Annotated Selective Bibliography for Focused Listening™ Level 1 Phone Apps
Laurna Tallman, Author of the Focused Listening™ Level 1 Phone Apps:
Laurna Tallman. 2010. Listening for the Light: A New Perspective on Integration Disorder in Dyslexic Syndrome, Schizophrenia, Bipolarity, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Substance Abuse. Marmora, Ont.: Northern Light Books. The autobiographical account of my discovery of the neurological paradigm that describes the effect of high-frequency sound transferred through the right ear into the brain on cerebral integration and on levels of consciousness and behavior.
Laurna Tallman. 2011. Ear Function in SSRI Withdrawal: A Comparison with Symptoms of Other Ear-Related Syndromes. Marmora, Ont.: Northern Light Books, Appendix. My study of the effect of SSRIs on the ears suggests dozens of physical and “psychological” symptoms occur as side effects of ear damage from psychoactive medications because those symptoms are either already recognized as ear-related by the medical mainstream and by such specialists as Tomatis and Bérard or have been shown by me to be ear-related because they disappear under sound stimulation of the ears.
Laurna Tallman. 2012. Hemispheric Integration and the Ears: A Scientific and Inclusive Paradigm of Human Behaviour Including the Mild and Severe Forms of Mental Illness. Marmora, Ont.: Northern Light Books.
Laurna Tallman. 2021. Awakening Normal: A Neurological Paradigm for How Focused Listening™ to Music Heals Mental Illness. Marmora, Ont.: Northern Light Books.
Founder and Followers of the Tomatis Method of music therapy:
Alfred Tomatis. 1990. The Conscious Ear: My Life of Transformation through Listening. Barrytown, NY, and Phoenix: Station Hill Press and Sound Listening and Learning Centre. Tomatis’s autobiography, which includes an emphasis on the right ear even though his music therapy is binaural.
Alfred Tomatis. Originator of Presentation. 1957. To the French Academy of Medicine by Dr. Moulonguet and Raoul Husson; presented to the Academy of Sciences by Prof. Monnier. “The larynx only emits those harmonics which the ear can perceive.”
Alfred A. Tomatis. 1987, 1991. The Ear and the Voice. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. Tomatis, who taught Anatomy at the Sorbonne, describes the influence of the ears on the body’s anatomy, especially in reference to the vocal emission.
Alfred Tomatis. 1996. The Ear and Language (Norval, Ont.: Moulin Publishing. Tomatis theorizes about language and cites examples of “unusual healing” with his music therapy.
Tomatis website (Tomatis died in 2001) does not emphasize the stapedius muscle in the way Tomatis does in his writing. The disclaimer to a full understanding by Bérard of the AIT success in healing has been mentioned. I show from other remarks that neither doctor had the overarching theory that I provide in my paradigm of right-ear-driven left cerebral dominance. I believe that is because they assumed the capacity for volition in the individuals with the conditions they treated. However, both doctors pointed to physical healing that occurred when the ears were healed: Bérard on asthma, skin conditions, and allergies, Hearing Equals Behavior, 42–3.
Tomatis on the stapedius control of the larynx, The Ear and the Voice, 32; of the viscera, ibid., 62–3. The tympanic muscle, which is a tensor, and the bony tympanic cavity, which conducts sound, also transfer energy to the brain. As Tomatis mentions that they are more involved in the transmission of lower frequencies, and he frequently emphasizes the importance of the stapedius muscle. The action of the tensor tympanum muscle is subordinate to the activity of the stapedius muscle in an explanation of the effects of Focused Listening™.
The French monks famously healed by Tomatis were suffering the same symptoms from sound deprivation as my family and I had suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) due to a virulent flu that also caused debilitating vertigo. Stimulation of the right ear restored health in all instances, not only demonstrating the etiology of that form of malaise in the middle and inner ear but providing its remedy. More recently, “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” is called “long COVID.” See also Tomatis’s treatment of epilepsy with his Electronic Ear, Tomatis, The Conscious Ear, 189.
William Condon, who studied the work of Tomatis, filmed and studied the physical responses to conversation in persons of all ages. At <www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/whatresearch Condon.asp>. (15 June 2011).
Norman Doidge. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. New York: Penguin Books. Doidge points out the links between autism and epilepsy, 75.
