Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 So I know during episode two, I stated that I would put bonus content after the theme song played, but it, it ended up being a little longer than expected by info dump ended up being a little longer when I went to edit. So I decided I would just make a bonus episode and I don't even have a Patreon or anything. So this is like just bonus episode for everybody Woohoo. But, um, it's minimally edited. So forgive me, my ums and U's and my starts and restarts and any potential loopy perseve perseverative. There we go. Got all the syllables in that my ADHD brain might have gone through. So I do hope you find the information informative, maybe a little entertaining, um, and just enjoyed the nice fun info dump episode. Oh, and also I decided to include, I made a cheesy little theme song for my podcast that I just sort of made up on my own and sang to myself.
Speaker 0 00:00:59 And I thought, why not make that my bonus episode theme song? Why not? So enjoy that too. Hopefully you somewhat enjoy my goofiness. Okay. So I'm not gonna lie. I kind of feel a little like Ferris Bueller at the end of fair of Bueller. Say off when he's like, what the movie's over go, go home right to the camera. Remember that? Uh, probably aging myself, but it's a good movie. Younger people you should see Ferris Peeler's day off. Anyway, welcome to the bonus content. My little neuroscience slash physiology geeks. I'm pretty sure that's who you are or the medical and, or the medical LPs, I guess I should say. I feel like medical LPs, usually the ones who really like loved all those physiology stuff, which kind of makes sense as to why we go into medical stuff. Right. Um, still useful to know if you work with kids and you work with schools and stuff, because you still see a lot of complex medical cases, particularly in the schools.
Speaker 0 00:01:56 Um, but also in private practice, depending on what areas you happen to specialize in. So welcome to my bonus content. Woo. All right. I actually added in like three different things that I thought maybe just didn't quite fit in with the episode or perhaps were a little too info dumpy. Um, so one is gonna be those memory centers in the brain talking about how we have different encoding rates, essentially for the different areas that mitigate different types of memory, um, long term memory, which is super interesting. If you work with cognitive patients, this might really help, um, it's kind of eye opening stuff. And then I actually threw in a little bit about the ululate gys and how it actually does connect to different motor plans. Then what comes from the primary motor cortex, the volitional, uh, motor cortex essentially. <laugh> um, we, I feel like in my S L P studies, we really focused on primary motor, but the, there is a theory that there is an emotional motor pathway basically.
Speaker 0 00:02:57 So I put it, I threw in a little bit about that, that, cause I learned that in my assistants, neuroscience class as well. And then I also threw in just this, I recorded this little teeny section on like the size of nerves and the size of like, what is the largest nerve in the body? Basically. It's like little trivia thing and also a little trivia thing on why we have really poor pain localization when we're dealing with very large nerves. It's very, very brief. There's more detail I could go into if I actually dug up my class notes, but I didn't. So, uh, this is it. This is my info dump of stuff I learned in my neuroscience, my Systems's neuroscience class. I think I took it in 2015 at the university of Arizona enjoy folks. And with very limited review, I will say so caveat. Mm. Grain of salt here, I guess cuz uh, double check me I suppose because um, yeah, it might not be, my memory is not infallible. It's good, but it's not totally infallible. All right. Hope you guys enjoy the bonus and thanks for listening. Geeky pees, we could totally be friends. Love you guys.
Speaker 0 00:04:05 It's the trauma
Speaker 1 00:04:07 Inform the trauma inform, promoting safety, empowerment and diversity, the trauma inform. So bonus content.
Speaker 0 00:04:27 So since I was bringing up things about emotional memory and coding really, really quickly, I thought I would do a little bonus content here, a little post theme song. Um, I would almost said post credits, like podcast don't have credits or at least mine doesn't anyway. Um, but post, uh <laugh> geez. I can't even think right now you guys. Okay. Um, I thought I would give a little bit of bonus post like outro, uh, post music content on memory centers in the brain. So not about trauma learning. I just think it's interesting stuff, especially for LPs out there. If you guys work with cognitive stuff, this is just interesting stuff that I learned from an neuroscience class. I took when I attempted a PhD briefly back in the mid 20 teens at university of Arizona. So I took a, a systems neuroscience class, um, at the PhD level and learn some cool stuff.
