Snakes and People: Coiling or Recoiling?

There has apparently been considerable controversy about the direction in which snakes coil, clockwise or counterclockwise. Dr. Eric Roth (Department of Zoology, University of Oklahoma) has tested these reptiles for the direction they prefer to coil.  Dr. Roth studied the coiling behavior of 30 cottonmouth snakes over a six-month period.   Adult snakes (16 of 20 snakes) preferred to coil in the clockwise direction. Many female snakes (15 of 20 snakes), but few male snakes (only 4 of 10 snakes), also tended to coil in a clockwise pattern.  Roth’s article seemed to come to the conclusion that on average they preferred turning clockwise to the right (Roth, E.D., 'Handedness' in snakes? Lateralization of coiling behaviour in a cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma, population. Animal Behaviour, 66:337-341, 2003.)

A more recent study by Harold Heatwole, Peter King and Samuel G. Levine arrived at a different conclusion. They studied the direction of for two species of viperid snakes—copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix) and cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus). Overall, neither species showed a significant preference for coiling in a particular direction. Only 1 of 22 snakes exhibited an individual preference, a result displayed random direction of coiling. Roth’s previously published claim for laterality in coiling direction by cottonmouths actually presented similar results but came to the opposite conclusion. The data from the combined studies suggest that if laterality in coiling direction does occur, it is extremely weak and inconsistent. Oddly, the only snake which exhibited a distinct preference for turning right responded with apparent interest when the name “Glenn” was called. (“Laterality in coiling behaviour of snakes: Another interpretation”  Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, Volume 12, Issue 6 November 2007).

This brings me to the upcoming mid-term elections.  Many people, including some respected pollsters have come to the conclusion the electorate is turning distinctively in a clockwise direction, i.e. to the right.  On the other hand the Pew Poll of only committed registered voters arrived at the same conclusion as Heatwole’s second Copperhead snake study, namely that people, like their viper counterparts, seem to be undecided about which direction they should turn.  They turn equally to the left and right.    

According to the latest Pew Poll, it will be easier to encourage younger folks to turn to the left this November, with the promise an improved economy and other benefits, than to the right (57% to 32%) than their 50+ year old elders who are turning to the right by 11 percentage points.  The problem is, how to get younger people to actually vote.

Facts help.  This year, the Obama Administration's Health Care Plan began preventing insurance companies from denying children coverage due to pre-exisiting conditions, like autism.  In another three years it will protect everyone else. If you are college age, beginning this year, young people who are not covered through their employer will be able to stay on their parents' health plan until their 26th birthday, which is a boon to young people looking for jobs.  The Republicans have promised to reverse these gains if they achieve a majority in the House and/or Senate in November.  Rachel Maddow's (MSNBC) famous "bikini graph" showing consistent reversal of job losses sustained under the Bush administration and gradual job growth, provides further encouragement that we're moving in the right direction.  http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/04/05/4118097-bikini-graph-on-jobs-and-more

Here's another idea. Maybe a YouTube video featuring House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner lip synching to Taio Cruz’s “Break Your Heart" would help generate some interest among young voters.  Remember Boehner’s “Hell No!” podium pounding tantrum during the health care debate? Clips of those outbursts would look great interspersed with verses from Break Your Heart…. “and I know karma’s gonna get me back for being so cold/ like a big bad wolf, I’m born to be bad and bad to the bone…”  Someone out there with a laptop and digital editing software could put together a YouTube video in a Sunday afternoon, which with a little luck could go viral. 

One last thing about snakes’ coiling. When snakes are scared, they find a hiding place and coil up together. Some snakes rattle their tales, like people shouting and holding up signs claiming Obama is like Hitler or Stalin and that he doesn’t have a birth certificate. Tail rattling. If disturbed, snakes strike, pretty much like people who are disturbed by what they don't want to hear. 

Just goes to show there’s much to be learned from studying the snakes' and people's behavior when they’re scared.