Paul Madaule. 1993. When Listening Comes Alive. Norval, Ont.: Moulin Press. The protégé of Alfred Tomatis describes his own healing from dyslexia by Tomatis and explores other aspects of Tomatis’s work.
Paul Madaule. 1978. “The Dyslexified World,” in Gilmor, Madaule, and Tompson, About the Tomatis Method, translated from the French by Dr. Paula Kacher. Toronto: The Listening Centre Press. “L’Univers Dyslexie” was presented at the Fifth International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology (Tomatis Method) in Toronto, 1978. Madaule describes the disconnect both intellectually and socially of the person suffering from dyslexic syndrome that is resolved by treatment with the Tomatis Method.
Internet file, “ResearchonTomatisMethod.pdf.” This is not ascribed, but carries the Tomatis, France, logo. One such study of infantile schizophrenia (autism) is relevant to extensive exposure to sound, more than typically is used by Tomatis Method and AIT practitioners (with binaural methods): 8. Autism Study on 100 children—Davis-Kalugin 2005:
. . . . According to Doreen Davis, children with autism typically need many more sessions beyond the original 60 hours used during this study. Therefore, the changes noted in the post session “Abilities Improved” form, are indicative of only the beginnings of change for these children. Additional sessions of the Tomatis Method were suggested. (Davis- Kalugin, 2005) [my emphasis]
Norman Doidge. 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. New York: Penguin Books. Psychiatrist Norman Doidge sites the research of Dr. John Merzenish regarding plateaus of neurological recovery that should not be accepted as terminals of recovery, 81.
Pierre Sollier. 2005. Listening for Wellness: An Introduction to the Tomatis Method. Walnut Creek, Calif., Mozart Centre Press.
Founder and Followers of Guy Bérard’s Audio Integration Training (Bérard’s AIT):
Guy Bérard. 1993. Hearing Equals Behaviour (New Canaan, Conn.: Keats, 1993). A new edition provides expanded information from Bérard’s research: Guy Bérard and Sally Brockett, Hearing Equals Behavior: Updated and Expanded, (Manchester Center, Vt.: Shires Press, 2011). Several of Bérard’s case studies (pp. 137, 138, 142, 148) refer to audio-processing difficulties in members of the same family. Bérard’s book title asserts Hearing Equals Behavior, but he offers no examples of acute mental illness other than suicidal depression and autism. Bérard’s awareness of the effect of the ear on behaviour is reflected in the title of his book Hearing Equals Behaviour although he does not understand how the damaged ear affects the brain to produce some severely aberrant behavioral syndromes. His writing draws on more than 8,000 patient profiles of which his suicidally depressed patients, of course, were only a relatively few. He notes that the range of depressions usually proceeded from audio deficits in the left ear, which enervates the right cerebral hemisphere, a finding supported in the MRI studies of D. Hecht that revealed disorganization in the right hemisphere in depressives.
D. Hecht. Oct. 2010. “Depression and the hyperactive right-hemisphere,” Neuroscience Research 68, 2: 77–87. See, also, the research summary “From the book Re-educating Hearing by Dr. Guy Bérard” at Spot, Centro Terapéutico y de Investigación at: <www.spotcentre.es/investigaciones. html>. (15 November 2010, my editing of the Google translation). Spot, Centro Terapéutico y de Investigación at: <www.spotcentre.es/investigaciones.html>. (15 November 2010, my editing of the Google translation). From the book Re-educating Hearing by Dr. Guy Bérard.
Autism: 48 cases treated:
Noise, removal of fear of ………………………………………………….. 47
Important modifications of small and larger behaviors ………… 47
Progressive restoration or improvement of speech ……………31
Restoration of unintelligible speech……………………………………..16
Total healing……………………………………………………………………….1
If the 1,850 dyslexic clients of Bérard are representative of his practitioners’ case loads, at least 1,850,000 dyslexics have been healed or significantly improved by exposure to filtered high-frequency sound using some version of The Tomatis Method.
Paul Millard Hardy, MD, behavioural neurologist <www.berardaitwebsite.com/hearingequalsbehavior.
html> and <www.aitinstitute.org/hearing_equals_behavior.htm> (16 June 2011).