Speaker 0 00:05:24 So here's some bonus content from that. I do not purport to have remembered this completely accurately. This is stuff that I remember from the class and I have not looked over my notes from that class in a while. Um, so if there's any inaccuracy as please forgive me, I'm literally just talking about stuff that I think I remember learning basically. Woohoo bonus. Here you go. Um, what I remember learning from that class is that hippocampal, amygdala learning. So like that associate, so that emotional memory is like one of the fastest, okay. Hippocampus, definitely encodes long term memory in terms of semantic learning. That's where you get into like the mice and the maze and S spatial cells and all that stuff that people won Nobel prizes for that happens in the hippocampus. So people are measuring there. Um, and uh, I know that like linguistically, you know, we theorize that we encode especially semantic, meaning in lots of different areas.
Speaker 0 00:06:28 That's why we can bypass it with semantic feature analysis. Essentially you can kind of BA bypass one pathway and try and get to the word or the concept a different way. Right. Um, so it's not like memory centers are what store, all of it. It's I think the current running thought neuroscience wise is that memory centers like the hippocampus, they're like the relay station. That's gonna pull the right files. Basically. They're the ones who are like, Ooh, to have that memory, we need to connect these things. We're gonna make a pathway happen through these neurons. So it's not like it's not like the warehouse that stores the files. Does that make sense? That kind of happens around the brain a lot, but um, you need that structure to be able to access those files. Does that make sense? I guess they're kind of like the, uh, I don't know.
Speaker 0 00:07:14 I guess they're like the Google search engine. I don't know. Or the card catalog. I don't know exactly. I can't think of a good, uh, <laugh> good, uh, uh, analogy for that. But yeah, essentially like the hippocampus, if you're having a semantic memory, the hippocampus is like sending out the right information to get to the right places in your brain. Essentially when you're trying to recall something so emotional learning, super fast semantic learning, it can happen pretty fast, but that's where you need a few repetitions of something, right. To try to remember, like if you're trying to memorize somebody's name and if you're me, you need like a billion repetitions. I'm so bad at remembering names. You guys. And if you ever meet me in the future, I preemptively apologize. If I don't remember your name and you've already met me before. I always remember stuff we talk about.
Speaker 0 00:08:03 I never remember names. It's like the worst. Anyway, it's something I think it has. So to do with my ADHD. I think my brain just thinks names. Aren't that important? It's details about people that's important. And I'm like, thanks brain for making that decision for myself because the other person thinks names are important and I need to anyway, ongoing battle. I digress let's head back to memory centers. So that takes a bit right. Semantic learning takes a bit of repetition and then there's habitual learning. So when you get into procedural memory, from what I remember in my systems, neuroscience class, once again, I'm mentioning it's a class and it's been a while since I studied this because I am leaving room for error. <laugh> here with what I'm telling you, but the basal ganglia, you know, we always talk about that in terms of Parkinson's disease and motor.
Speaker 0 00:08:47 And we know a lot of motor about the basal ganglia, but the reality is the basal ganglia actually is connected to all the brain centers. So it has cognitive aspects to it. It has like sensory aspects. It has all these different aspects for the basic ganglia circuitry. The motor is the best studied one. So that's the one we learn about because we know it the best basically. Um, and we know it's about scaling, like your movement and this and that. Like what's important, you know, whatever. Okay. And it's habitual learning stuff. Right. Which becomes that issue. That's where like Parkinson's treatment is more about making sure there's more of a volitional intention rather than it being a habit. Right. Because the habit system is starting to break down. So, um, so habit you've probably heard it takes, you know, a month or so to develop a habit, you have to do it regularly.
Speaker 0 00:09:43 So if you're trying to encode like a long term memory into like a procedural memory or a habit, the reason it takes a long time is because the basal ganglia actually is one of the slower encoding systems. So long term memories, like getting coded in the basal ganglia, but they don't really encode quickly. It takes a lot of repetition for the Baal ganglia system circuitry to be like, oh, I guess this is important for me to like, start to remember this basically. So that's, what's so interesting. Right? It's kind of fascinating stuff that, uh, yeah. <laugh>, which also makes a lot of sense. If you think about the cognitive stuff we start to see in Parkinson and other, you know, similar, um, issues with basal ganglia, you start to see cognitive impairments, memory impairments, that sort of thing. And it's like interesting because we don't know much about the effect of a degradation of that circuitry on those domains, but it kind of makes sense that we see some of that because it does have circuitry that feeds into cognitive areas in the brain.