Meniere's Disease and Regressive Autism

In early January 2007 I packed my suitcase for a grant review meeting held annually at a hotel on Key Biscayne, Florida. I didn’t really spend much time on the beach at those meetings, since nearly all of our time was in a hotel conference room, discussing research proposal.  Nonetheless, it was always nice to escape from Minnesota’s minus 20 degree temperatures for a couple of balmy days in Florida.  I had written drafts all of my reviews and settled in to get a good night’s sleep before heading to the airport the next morning.  Around 4am I awakened.  When I sat up in bed the room was violently spinning.  I felt a sense of panic, wondering what in the world was happening to me.  I tried to stand but immediately fell, fortunately backward into bed. Within minutes vomiting began, which lasted all morning into the afternoon.  My wife called the Sonesta hotel and left the message for the Committee Chair that I was ill and couldn’t attend the meeting.   So much for warm gulf breezes and seafood salad with iced tea under palm trees.

After recovering from the acute episode, I saw my physician who initially said it was probably caused by a virus that affected my inner ear, but he acknowledged it could also be an uncommon type of vertigo caused by a problem with crystals falling into the canal of my inner ear.  That seemed far-fetched at the time.  Six months later the second episode occurred, this time I had been seated at my computer working on a chapter I was writing.  I suddenly turned my head in response to a noise, and the room began spinning and didn’t stop.  By holding onto the wall, I managed to make my way from my study to bed without falling.  Vomiting lasted the rest of the day. 

I was referred for a test in which a fiber optic camera covered my eyes like goggles and transferred what the camera saw to a computer monitor. The physical therapist asked me to lie down with my head tilting over the edge of the table.  She rapidly moved my head first to the right for 30 seconds, then the left and then she asked me to roll over on my left side and finally to sit up straight, all the while wearing the eye movement camera.  After three repetitions of this sequence, she showed me the images of my nystagmus, rapid jerky movement of my eyes in the direction opposite the head position.  It looked like a series of frantic appearing “beats.” By the third repetition, the nystagmus stopped. That was how I learned I had Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), a real mouth full.  The therapist explained that small crystals, called otoconia, are shed by tissue inside the inner ear which float downward by gravity into the inner ear canal where they eventually settle in sufficient numbers to block the flow of fluid needed to detect the direction of head movements, hence the vertigo when you move your head. 

That wasn't great news, but it turned out there was something I could do about it.  The therapist gave me exercises I could do at home, and I eventually purchased a DVD from Dr. Timothy Hain, an otolaryngologist in Chicago, demonstrating the Epley Maneuver Exercises that would clear the crystals from my inner ear canals.  The exercises seemed to have been working well, until in Mid-May of this year.  I had gone for a routine eye clinic appointment to fit new eyeglass prescription.  As I was pulling into the parking lot the spinning began followed within a minute or two by retching.  I managed to call for help using my IPhone and was hospitalized overnight until the spinning and vomiting stopped with the aid of IV medication. 

 The most recent episode was on July 6^th when I was scheduled to teach a class on autism at the University of Minnesota, and I had another episode of violent spinning sensation and vomiting that lasted twelve hours.  I have had more frequent episodes, but now they have been preceded by a feeling of fullness in my right ear, tinnitus, first high pitched ringing and then an almost roaring sound in my right ear. Voices are muffled and unintelligible when I cover my left, “good” ear so am only using my right ear to hear.  After the last episode’s immediate crisis had passed, I saw an ear nose and throat specialist and his colleague, a physican’s assistant who specializes in such conditions.  An audiologist test for loss of hearing at various frequencies was conducted. The audiogram indicated and I had lost much of my hearing at low frequencies in my right ear.  I could tell from the expression of her face that the news was not good.  She said, “With your history of recurring vertigo and vomiting episodes, feeling of fullness in the ear, roaring tinnitus, and now loss of low frequency audition, that is the profile of Meniere’s Disease."  She didn’t break all of the bad news to me at once.  As a professional working with families of kids with autism I do the same, so I knew the drill.  I suppose she was sparing me the information that I would very likely eventually lose my hearing entirely in the affected ear.  She prescribed an anti-inflamatory medication that she said might help over short term with relief from symptoms.  I keep a packet of chewable meclizine in my pocket at all times and on my bedside table at night in case the spinning sensation begins.  If I sit or lie extremely still after taking meclizine the most violent episodes are usually prevented.

Meniere’s disease is a progressive, chronic relapsing neurological condition that destroys the labyrinth of the ear’s cochlea and inner ear that enables one to hear and maintain balance.  In many cases between 5 and 8 years after onset, the condition “burns out,” with cessation of spinning and vomiting episodes but entire hearing loss in the affected ear.  The cause of Meniere’s disease is unknown and there are no treatments demonstrated to be effective. Theories abound but data are scant.  Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy may enable me to maintain better balance and to use visual and other kinestheic cues that are still working in the other ear to compensate for lack of balance sensation from the affected ear. 

