Woody Cavenaugh

While I feel better at this moment than I have felt in a week, it is only comparatively. The pressure still exist. Today I spent a minute or so seeking out what exactly it was that was hurting, and what systems live in that region.

The pressure is in the left pre-motor area. To quote a pretty good website on the subject.

The Left premotor area, in upper left front of the forehead, keeps track of sequential patterns -- words, symbols, ideas, that come one after another. This is highly important for humans with symbolic thinking.

The area primarily would have evolved for planning tool use -- how to use tools in a sequential way to accomplish symbolic goal.

Because the motor nerves cross, this left-brain premotor area controls the RIGHT HAND. Humans are "handed" because one side of the brain specialized to do sequential operations. Most humans have symbolic language in the left brain, so most humans are Right-Handed!

Key talents where this area is important include:

1. Tool use - doing a sequence of operations with the right hand.
2. "Logical" thinking - putting ideas together in sequence, so one follows another
3. Cause and effect reasoning - a basis for scientific thinking and "how-to" analysis
4. Grammar - Thinking, speaking and writing language in a sequential way to follow rules.
5. Rules for playing Games - what to do in what order, for a logical result. (However, many games like chess also have a strong right-brain component of patterns.
6. Following recipes and instructions
7. Awareness of time, and possibly the passage of time in comparison to other events. (For example, when people are using this part of the brain for intensive sequential analysis, such as how to do something on a computer, time awareness seems to fail, and they will say, "I lost track of time."

And to quote another one:

CEREBRAL CORTEX Frontal Lobe: Most anterior, right under the forehead.

Functions:

* How we know what we are doing within our environment (Consciousness). How we initiate activity in response to our environment. Judgments we make about what occurs in our daily activities. Controls our emotional response. Controls our expressive language. Assigns meaning to the words we choose. Involves word associations.
* Memory for habits and motor activities.

Observed Problems:

* Loss of simple movement of various body parts (Paralysis). Inability to plan a sequence of complex movements needed to complete multi-stepped tasks, such as making coffee (Sequencing). Loss of spontaneity in interacting with others. Loss of flexibility in thinking. Persistence of a single thought (Perseveration). Inability to focus on task (Attending). Mood changes (Emotionally Labile). Changes in social behavior. Changes in personality. Difficulty with problem solving.
* Inablility to express language (Broca's Aphasia).

So if you see anything weird from me in those regards, we can safely rule out blood pressure or liver yang.

On the other hand what if my baseline already indicated a certain "weakness" in these areas...

Let the games begin!