Migraine*, Oliver Sacks

*Migraine (Revised and expanded), Oliver Sacks, 1992

This is the 18th volume in the “Essays Project.” While the Essays Project has focused mainly on essays, we became intrigued with Oliver Sacks and are taking something of a detour to read his complete work, essays or not.

[[More to come…]]

Front Matter

There are prefaces to the original edition, and, to this, the 1992 edition. There is also a forward by William Gooddy, a migraine specialist whom Sacks praises in his prefaces. There is also a historical introduction, which summarizes over 2,000 years of medical writing on migraine; I will pass on summarizing this.

The following, from the ’92 Preface, is Sacks’ comment on the aims of the book; I think his thoughts on why humans may need to be ill, for a brief time, will be very interesting.

Migraine, of course, is not just a description, but a meditation on the nature of health and illness, and how, occasionally, human beings may need, for a brief time, to be ill; a meditation on the unity of mind and body, on migraine as an exemplar of our psychophysical transparency; and a meditation, finally, on migraine as a biological reaction, analogous to that which many animals show.

–Oliver Sacks, Migraine, xv

I. The Experience of Migraine

C1. The Common Migraine

As I read through this chapter, the vast range of symptoms and manifestations attributed to Migraine would seem to defy any sort of classification. However, Sacks grapples with this by describing constellations of symptoms, and also sequences of symptoms/constellations, and leaves me with the sense that Migraine really is a distinct and identifiable entity.

One thing which I think, perhaps, he does not emphasize enough is that migraine recurs over the course of months and years, and I think that it is this pattern of recurrence (even though the symptoms may change completely) that I find most convincing.

Sacks’ high level description is that there is a prodomal phase (when the first hints of what is coming occur), the attack proper, resolution, and finally rebound. I’m particularly struck by the fact that both prodomal and rebound phases may often (but not invariably) include feelings of great well-being.

II. The Occurrence of Migraine

This section examines when migraines occur, and divides them into periodic (occurring a particular times and with particular rhythms of occurrence), circumstantial (appearing in response to particular circumstances), and situational (as a reaction to intolerable situations such as stress).

III. The Basis of Migraine

We skimmed this section, except for focusing on the psychological causes of migraine.

IV: Therapeutic Approaches to Migraine

We only skimmed this section. As the title suggests, it has to do with approaches to avoiding, ameliorating or otherwise treating migraines.

V: Migraine as a Universal

This section is really just one chapter which is on Migraine Aura and Hallucinatory Constants. It discusses, and tries to systematize the types of hallucinations seen during the migraine aura phase. There are three types: phosphenes (stars and scintillating points of light); spectra: the classical expanding scotoma with its ‘fortification edges’; dynamic geometric patterns (grids, mosaics, spirals, etc.)

The interesting thing about these hallucinatory phenomena is the possibility that they are a direct reflection of activity and function of cortical cells. For example, the ‘fortifications’ around the edge of a scotoma may (perhaps) be produced by groups of edge/orientation detecting cells. Similarly, Alan Turing described how waves of chemical reactions can give rise to regular geometric patterns in “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis.”

Another thing this brought to mind was John Conway’s Game of Life, in which 2D cellular automata with simple rules can produced spreading and repeating patterns of activity. See the wikipedia article. One wonders if the cortex, when undergoing a migraine, can generate such spreading and repeating patterns.

# # #

How to Do Nothing…, Jenny Odell

*How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell, 2019

I found this book to be quite a disappointment. For the most part, it is not about the attention economy; nor does it say much about how to resist it. It is really just a lament about the state of late-capitalist-resource-extrative-modernism. And while there is certainly much to lament, I don’t really find much in the way of strategies on how to resist the various forces that are having such negative effects on the environment and world.

The book seems very undisciplined — or perhaps self-indulgent — to me. It meanders from polemical to anecdotal. In the smaller potion of the book that did seem to be about the attention economy, I was bemused by the author’s inclination to delve back into history (quoting Seneca for example), but not recognizing that the ability to reach so far back to find apropos material suggests that the malaise that she is investigating seems to have been present, at least in the west, for centuries.

A bit cynically, I wonder if the publisher insisted she tack on the ‘Attention Economy’ bit of the title to garner attention and thus up sales. To my eye the book is more about mindfulness and focus, and while I actually am in sympathy with many of the ‘lessons,’ I can’t say I learned anything. Mostly, when the book turns to the entrancement of people by Twitter or Facebook or some other form of broadcast media, I want to say, ‘Come on, just get a grip. Show a little character and self-discipline by recognizing that you don’t like the way this slice of the media is effecting you, and do something different.

And speaking of the media, it seems to me that much of what Odell inveighs against not digital media in general, but broadcast media like Twitter and Facebook. It is a failure of analysis to fail to differentiate among media (digital or otherwise) that work in different ways, and shape discourse in different ways.