Now I know a little of what parents feel like when they are told their child has regressive autism, for which there is no known specific cause or treatment to halt the progressive loss of skills and worsening of autism symptoms.  My paroxysms of vertigo and vomiting are awful and temporarily debilitating, but nothing compared with the daily crises experienced by children with autism and their families. Long-term intensive early behavioral intervention overcomes most of the symptoms over 2-4 years for half of the children, and the remainder experience improvements but not as dramatic.  If I’m lucky, Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy will enable me to function more like kids who receive Autism Early Intensive Behavior Intervention with “best outcome,” copacetic if not entirely wonderful.  With my political proclivities, it’s fortunate that my left ear is my “good” ear and eventually won’t be able to hear at all with my right ear (take that, Glenn Beck).

I will likely be a more empathetic listener the next time I have to discuss regressive autism with parents whose child has that condition.

Beck & Goebbels Propaganda

Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Is reminiscent of a similar event July 9, 1933.  Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and intellectual architect of Hitler’s Nazi party, delivered a speech, “The Storm is Coming.” Like Beck, Goebbel’s purpose was to work the populace into a frenzy of opposition to the existing political order, and against Jews in particular. Few of Beck’s followers seem familiar with the similarity of propaganda tactics that eventually brought Hitler to power and led to the Holocaust and World War II.  

Beck’s desecration of the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech makes use two of Goebbel’s most important Propaganda Principles*: “If you tell a lie often enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” and “Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”  Beck projects his own racism on President Obama, labeling him racist and thereby seeks to turn whites against blacks, fomenting racial hatred and conflict in America.  Goebbels remarked at the 1933 Nuremburg rally**, “The insane belief in equality that found its crassest expression in political parties is no more,” which fits in well with Mr. Beck’s own propaganda scheme.  As in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Beck views some (white Christians) as more equal than others.  Among those least likely to be equal are racial. ethnic and religious minorities, and people with disabilities, like autism.

If you are not old enough to remember the consequences of America’s initial reticence about the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, and the role of Goebbel’s propaganda machine in particular, it is worth perusing the German Propaganda Archive that is available on line.  It will make you think again about the consequences of Glen Beck’s virulent propaganda program. 


*See:  Leonard W. Doob (1954) Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda, in Daniel Katz (ed) Public Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.


**“Rassenfrage und Weltpropaganda,” Reichstagung in Nürnberg 1933 (Berlin: Vaterländischer Verlag C. A. Weller, 1933), pp. 131-142. Translated in German Propaganda Archive, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb41.htm   Accessed 8-27-10

Early Autumn’s Melancholy

Autumn approaches along Lake Superior’s North Shore a stone’s throw from the Canadian border, as sumacs exchange green for yellow and orange and snippets of red foliage emerge.  Sunlight simmers across the great lake’s sixty-odd degree surface, whitecaps and mini-water spouts frenzied by 35 mile per hour wind gusts crossing from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Sail boats with tightly bound masts moored in the Grand Marais harbor lurch and sway, wind tosses the whitecaps’ froth haphazardly into the air.  Seagulls’ mewing complaints of the lack of food scraps left by visitors who have already begun heading south for warmer weather. In another few months the wind child temperature will drop to -70 F along the shore.  

How the Ojibwe natives and early French fur traders managed to cross the great marais to Grand Portage at the Canadian border in 25 foot long birch bark canoes, in such treacherous water is a mystery.  They survived the bitterly harsh winters by means only the legendary Ojibwe trickster, Nanabozho knows. Our family’s too short holiday in the far north concludes with our daughters', son's and cousin's, packing for their return trip to the Twin Cities and far off New York.  Goodbye embraces are followed by the inevitable melancholy of parting, as autumn reminds us of summer’s wondrous days, not to return. 