Bérard, Hearing Equals Behaviour, on the “2–8 profile}” for suicidal depression, 42–8. (Bérard and Brockett, 2011, 46–52.) Note that the same audio deficits in both ears are associated with allergies and skin eruptions that disappear when the ears’ function is normalized. Bérard’s references to dyslexia in the context of Georgiana Stehli’s autism: “The audiogram (Figure 4-1) showed some of the usual anomalies associated with dyslexia, principally bilateral distortions.” Ibid., 56. Bérard and Brockett, 29–42, 44–5, passim, give details of typical frequency distortions for several symptoms with an interpretation of how such deficits affect both pronunciation and comprehension with cumulative effects on behaviour.
Bérard gives audio profiles for depression and aggression; see Hearing Equals Behavior, Pt II, 97 ff. The audiograms for Georgiana Stehli point directly to the similarity of audio-processing deficits in dyslexia and autism, therefore, as in Daniel’s case, to schizophrenia and dyslexia. His schizophrenia and dyslexia audio deficits would have been similar to the bilateral distortions mentioned by Bérard for autism and dyslexia (Hearing Equals Behavior, 1993, 53).
Oliver Sacks. 2007. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Vantage Books. ch. 2 passim. Sacks devotes a chapter to epilepsy and seizures pertaining to the sounds of music as a stimulus, sometimes referring specifically to differences between the brain’s hemispheres. In several instances recounted by Sacks, an abrupt shift in the patient from the dominance of one hemisphere to the other will seem the likely explanation for some of these behaviors.
Annabel Stehli. 1991. The Sound of a Miracle: A Child’s Triumph over Autism. New York: Doubleday. A mother’s account of Dr. Guy Bérard’s one healing of autism.
Annabel Stehli, ed. 2004. Sound of Falling Snow: Stories of Recovery from Autism and Related Conditions. New York: Beaufort Books with the Georgiana Institute. Accounts of families who found help for an autistic child, if not complete healing, using Bérard’s AIT.
Dr. Jeff Bradstreet, “Foreword,” in Stehli, The Sound of Falling Snow, x. Regarding “static epilepticus, the worst form of epilepsy.”
I Samuel: 16: 18; 18: 10; 19: 9. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X, lines 25–32. Homer, Odyssey, XII.90.1. King Saul had classic symptoms of bipolar I that were only temporarily soothed by David’s harp-playing. The control of Orpheus over Hades (Hell), the Furies (the demonic), and the Sirens (the temptation of the primal urges), who sing, makes the precise connection between music stimulation and left-brained control over right-brained manifestations. See also Katherine LaFrance, “Orpheus Unraveled? A conversation on sound and brain function” <serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro03/web1/klafrance.html>.
Meten Somer, Iris E.C. Sommer, and Reneé S. Kahn. 2009. “Hand preference and population schizotypy: A meta analysis,” in Meten Somer and Iris E.C. Sommer, eds., Language Lateralization and Psychosis (New York: Cambridge University Press. Schizophrenia has been linked to non-right lateralization “since the 1950s,” 122.
On Psychiatric Drugs:
A Literature review reported by Reuters, Medical News, Medscape, 2001, “Lower dose, longer titration recommended for Risperidone,” based on a literature review by Dr. Richard Williams of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria, British Columbia, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 62 (Apr. 2001): 282–9. The Reuters report reads: “In patients not previously exposed to the drug [Risperdal], elderly patients, first-episode younger patients and patients with indications other than schizophrenia, he recommends an initial target dose as low as 1 to 2 mg/day, commencing with a dose of 0.25 mg/day in the elderly.” From the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry abstract:
A number of studies were carried out in Vancouver in the early 2000s, some of them funded by Janssen Pharmaceuticals to learn more about Risperdal. The following study, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, found that Risperdal affects metabolism in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the desirable hemisphere for dominance: E.T.C. Ngan et al., “Immediate and delayed effects of risperidone on cerebral metabolism in neuroleptic naïve schizophrenic patients: correlations with symptom change,” Journal of Neurological and Neurosurgical Psychiatry 72, 1 (Jan. 2002): 106–10. Accessed 18 July 2008 at: <jnnp.bmj.com/cgi/ content/abstract/72/1/106>. “The evidence suggests that the reduction in medial-frontal activity after treatment with risperidone is a direct effect of risperidone and not a consequence of symptom improvement. Reduction of medial frontal metabolism may be one of the physiological mechanisms by which risperidone alleviates symptoms of psychosis in schizophrenia.” Or, as I found in D’s case, also causes psychosis and predisposes the ear and the brain to further episodes and/or deeper psychosis.