Speaker 0 00:10:46 And if it's in charge of what is essentially procedural or habitual, then yeah. Breakdowns in that would definitely affect how somebody is reasoning or problem solving or, you know, all that executive function and stuff would definitely be impacted by that. So that's just a theory. That's just like me hypothesizing out here, um, in my little office here. So <laugh> in my little podcast recording area. We that's just me hypothesizing out here in my little podcast recording area and just sitting out into the ether, but this is your bonus content, little bit of something on memory centers, but that's why we have the different areas of memory. And that's why we have these different domains of memory that then getting coded in different speeds at a different rates. Hope you enjoy that SLPs cognitive, especially the ones who work with cognitive stuff. Um, it's kind of nifty to know about.
Speaker 0 00:11:38 Right. So, yeah. And also like, yeah, just try not to think of memory centers as being like, you know, the Raiders of the lost a warehouse where all the memories are stored. <laugh>, they're much more like a really station, like, okay, yeah. If you want that memory, then I know how to get to that. I'm gonna, I'll put in the search terms and boom, we'll bring it up. And there it is. That's really more it's about what it's about. Um, as far as what we know, it's more about the connectivity and not so much about like a file system, if that helps at all, hopefully
Speaker 2 00:12:13 The bonus content transition.
Speaker 0 00:12:16 Yeah. Here's another kind of interesting thing about the singulate. Um, we know in certain animal models, including with primates and things that there are motor connections from the singulate to like, uh, sorry, there are connections from the singulate that send out motor patterns and bypass the primary motor cortex interestingly. And, um, there's a hypothesis that, that still also exist in humans because if you've ever noticed, if you're working with like, um, stroke patients and they might have the unilateral hemiparesis, and then when they laugh, they, you might actually see more activation on that side of their face than if they're volitionally trying to smile. Right. And that's cuz the volitional motor is coming from the primary motor cortex, which might have been affected by that stroke. But the, uh, singulate it connections, the more emotionally driven motor planning, um, might not have actually been impacted by it or not as heavily impacted by it.
Speaker 0 00:13:24 So that's kind of interesting, interesting little tidbit neuroscience wise that, um, it might help to explain certain phenomena. We also see in the SLP world such as, um, with just people with DYS fluencies that when there's automatic speech or more emotionally driven speech, they can be become more fluent in the voice world. There spasmodic, dysphagia, where if it's VO like emotional vocalization, it's clear and the spasmatic the spasmodic dysphagia seems to mainly be present with, uh, volitional voicing. Right? So it is kind of interesting cuz these are all different things that converge to help suggest strongly that our emotional system has their own access to certain motor planning kind of cool. Right?
Speaker 2 00:14:14 The bonus content transition.
Speaker 0 00:14:17 Yeah. Little piece of trivia time. I said Vegas is one of the largest nerves in your body, little piece of trivia for everybody out there, the actual largest nerve in your body, the largest like single nerve as far as at the cellular level is the sciatic. That is the nerve. If you have had sciatic pain, you know what I'm talking about center of that comes from your lower back and it actually goes all the way down your leg. So that's that one where like, if it gets a little pinched or a little impeded or something, you know, especially for women, um, when you're pregnant, <laugh> this tends to happen right where you get the pain and it's like, you might feel it in the back of your thigh and then it might move down to like the back of your knee and it might move up to your lower back in a little bit and then maybe it'll be in your back of your calf at some point.
Speaker 0 00:15:04 Right. And it's such a weird thing that you get that pain response. Right. But that's because it's all the same nerve. So your brain's not actually great at localizing exactly where the pain is. Um, basically it's just getting the message like this nerve is annoyed <laugh> and so you experience the pain. Like it can be kind of all the way down your leg essentially, or even in your lower back. So piece of trivia, that's the sciatic, another fun piece of trivia about the Vegas quick side note guys, um, it is really large, right? And it does carry 80% of that information, including sympathetic in your torso about your gut. So like pain response and stuff. This is also why we have really bad localization for pain in our torso. And as like, especially CIS females, we know what it's like, where it's like you get pain in your lower abdomen.
Speaker 0 00:15:53 And you're like, I don't know if this is my reproductive system that's causing me pain or is it my digestive system? Like who knows? Right. <laugh> hard to localize and that's cuz a lot of that information is going up essentially in the same nerve bundle and it's, you know, it does get, um, sort of filtered out as it goes up to the brain. But essentially you end up with really poor localization because uh, it's kind of coming from the same source no matter where the pain happens to be so fun. Little topics, little, little bonus side notes. Okay.