Later in the book she takes on the notion of western ‘progress’ — which she somehow ties to the attention economy — and the damage that technodeterminism and extractive capitalism have done to environment. And it has done damage, but she does not offer any convincing or compelling remedies, other that to suggest a label — “manifest dismantling” — for the various efforts to mitigate or reverse eco-system damage that have been in play for decades.

I could go on, but it feels like too much work to try to distill crisp arguments from her prose and then critique them.

# # #

ILSG-25: Hawai’i Volcanoes Trip Report

These are my cleaned-up day by day notes from a 13 day geology field trip on the big island of Hawaii to explore the volcanic features of the island.

Day 1 (1/24): Sturgeon Lake; Pahoehoe; Hydrothermal Alteration

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

I read this book for the Elle Cordova SF book club; it is number 3 in the sequence. I was familiar with some of Butler’s earlier work, the Xenogenesis stories, which I liked, and at some point had read Parable of the Sower, which I did not care for.

To step back a moment: Octavia Butler is justly lauded for her impact on late 20th century and later science fiction. Though by no means the first black author to make a name in the genre (Samual Delany is, I think, the progenitor), she is among the first to really foreground themes related to black experience — characters experiencing racism, dominance/repression, resistance/survival, and (loss of) bodily autonomy. As I write this, I balk, because I am by no means a scholar of SF, and so I should preface the foregoing with “In my limited experience.”

In re-reading ‘Sower,’ I found myself recapitulating my initial unfavorable reactions. The first being, ‘I don’t think this is really science fiction.’ [Clearly SF writers disagreed with me, as this novel was awarded a Nebula.] Still, it seems like a straight-forward post-apocalyptic novel — I was going to write, “in the vein of Cormac McCartney’s The Road — but on pausing to look it up, I find that this pre-dates Road by at least a decades. I didn’t care for The Road, either, so at least I am consistent here. In both cases, we don’t have much in the way of science happening, just an extrapolation of current trends that are leading / have lead to the breakdown to the climate, environment and society, and protagonists living off scavenged food amid a world filled with violent and destructive bands. Sower does give its protagonist, an odd disability/delusion called hyperempathy caused by a mother’s use of a drug during pregnancy, but, although complicating life for the protagonist, this problem does not seem to me to fundamentally shape the story.

My second unfavorable reaction has to do with the unrelentingly-grim world of the book. The closest the book gets to hopefulness are a few periods of stability in the midst of a long inevitable decline, which the protagonist tries, inadequately, to prepare for. Of course, this is perhaps a realistic portrayal of the challenges we face, but it does not make it a fun read (except, perhaps, in contrast to its sequel Parable of the Talents, which I am now finishing and will probably not write about).

I suppose that the best that may be said of the book is that it shows the kindness and inclusiveness is at least a middle-term effective strategy, and that people can overcome interpersonal obstacles to work together. It also posits an interesting believe system — being constructed by the principal protagonist — that, it is argued, is more suited to the needs of the post-apocalyptic world, and paints a realistic picture of the ways in which it evolves and spreads.

The book is thoughtful and well-written, but I’m still not convinced that it should be called science fiction…

# # #

I Robot, Isaac Asimov

It is possible I read this over five decades ago, but if so, I don’t recall any of the stories. I know I read some ‘three laws’ stories, but that may have been in some other book/collection, possibly Caves of Steel. I read this because it was a pick for Elle Cordova’s SF Book Club, even though this one was picked and discussed before I joined. But, I was curious as to how I’d experience this very old story (circa 1950), and probably a little motivated by the ‘collect-the-whole-set’ phenomenon, as I picked up the book club on its second book.

Though I don’t remember any of these stories in particular, Asimov’s three-laws stories are sort of a one-trick pony: there is some kind of mystery or inexplicable event involving a robot, and the resolution turns on realizing that the three laws are not being interpreted or executed as intended, and thus the problem is that the robots are being too literal. Thus, in one story, a robot lies to various humans in the story because it is telepathic and knows what they want to hear, and so it can’t tell them the truth because that would ‘harm’ them. So, they are all essentially puzzle-stories.

Asimov’s characters are not terribly well developed. It feels as though he has carefully chosen a stereotype for each, and few physical or behavioral features of each character as a synecdote for their individuality. We’ve got the hot-headed, angry red-headed Irish engineer, and his cool and more reflective partner. And of course, Susan Calvin, the brilliant but plain woman who has repressed everything but her mind to make it in the world of science. But kudos to Asimov for creating a central female character in the 1950’s, and making her as well developed (which is to say, not very) as any of the male characters.

If these stories are from the golden age of science fiction, they are also from the golden age of smoking — it is astonishing, to 21’st century eyes, to see how many people smoke, even on space ships. It is also interesting — and characteristic of the time of writing — to find that unions have played a significant role in keeping robots off of earth and out of the workforce, as have religious movements.

I wondered reading these stories would whet my appetite for more of Asimov’s robot books, but the answer is no. Although, it could be interesting to read some of the other books where more modern writers — David Brin being one — filled in some of the gaps in Asimov’s world.

# # #