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (New York: Crown/Random House, 2010). Whitaker cites the proliferation of D2 receptors as a side effect of Risperdal. (p. 105). He cites the poorer outcomes for schizophrenics who are medicated as compared with those who are not (99–107). Whitaker also reports the use of patients as subjects for testing drugs when over and over again the outcomes are better for subjects taking the placebo while those taking the drug become addicted to it (ch. 14). Using patients for drug trials and supposed “therapies” amounting to torture that have taken place in Ontario hospitals have resulted in class action suits; see, for example, <www.oakridgeclassaction.ca/document/vol%201/Vol%201%20sec2-D.pdf> where the class action suit document can be viewed that was against Dr. Elliot Thompson Barker, Dr. Gary J. Meier and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario in respect of alleged human experimentation conducted on patients at the Penetang Psychiatric Hospital, Oak Ridge Division, between 1965 and 1979.
Ngan, et al. note 29. United States Drug Agency, at: <www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug07/ aging0807. htm>. This study suggests the importance of a diet rich in oxygen radical absorbing nutrients (anti-oxidants) for those persons with neuronal problems because they affect the level of dopamine production in the brain. They may affect the level of dopamine in the ear, also. See also studies of dopamine production in psychosis, at: <lansbury.bwh.harvard.edu/da_and_ agonists.htm>, including T.R. Kosten, T.P. George, et al., “The potential of dopamine agonists in drug addiction,” Expert Opin Investig Drugs 11, 4 (2002): 491–9; and an alternative to dopamine agonists: F.P. Bymaster and C.C. Felder, “Role of the cholinergic muscarinic system in bipolar disorder and related mechanism of action of antipsychotic agents,” Mol Psychiatry 7, Suppl. 1 (2002): S57–63.
G. Halmos, B. Lendvai, et al., “Simultaneous measurement of glutamate and dopamine release from isolated guinea pig cochlea,” Neuro-chem Int 40, 3 (2002): 243–8. A study of dopamine within the cochlear system itself.
On Hearing Loss:
J.F. Willot and S.M. Lu. 1982. “Noise-induced hearing loss can alter neural coding and increase excitability in the central nervous system of mice,” Science 216, 4552 (1982): 1331. At: <www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/216/4552/ 1331>. Catatonic behaviour includes the extremes of paralysis and of hyperactivity. I also wondered if I had located the explanation for the seizures in epilepsy, akasthisia (manic, restless movement) in mental illness and SSRI side effects, and hyperactivity in some dyslexic children, whose ADD manifests as ADHD.
Most audiometry has been more concerned with whether or not the ear can hear in terms of decibels (the amplitude of the sound wave) and much less concerned with the frequencies that can or cannot be perceived and even less with discrepancies between the ears or with differences from a 10-decibel baseline, such as hyperacusis or “peaks” at particular frequencies. Except in some educational settings, audiometry aims to correct perception, not the neurological and behavioral consequences of audio-processing deficits. Oddly, most therapeutic audiometry methods applied in educational settings aim to bypass deficits by using eye-hand-oral methods of intervention rather than by treating the primary deficit in the ear, possibly because loss of hearing through cilia damage, which usually is irreversible, is assumed to tell the whole story of audio-processing deficits.
Audition Related to Vision: We perceive motion with our ears as well as with our eyes.
Laura Pettito. 2010. Dr. Laura-Anne Petitto’s research with the deaf and their perception in Broca’s area of hand signs delivered at 1.5 hertz (one movement per second) bridges a conceptual gap between the ear’s reception of Hertz below the threshold of hearing as motion by the vestibular canals (see Tomatis, The Ear and the Voice, 52, 83–5) and the normal hearing mechanism of sound, both of which alter the brain in the same place in the same way (categorical perception) in Broca’s area. At: <www.utsc. utoronto.ca/~peititto/M&C2005.pdf>. 20 Aug. 2010.
Further experiments of the psychologist Laura Pettito with deaf people measured sign language at 4 hertz and found that it was perceived by the deaf persons in Broca’s area as if it were spoken language. The slowly rolling ball is another instance of the vestibular canals’ reception of the hertz of motion below the threshold of hearing that is registered in the brain like sound (see end of note 57 re Pettito on categorical perception).
