Hosteen Klah

Hosteen Klah 

Hosteen Klah 

Hosteen Klah 

Hosteen Klah 

Hosteen Klah 

Navajo boy babies are given the name "Away Eskay,” meaning “Baby Boy” until they exhibit some characteristic or some unusual mark is discovered on their bodies to suggest a name.

It was four or five yeas after his birth that Hosteen Klah was given a name that would remain with him the rest of his life. It was noticed that he used his left hand more readily than his right, so he was called “Klah” which means “left handed.”

Klah is the best recognized of all Navajo Medicine Men of the 20th century. It was he who undertook to learn all the sandpaintings associated with various healing ceremonies, and it was he who was the first to record a healing sandpainting in tapestry form. Prior to his doing this, it was fervently believed by the Navajo that doing so would result in serious illness to the perpetrator. When Klah escaped serious illness following weaving a sandpainting rug, he continued making them.

The Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe was built specifically to house all of Klah’s tapestries, ceremonial effects, and drawings of his sand paintings. It was built in the shape of a Navajo hogan, or traditional house. Unfortunately, Klah passed away just months before the museum was dedicated in his honor. The museum’s name has now been changed to Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian to better define its expanded mission.

Klah was invited by the State of New Mexico to attend the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1934 as the official Medicine Man for the exhibition. He accepted. This photograph was taken shortly before his departure for Chicago.

Marvin D. Mangus: Artist Signature Study

Neural Circuit Taxonomy

Neural network circuits

Brain stuff -- interesting to find out what might go on in that grey matter.

"Precision psychiatry: a neural circuit taxonomy for depression and anxiety"

By Dr. Leanne M Williams, PhD

Summary

"Although there have been tremendous advances in the understanding of human dysfunctions in the brain circuitry for self-reflection, emotion, and cognitive control, a brain-based taxonomy for mental disease is still lacking. 

As a result, these advances have not been translated into actionable clinical tools, and the language of brain circuits has not been incorporated into training programs. 

To address this gap, I present this synthesis of published work, with a focus on functional imaging of circuit dysfunctions across the spectrum of mood and anxiety disorders. 

This synthesis provides the foundation for a taxonomy of putative types of dysfunction, which cuts across traditional diagnostic boundaries for depression and anxiety and includes instead distinct types of neural circuit dysfunction that together reflect the heterogeneity of depression and anxiety. 

This taxonomy is suited to specifying symptoms in terms of underlying neural dysfunction at the individual level and is intended as the foundation for building mechanistic research and ultimately guiding clinical practice."

And from Wikipedia:

"Dysfunction in the salience network have been observed in various psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, frontotemporal dementia, and Alzheimer's disease. 

The AI node of the salience network has been observed to be hyperactive in anxiety disorders, which is thought to reflect predictions of aversive bodily states leading to worrisome thoughts and anxious behaviors. 

In schizophrenia, both structural and functional abnormalities have been observed, thought to reflect excessive salience being ascribed to internally generated stimuli.

In individuals with autism, the relative salience of social stimuli, such as face, eyes, and gaze, may be diminished, leading to poor social skills."

House Plant Air Purifiers

Frank Lloyd Wright's Cherokee Red Wheels

Frank Lloyd Wright

It was apparently circa 1946 that Frank Lloyd Wright's Lincoln convertible was involved in a road accident as it was being driven by one of Wright’s apprentices (other accounts say a member of Wright’s family was at the wheel). Although the driver, whoever it was, survived relatively unscathed, the car was in need of serious bodywork and mechanical repairs.

Wright, who was never one to let tragedy get in the way of an opportunity, decided to "improve" the design of the car, with the goal of showing the boys at Lincoln how to design a "proper luxury vehicle." The car was shipped to Hollywood, along with Wright’s blueprints, and bids were taken from mechanics and coachworks. The mechanicals and some of the bodywork were repaired there, but the car was shipped back to Wisconsin to be modified at a local body shop, whose bids were presumably much cheaper than the well-known coachworks in Hollywood.

At last, Wright’s Lincoln was on the road -- a custom design that he believed would be "the future in luxury motoring." The convertible top went away and a sedanca roof was installed to make it a town car. This half-roof was integrated into the lower body. The rear window was removed and semicircular opera windows were installed at the sides. The line of the roof arched along the same radius as the window, rather than following the roof line set by Lincoln. A removable fabric roof stretched between the red sedanca and the windscreen. Much of the rest of the car was relatively stock Lincoln, with exception of a Wright-designed custom leather interior and a restored Cherokee Red colorway.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Marvin D. Mangus: Paintings Found on the Internet

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Marvin Mangus

Each time I discover a photo of one of dad's painting, I plan to archive it these ongoing visual files.

Marvin D. Mangus: Polar Bear Painting

Marvin Mangus

I was pleased to win this polar bear painting by my dad, Marvin D. Mangus. Judging by the signature style, I estimate this work to be c. 1961. I'm very happy to add it to my collection.

Cognitive Reframing: An Ambiguous Figure

Ambiguous images

"Ambiguous images" or "reversible figures" are optical illusion images which exploit graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms. These are famous for inducing the phenomenon of "multistable perception." Multistable perception is the occurrence of an image being able to provide multiple, although stable, perceptions. Classic examples of this are the "rabbit-duck" and the "face or vase."

"Cognitive reframing" is a psychological technique that consists of identifying and then disputing irrational or maladaptive thoughts. Reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives. In the context of cognitive therapy, cognitive reframing is referred to as "cognitive restructuring." Cognitive reframing, on the other hand, refers to the process as it occurs either voluntarily or automatically in all settings.