David, now 45 years old, was the first person with autism with whom I worked.  He was 5 years old at the time.  His parents, Etta and Doug, devoted much of their life to helping David have a better future. David lives in a Twin Cites group home and has a job that provides satisfaction and a little spending money.  When Etta died this past year, David didn’t understand her absence.  He insisted that she was in Duluth, which he knew she visited from time to time.  As weeks and months passed, he seemed to realize she wasn’t returning from Duluth.  David became teary-eyed and despondent.  He had rarely made telephone calls to his parents.  It was they who called him, conducting a largely one-sided conversation.  Abruptly David began calling his dad by phone from his group home.  Doug answered, realizing from the number on his phone’s display, it was David calling.  Greeting David cheerily, Doug expected minimal reply, since David seldom speaks.  Doug was taken aback, when David blurted out, “I Love You Dad,” and hung up. David had no idea how to express the rest of what he was feeling, other than the need for love.  What else was there to say, perhaps that was enough?  

For David, the ambiguity of his mother’s absence had been a little like our family’s brief early autumn visit, concluding in the melancholy of their departure… easily managed in our case, but deeply saddening to David.  Doug is spending more time with David than in the past, regularly taking him for lunch at Famous Dave’s Barbecue, which, not surprisingly is doubly satisfying and a bit amusing to David.  Fortunately, David hasn’t heard of Kubler-Ross’s stages of grieving and is more likely to stick to the Chinese Buffet and Famous Dave’s with his dad and sister Ann as a means of overcoming his sorrow. We each have our own way of managing the sadness of loss.

I Forgot To Remember to Forget

Who would know off the top of their head the year the Beatles released Love Me Do as a single, or whether Can’t Buy Me Love was on the Hard Day’s Night Album, or who wrote Nowhere Man (it was mainly John Lennon with some odds and ends by Paul McCartney)? For one person, Bill Stainton, a multiple Emmy Award-winning TV producer, writer, and performer and an internationally-recognized Beatles expert.  Jude Southerland Kessler would also know.  She’s author of the historically researched novel Shoulda Been There. She has spent 20 years and made seven trips to Liverpool to research her comprehensive and thorough novel about the life of John Lennon.   Sharon L. Richards, is another Beatles expert.  She was hired by the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, FL to be the Beatles Expert at their museum experience, the Vault.  Sharon’s memories of working at the Hard Rock Vault are contained in her first non-fiction release Nights Inside The Vault. 

Oh, and there’s one other person, a young man with less celebrity.  He’s my 13 year-old grandson Michael Rodriguez who lives in West Orange, NJ, who has autism.  Michael will be entering 8th grade next Fall.  He is socially shy and sometimes acts a little silly for his age, but he has an encyclopedic memory of Beatles songs, the primary Beatle who wrote it and the year and the album was released.  He can recite the order of the play list on any album without hesitation.  If you recite a list of songs on an unnamed Beatle album, with one out of order, he will tell you the album and inform you that you have them out of order and recite the correct order.  Needless to say he will also tell you the year it was released.  Michael’s dad used to play drums in a local rock band, and his older brother plays drums, guitar and piano, so maybe there’s something in the genes in addition to autism that contributes to this unique ability.

Do Words Mean What We Want Them to Mean?

Too many things in our political, social and professional worlds are reminiscent of the exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

In her poem Scumble, 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armatrout wrote:

What if there were a hidden pleasure

in calling one thing

by another’s name?

Indeed, that seems to be the way of much of today’s world, and such misuse of words and the names of things have consequences.  We begin believing that the misused words actually mean something different than the do.  Repeal of a tax cut becomes a tax increase.  Repeal of pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurance companies becomes socialized medicine.

Elimination of the diagnostic category, Asperger’s disorder from the fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association,  as has been proposed, will apparently expunge from existence people with the condition we now recognize as Asperger disorder.  One wonders where they will go.  Perhaps there is a diagnostic purgatory for people with conditions that have fallen out of favor among child psychiatrists and clinical psychologists.

Because early intensive behavioral intervention has proven to be the most effective treatments for many young children with autism, it has been proposed in some states that one must be certified as a behavior analyst in order to be reimbursed for providing those services.  But what if one has comparable training and experience in applied behavior analysis and working with youngsters with autism, and is a licensed teacher, or speech language pathologist or psychologist?  Does that mean such individuals recognized by their state governments as qualified professionals, would be unable to be paid for such services?  Does the term “behavior analyst” mean only “certified behavior analyst” recognized by the Behavior Analysis Certification Board?  Perhaps like Humpty Dumpty, a word means what someone wants it to mean, or perhaps is should not.