Fundamental Facts about the Neurology of Hearing:
Richard L. Gregory. 1981. Mind in Science. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 203. Neurons carry messages at the speed of sound. The speed of sound in air is 1100 feet/sec. or 344 metres/sec. Bérard gives the delay of one-fifth of a second in right-ear and left-ear sound arriving in the brain, as one cause of stuttering, Hearing Equals Behavior, 34.
P. Brown, Rothwell, J.C., Thompson, P.D., Britton, T.C., Day, B.L., and Marsden, C.D. 1991. “New observations on the normal auditory startle reflex in man,” Brain; 114:1891–1902; cited by Milicent Cranor, <www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/31st_Issue/jiggle.html>.
Gregory, Mind in Science. 1981. “Neurons wired together fire together.” “The pulses of equal intensity and the ‘all-or-none’ response of nerve[s] were described by E.D. Adrian in The Basis of Sensation in 1928.” Gregory, Mind in Science, 204–5 ,and postulated as a “first law” of neurophysiology by Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, Montreal. Personal correspondence with the author’s father W.A. Mohun, 20 November 1967.
Hemispheric Distinctions in Various Diagnoses:
Rachel L.C. Mitchell and Tim J. Crow. 2005. “Right hemisphere language functions and schizophrenia: the forgotten hemisphere?” Brain: A Journal of Neurology (2005), at: <brain.oxfordjournals. org/cgi/content/full/128 /5/963>. 25 June. Mitchell and Crow, “and schizophrenia has in the past been referred to as ‘a left hemisphere disorder’ (perhaps most notably by Flor-Henry, 1976, 1983).” Clearly, the dysintegration of the hemispheres in schizophrenia has been noticed, in part, from the perspective of each distinctive hemisphere.
Timothy J. Crow. 1983. “The two-syndrome concept,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 11, 3 (1983): 479, at: <brain.ox-fordjournals.org>. 14 Apr. 2009. Crow notes that the post-mortem examination of schizophrenics’ brains shows the temporal lobes shrunken. I have observed the MRIs of a left-brain-stroke victim that show the right-brain enlarged as a result of the patient’s need to become left-handed following paralysis of the right-hand.
Apparently, the brain is receptive in somewhat different areas to different concentrations of frequencies. Compare with Tomatis, The Ear and Language, 103; the frequency concentrations for French are about 800–1,800 Hz; for English, 2–12 kHz, On language frequencies, The Conscious Ear, 70–80; specific reference to Chinese cadences, 79. Note that the deficits of auditory processing characteristic of dyslexia shrink English-speakers and Chinese-speakers brains, albeit in slightly different locations:
“Dyslexia . . .appears to be associated with dysfunction of the left temporoparietal cortex and the left inferior frontal gyrus in English monolinguals. In Chinese monolinguals, however, the dysfunction appears to center in the left middle frontal gyrus. In addition, compared to healthy controls, English dyslexic children exhibited reduced grey-matter volume in the left parietal region; Chinese children with reading problems exhibited reduced grey matter volume in the left middle frontal gyrus. These results suggest that abnormalities in both functional and anatomical structures of language processing might be language-dependent.”
S.E. Shaywitz, et al. 1998. “Functional disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in dyslexia,” Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95 (1998): 2636–264.
See also E. Temple, et al., “Neural deficits in children with dyslexia ameliorated by behavioral remediation: evidence from functional MRI,” Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 100 (2003): 2860–2865. W.T. Siok, C.A. Perfetti, Z. Jin, and L.H. Tan, “Biological abnormality of impaired reading is constrained by culture,” Nature 431 (2004): 71–6. F. Hoeft, et al., “Functional and morphometric brain dissociation between dyslexia and reading ability,” Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104 (2007): 4234–9. W.T. Siok, Z. Niu, Z. Jin, C.A. Perfetti, and L.H. Tan, “A structural-functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers,” Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105 (2008): 5561–6, at: <www.arlenetaylor.org/brain-learning/1575-learning-and-the-brain-a-f> (20 Aug. 2011).
Some Canadian researchers are prescribing glasses to dyslexic children; they have not noticed the attention deficit cycle. A prism in the right lens that focuses light onto the right nasal retina helps to correct the vision deficiency in the right-brain half of the cycle, but certainly distorts normal vision during the left-brain phase of the cycle. This crutch is not a cure. <adhdguide.blogspot.com/2008/05/-glasses-for-dyslexia.html>.