Mini Book Review: Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind"

Michael Pollan

I want to read this, but I don't want to spend much money. Since I don't read ebooks, a trip to the Loussac Library may be in order...

"The value of psychedelics is not the experience of them -- the grooviness of the moment -- but the sediment the experience leaves behind.

It’s possible these effects can be chalked up, in part, to the drug’s effect on the brain’s so-called 'default mode network,' especially the part associated with 'self-referential thought.' Pollan grants, if briefly, that turning off the network --truly 'getting over yourself' -- might also be achieved through 'certain breathing exercises,' or through 'sensory deprivation, fasting, prayer, overwhelming experiences of awe, extreme sports, near-death experiences, and so on.'

Pollan doesn’t give a lot of prime real estate to psychedelics’ naysayers. But given that those on LSD can appear to be losing their minds, and that the drug leaves one feeling emotionally undefended (a potential benefit as well as a profound risk), he does strongly recommend having an experienced guide in a proper setting when you trip. With those safeguards in place, he believes usage could be on the verge of more widespread acceptance, pointing out that plenty of other once widely-derided practices redolent of the 1960s, like yoga and natural birth, are now common."

Among other things, Pollan discusses the ways that psychedelics 'dissolve our sense of self,' and the potential mental health benefits they bestow as a result. “Psilocybin gives you such a powerful psychological experience that it kind of reboots your brain, your mind,” he says. “A lot of depression is a sort of 'self-punishment,' as even Freud understood. We get trapped in these 'loops of rumination' that are very destructive, and the stories that we tell ourselves: you know, 'that we’re unworthy of love, that we can’t get through the next hour with a cigarette,' whatever it is. And these deep, deep 'grooves of thought' are very hard to get out of. They disconnect us from other people, from nature, from an earlier idea of who we are. The 'mystical experience,' as it’s sometimes called, or the 'experience of the dissolution of the ego,' gets us 'out of those grooves' and gives us a break from 'the tyranny of the ego,' which can be a very 'harsh ruler.'”

Neuroscience: Default Mode Network

From yee Wiki: In neuroscience, the default mode network (DMN), also default network, or default state network, is a large scale brain network of interacting brain regions known to have activity highly correlated with each other and distinct from other networks in the brain.

The default mode network is most commonly shown to be active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. But it is also active when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future. The network activates "by default" when a person is not involved in a task. Though the DMN was originally noticed to be deactivated in certain goal-oriented tasks and is sometimes referred to as the task-negative network,mit can be active in other goal-oriented tasks such as social working memory or autobiographical tasks.The DMN has been shown to be negatively correlated with other networks in the brain such as attention networks.

Evidence has pointed to disruptions in the DMN of people with Alzheimer's and autism spectrum.

The default mode network is known to be involved in many seemingly different functions:

It is the neurological basis for the self:

Autobiographical information: Memories of collection of events and facts about one's self

Self-reference: Referring to traits and descriptions of one's self

Emotion of one's self: Reflecting about one's own emotional state

Thinking about others:

Theory of Mind: Thinking about the thoughts of others and what they might or might not know

Emotions of other: Understanding the emotions of other people and empathizing with their feelings

Moral reasoning: Determining just and unjust result of an action

Social evaluations: Good-bad attitude judgments about social concepts

Social evaluations: Good-bad attitude judgments about social concepts

Social categories: Reflecting on important social characteristics and status of a group

Remembering the past and thinking about the future:

Remembering the past: Recalling events that happened in the past

Imagining the future: Envisioning events that might happen in the future

Episodic memory: Detailed memory related to specific events in time

Story comprehension: Understanding and remembering a narrative

The default mode network is active during passive rest and mind-wandering. Mind-wandering usually involves thinking about others, thinking about one's self, remembering the past, and envisioning the future.

Electrocorticography studies (which involve placing electrodes on the surface of a subject's scalp) have shown the default mode network becomes activated within a fraction of a second after participants finish a task.

Studies have shown that when people watch a movie, listen to a story, or read a story, their DMNs are highly correlated with each other. DMNs are not correlated if the stories are scrambled or are in a language the person does not understand, suggesting that the network is highly involved in the comprehension and the subsequent memory formation of that story. The DMN is shown to even be correlated if the same story is presented to different people in different languages, further suggesting the DMN is truly involved in the comprehension aspect of the story and not the auditory or language aspect.

The default mode network has shown to deactivate during external goal-oriented tasks such as visual attention or cognitive working memory tasks, thus leading some researchers to label the network as the task-negative network. However, when the tasks are external goal-oriented tasks that are known to be a role of the DMN, such as social working memory or an autobiographical task, the DMN is positively activated with the task and correlates with other networks such as the network involved in executive function.

A hitherto unsuspected possibility is that the default network is activated by the immobilization inherent in the testing procedure (the patient is strapped supine on a stretcher and inserted by a narrow tunnel into a massive metallic structure). This procedure creates a sense of entrapment and, not surprisingly, the most commonly reported side-effect is claustrophobia. This alternative view is suggested by a recent article that links theory of mind to immobilization.

Fred Machetanz Lithographs

Fred Machetanz

Fred Machetanz

Fred Machetanz

Fred Machetanz

Fred Machetanz

Fred Machetanz

Mood Elevators

George Nakashima

George Nakashima

George Nakashima

George Nakashima

George Nakashima

George Nakashima