosurgeons stimulate the ACC, patients report that they suddenly feel like they want to be challenged, so they associate that area with doing hard tasks.
super-agers who tend to retain cognitive function longer tend to have bigger ACC’s.
the key to growing the ACC is not just to do difficult things, but to do things you don’t want to do at all. So, if you love to do something hard, like hike, but you really, truly enjoy it, it might not grow your ACC. But if you force yourself to do something you don’t like, say diet, that is what grows it.
cross puzzles are not going to cut it.
I think we are going to look back at that advice about crosswords as quintessential 90’s bullshit, like glyphosate-ridden Cheerios, or fat-free milk.
Are there shortcuts via stimulation?
“The future of medicine is not in chemistry but physics!”
said that in the comment section on my TMS post, and it stuck. My neurologist jut posted about how the ACC can be stimulated via ultrasound technology in a recent breakthrough. I tweeted the paper to Huberman.
By using focused ultrasound, this region can be modulated without surgery. This has the potential to revolutionize pain management. Traditionally, treatments like deep brain stimulation or cingulotomy have been shown to work, but they are both surgical procedures thereby reducing the population who can use it.
The ACC region while connected to the prefrontal and amygdala is too deep to stimulate via Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, but my neurologist said we are getting at it indirectly. I’m at my 20th session.
850pm in the car - a milestone
In the most liberating couple of hours I’ve had in four years, I spontaneously got in the car at 8:50 p.m. to head to Montauk, finally dodging the summer traffic. I forgot how incredible the atmosphere is at that hour.
8:50 p.m. is no man’s land—like 40g of carbs on a diet. Were people just off work? Going to dinner? It’s dark, but the city is still alight with traffic. The whole place is gorging on electricity.
Look up, and you might think about black holes. To the side sporadic American flags fill your eyes with tears. It’s this night road you’ve missed among so many things.
I made up a playlist mainly from the 2010s to accompany. If you’re in the mood for some uplifting, windows-down tunes, check it out here.
I hope to add to this playlist, but there may be some different tracks ahead as measured by the number of times this week I have leaned on Chat GPT for actual advice on things nobody wants to talk about with me on repeat.
Hey if nothing else, tough times grow the ACC, right?
With Much Love from the Healingvrse,
Rebecca