Michael Mann, PhD. 1981, 2009. The Nervous System and Behaviour. New York: Harper and Row. At: University of Nebraska Medical Center, on-line version of text, at: <www.unmc.
edu/ Physiology/Mann/mann17.html>.www.unmc.edu/Physiology/Mann/mann17.html
One recent discovery concerning the human V1, the upper layer of the visual cortex, is that signals measured by fMRI show very large attentional modulation. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex> 12 July 2011.
Chris McManus. 2002. Right Hand Left Hand. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 202–213; and from the 20% of right-brain language center persons stipulated in the I. Derkishan article <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laterality>.
The discrepancy between these reports on lateralization and “the location of the language centre in the right brain” bears further study. The effect of the right brain on sound travelling to the left brain from the left ear may be creating blood flow in the right brain picked up by transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (ibid. McManus, 201) interpreted as “right-brained language” that are mistakenly ascribed as deriving from a language centre there. I imagine that for people with strongly visual memories, such memories relevant to language could strongly activate the right brain although the language centre is in the left hemisphere (see Beauregard on nun’s memories of their “mystic” experiences, Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul [New York: HarperCollins, 2007], 266–77). My paradigm is in some of its aspects approximate; for example, I have not worked with people (as far as I can tell) who have completely reversed hemispheric dominance so that their language center and related processes occur in the right brain under the lateralizing influence of their left ear. I make estimates of that behavioral syndrome according to my research and the aspects of my paradigm that have been demonstrated to me.
M.H. Thaut, et al.,1999, “The Connection between Rhythmicity and Brain Function,” Engineering in Medicine and Biology 18, 2: 101 (quoting Alfred Tomatis); quoted in Joshua Leeds. 2010. The Power of Sound: How to be Healthy and Productive Using Music and Sound, Rochester, Vt., and Toronto, Ont.: Healing Arts Press, 40.
John E. Upledger and Jon D. Vredevoogd. 1982. Craniosacral Therapy. Seattle: Eastland Press, 85. The four-minute cycle in attention deficit may be impelled by the closed hydraulic (cerebrospinal fluid) system surrounding the central nervous system. A little-understood aspect of the brain’s function is the closed system of cerebrospinal fluid under pressure that Dr. John Upledger explored and has written about. His ability to alter conditions of dyslexic syndrome suggests to me that regulating the pressure surrounding the brain through external pressure on the bones of the skull may promote hemispheric integration, possibly also by affecting the condition of the middle and inner ear. See also my description of changes in D. during my brief attempt at craniosacral therapy. Tallman, Listening for the Light, 273, 275. Tomatis notes the audio-lumbar sacral loop and the audio-cervical loop “under cochleo-vestibular supervision.” The Ear and the Voice, 76.
A woman was unable to have her hearing corrected when deficits were identified during her childhood. In her 30s, hearing aid technology improved and she has worn hearing aids for each ear since then. It is possible that treatment with the Tomatis Method when she was young might have corrected her audio-processing deficits. Focused Listening has been very helpful to her in supporting left-brain functions, although in her mid-80s she is succumbing to dementia. Personal communication. Name withheld. June 2011. April 2025.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), usually prescribed for depression and minor mood disorders, have become notable for causing serious side effects called “Serotonin Syndrome.” These medications include Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, Celexa, and Effexor, among others. Laurna Tallman, Ear Function in SSRI Withdrawal, Appendices.
G.M. Stratton under the influence of Wilhelm Wundt. Experiments in perceptual adaptation conducted by Stratton. At: <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Stratton> (7 January 2013).
When Bob Marley, in “Redemption Song,” sang, “Have no fear for atomic energy ’cause none of them can stop the time,” he expressed a sense of exceptional powers that can come to pot-smoking Rastafarians and other drug-users when their time sense has become distorted. That sense of time is disordered initially in the ear affected by cannabis smoke migrating from the upper respiratory tract through the Eustachian tube.
Physical and Psychic Trauma. The interhemispheric relationship makes difficult the recovery from such trauma such as child sexual abuse, rape, warfare, a car accident, catastrophic natural events, etc. The person with ear damage, which is more likely following some kinds of trauma, is less likely to be able to respond to talk therapy and less likely to be able to learn to forget.