PHOTO: “MEMORY SYNAPSES” – SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE “How Our Brains Make Memories”
A few days ago I had the unusual experience of watching my vocal chords in action. Chronic hoarseness and some difficulty breathing sent me to an ENT specialist. I had gone to one decades before when singing in coffee houses, churches, and at sing-a-longs pushed my voice past its limits, but this time technology had a new tool to offer: a rigid stroboscopic endoscope, or in laymans terms, a long silver tube with a camera that takes a video with soundtrack of ones vocal chords while the patient follows the speech and language pathologists directions for holding pitches and taking deep breaths through the mouth.
The procedure was painless, and the results were amazingly clear.I marveled at the two small muscles that moved, stretched, and relaxed, allowing me to make sounds that become speech when they are strung together. For almost sixty years, my vocal chords have worked with my brain and lungs as I moved from a crying infant to a toddler learning language, to a singer, teacher, and public speaker. I called my children for dinner, whispered sweet words to my love, and chanted with choirs of monks. I have moaned and groaned, cheered and yelled, laughed and cried. I watched the video in the pathologists office and wondered that those two whitish strips of muscle had vibrated and produced an infinite variety of sounds.
After the fascinating session, while waiting for the doctor, I flipped through a Smithsonian magazine and found an article on the plasticity of adult brains and changing of memories. The brain is the most mysterious and complicated part of the human body. Mesmerizing images of neurons, cells, and synapses accompanied the article. I will have to find the issue in the library because the doctor was ready to see me before I had reached the end of it.
Since the doctors verdict was that my vocal chords were healthy, but needed strengthened and beefed up with proper diet and exercise, I will have the opportunity to see if voice therapy has changed as much since my former experience as the tools used for diagnosis have. Meanwhile, I have been reminded of the wondrous creation that is the human body. Its existence is a miracle; its myriad of working parts something most of us take for granted until one of them dont work as well as we would like. I have no way of imagining the glory of the One who set in motion the matter and events that led to such a creation.
© 2010 Mary van Balen
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