I had a client with Dementia whose repertoire of tunes up to, say, the
late Seventies was in tact. She would remind us that she used to sing on
the radio as a kid, and her utter joy at Sing-Along time, or movie
afternoons, where older musicals worked best for most clients, was
delightful. Couldn't remember much past a minute, but a happy
decline--fortunately. We had music therapy through the local
conservatory therapists in prior years, but ours was a small group, and
the funding wasn't there after new rules set in. There was an onus on us
to prove that we could pay 50% for workshops for at least 2 years, and
it had to be weekly. We could barely pay for an eight week run. So we
continued to be tortured by Sing-Along, with intermittent guitar
performances or Barber Shop. But the clients loved it, needed it, and so
obviously benefited from it physically because of the psychological
boost and challenge to mind and body, and it was a way to relate to
others they may not otherwise get along with, and they'd get to see a
new face, too.
Memory, however, might just be stored outside the brain. Have to
remember where I read that one! Wait, it's coming back...that "What The
Bleep Do We Know!?" book, page 158.
It reads: /A number of scientists are currently looking into the
proposition that memories are not actually stored in the brain. It has
been found that if you remove part of the brain where a memory appeared
to be located, the memory may still persist! Where is it stored? Perhaps
somewhere at the planck scale, or what some people might call "the
akashic records." The brain might just serve as an instrument to pull
the memories out of the universe. It might be the local storage, the
local disk for the cosmic hard drive where all memories are stored.
/(Planck scale, currently the smallest distance that can be defined, at
10-33 centimeters, 10 trillion trillion times smaller than a hydrogen
atom.)/
/
This was inset in the section where Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a prof in Dept.
of Anesthesiology and Psychology and Director of the Center for
Consciousness Studies at U. of Arizona, Tuscon,
(www.quantumconsciousness.org), explains that he thinks /"more like a
quantum Buddhist, in that there is a universal proto-conscious mind that
we access, and which can influence us. But it actually exists at the
funda-mental level of the universe, at the Planck scale."
/He is the same fellow who coordinated with Roger Penrose ( proposed
that consciousness comes about when superpositions of neurons within the
brain reach a certain threshold and then collapse--similar to collapse
of wave function due to observation, called objective reductions (ORs).
Hameroff suggested the mechanism by which this could take place.
Together they formulated their *Penrose-Hameroff "OR" Theory of
Consciousness.* Central to the collapse process are highly intelligent,
self-organizing microtubules which serve as the cell's nervous and
circulatory system; they process and communicate, and organize
neighbouring cells to act coherently. In neurons, microtubules set up
synaptic connections, and are involved in release of neurotransmitters.
They organize the neuronets one level up, but are themselves affected
deep within their own structure by a quantum phenomenon: the proteins of
which they are made respond to signals from an internal quantum computer
consisting of single electrons. These "proteins changing their shape is
the amplification point between the quantum world and and our affecting
the classical world in everything that mankind does, good and bad."
Hameroff continues "that it's the spontaneous collapse (OR) of these
microtubules, roughly forty times a second, that gives a moment of
consciousness. Our consciousness is not continuous, but a sequence of
"ah-ha moments". He says, "Consciousness kind of ratchets through space
time in a sequence of now moments: now, now, now..."
"What The Bleep Do We Know!?" has many amazing contributors, and is one
of the best books ever. It's a great introduction to quantum physics,
and it's not at all dry. Most libraries should carry it. It's way better
than the movies that preceded it, though the movies are fun. So are the
film comments as they go through the contributors.
Natalia
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