GO

HERE THE WILD THINGS GROW...

Lately for me, that is in my own mind.  Im giving the Buddha teaching a little rest now try to digest it all and incorporate what I can and let the rest stew a while.  

Do you ever suffer from Earworms?  I do.  

NO nothing is crawling into my ear.  But something is creeping into my brain.  I get these little snips of a song like one line, or one part and it plays over and over in my mind.  Its not new but lately it happens more and more.  So I googled it up:

In order to get stuck in your head, earworms rely on brain networks that are involved in perception, emotion, memory, and spontaneous thought. ... It's as if your stressed-out brain latches onto a repetitive idea and sticks with it. Also, if you have a musical background, you may be more susceptible to earworms too.

I do have a musical background.  First off I love music.  I can't name one song that hit the charts since 2000, so I just listen to the old stuff and not the new soooo therefore I don't know any new stuff.  I used to play guitar, I taught myself to play and I learned from others also.  In the beginning I could not tune my guitar so I finally got a guitar tuner a simple tone playing wind instrument to help me.  

I played in 2 concerts and I entertained my friends and family with my guitar, I won a radio contest and I was  only barely good, never great but It gave me this ability to know the note coming next in my mind.  A progression that made sense.  I can't play guitar since the breaking of both my wrists, the left wrist won't flex or bend in the way necessary for me to make chords with it. I miss it. 

It can be just a jingle from an ad, a tag line, a refrain, a chorus.  Sometimes I have to say STOP and it goes away...but then before I know it, another one pops in.  I really thought I was going crazy, I guess its like a wheel, it spins and if no particular thing is spinning my brain inserts a snip of a song or a riff. 
The temporal lobe in the diagram. 

The auditory cortex is located in the temporal lobe, an area of the brain affiliated with short-term memory, specifically verbal short-term memory. The phonological loop is best described as a “short loop of recording tape that continuously stores a small amount of auditory information,⁴” such as the chorus of a song.

Like right now when Im not thinking of what I want to type my brain plays a bit of a song, and sometimes it actually plays IN the Background of my mind, like 2 minds are working at the same time.  So I found this"

Recording the electrical activity of neurons directly from the surface of the brain, the scientists found that for a simple task, such as repeating a word presented visually or aurally, the visual and auditory cortexes reacted first to perceive the word. The prefrontal cortex then kicked in to interpret the meaning, followed by activation of the motor cortex in preparation for a response. During the half-second between stimulus and response, the prefrontal cortex remained active to coordinate all the other brain areas.

So my Prefrontal Cortex, located in the Frontal Lobe is responsible for any reaction needed by the visual or auditory input,, so in this case is  has decided there is no response...I don't begin to sing, I don't move in a certain way, I just repeat it.  BUT sometimes things don't come from my ear, not heard but from within.  Like I would think of something and then like an autonomic turntable goes and pulls a record out of my memory bank and plays only one piece of it  like a stuck record.

The  temporal lobe where the auditory cortex is located is also responsible for short term memory, emotions...and equilibrium.  My equilibrium has never been good.  I get bouts of vertigo.  I can't spin or make quick movements with my head, or ride on merry go rounds, or go out to sea or fly in plane without at first taking a pill or just avoid it. 

The people I have known who had dementia, the first sign I recognized is they repeat the same thing over and over.  It's like this same  looping thoughts, does that originate in the temporal lobe?  Even in my dog Casey, who had dementia, it showed in a different way he would do the same thing over and over, like he would go drink water.  Then he would go again, I finally had to start taking  the water bowl up after I knew he had drank enough till he went to nap and then I'd put it back down.  And he would go in and out the dog door, he actually used it so much it failed.  The entire flap thing just fell off...I was constantly repairing it.  Then when he got to where he physically couldn't go in and out without help he would go to the flap and just put his head out and turn around and come back to his bed and he would do that over and over. Then he began to have seizures and I eventually knew his suffering had to end. 

It's a scary thing.  One thing I've noticed is that my brain is sending the wrong thing to my mouth or my thoughts...as an example, like when I tried to put my gloves on my feet, it was funny, but really? Then sometimes it just won't come up with the right word like a very simple word like pruning sheers.  The other day on the phone I was trying to tell my sister something I did using the pruning sheers, and I could not come up with the word, so I said, "those really long handled things like scissors," she said "pruning sheers" and I said "yes."

Scary stuff..emotions, equilibrium, short term memory all come from this area of the brain where the loopty doop songs come from...hmmm 
When I googled it I found out Im not the only one, millions maybe ALL of us have this.