The Diving Bell and The Butterfly Trailer (Friday November 30)

City Cinemas Angelika Film Center (add to My Theaters)
(City Cinemas) 18 W. Houston St., New York, NY 10012, 212-995-2000

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
PG-13 1 hr 54 mins 8.1/10 (650 votes)

Showtimes: 12:15pm | 2:45 | 5:15 | 7:45 | 10:15 | 12:30am


Lincoln Plaza Cinemas (add to My Theaters)
(Independent) 1886 Broadway, New York, NY 10023, 212-757-2280

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
PG-13 1 hr 54 mins 8.1/10 (650 votes)

Showtimes: 11:05am | 1:15pm | 3:30 | 5:50 | 8:10 | 10:30

AAC: Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Until recently, people with complex communication needs have had no access to professional interpreters. The Swedish Speech Interpretation Service (SSIS) is attempting to address this problem. This qualitative study reports on how 12 persons with aphasia experienced the services of a professional interpreter from the SSIS. The results are presented in two themes: (a) The purpose of using an interpreter, which addresses issues relating to autonomy, privacy, and burden on family members; and (b) perceptions of quality of service, which addresses issues relating to the skills and professionalism of and accessibility to interpreters. Results highlight the ongoing need for the SSIS and its importance to the participants. The professional interpreter as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) “tool” that could be used to enhance the participation of people with aphasia in the community-at-large, is also discussed; as is whether relatives and other non-professionals or professional interpreters should interpret for people with aphasia.next....

Aphasia sufferer writes of his struggle

The Yomiuri Shimbun

While working as an insurance agent in the morning of March 10, 2000, Tsuneo Kojima suffered a brain hemorrhage. The hemorrhage caused aphasia--which damages the part of the brain responsible for language and communication--leaving him unable to speak.

In his book, "Ki ga Tsuitara Shitsugosho --Tonikaku...Shibutoku Iko" (When I Came To, I Had Aphasia--Anyway...I'll Never Give Up), Kojima, of Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, says he felt as if "his head had been struck by a hammer," and recalls his struggle with rehabilitation over a seven-year period.

Kojima, 66, was unconscious when he arrived at hospital by ambulance. But despite overcoming his brush with death, he was left unable to utter a single word, and was unable to tell doctors his name and address or pronounce numbers.

After being diagnosed with aphasia, his wife bought him books written for 4- and 5-year-old children who are just starting to read hiragana. He took a long time to recognize the characters, and he could not remember how to write them at all.

Difficulties with numbers compounded his struggles. For example, he did not know what number comes after one. "I wondered what I would do if I could not regain my speaking ability," he said.

next....

henrik ibsen and aphasia

During his long illness Ibsen was troubled by aphasia, and he expressed himself painfully, now in broken Norwegian, now in still more broken German. His unhappy hero, Oswald Alving, in Ghosts, had thrilled the world by his cry, “Give me the sun, Mother!” and now Ibsen, with glassy eyes, gazed at the dim windows, murmuring “Keine Sonne, keine Sonne, keine Sonne!” At the table where all the works of his maturity had been written the old man sat, persistently learning and forgetting the alphabet. “Look!” he said to Julius Elias, pointing to his mournful pothooks, “See what I am doing! I am sitting here and learning my letters —­my letters! I who was once a Writer!” Over this shattered image of what Ibsen had been, over this dying lion, who could not die, Mrs. Ibsen watched with the devotion of wife, mother and nurse in one, through six pathetic years. She was rewarded, in his happier moments, by the affection and tender gratitude of her invalid, whose latest articulate words were addressed to her—­“min soede, kjaere, snille frue” (my sweet, dear, good wife); and she taught to adore their grandfather the three children of a new generation, Tankred, Irene, Eleonora. Next....

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly trailer released

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (for the meaning see diving bell and butterfly) is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome.

Kirk Douglas and AARP

Music's Mending Powers

(CBS) Dr. Oliver Sacks, played by Robin Williams in the movie "Awakenings," tried using music to arouse the catatonic victims of a rare brain disease.

The movie was based on a book and documentary about Sack's patients in the 1960s.

"These were people who couldn't generate any movement or any speech for themselves, sometimes until or unless they heard music," Dr. Sacks told Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood "And then suddenly they'd be able to flow, to dance, to sing. It was miraculous to see them, amazing."

A pianist himself, Dr. Sacks has spent years exploring the effects of music on the brain, chronicled in his latest book, "Musicophilia."

"I see patients with all sorts of neurological conditions who could be greatly helped by music," Dr. Sacks said. "People with Parkinson's disease who can't generate a sense of rhythm of their own, who can't flow, who can't move, but you give them rhythmical music and they can discover their own lost rhythm."

At Beth Abraham Health Services in the Bronx, Parkinson's patients like Jane Kirby walk cautiously without music, but with music, they step much more boldly.

Music not only stimulates movement. It can trigger memory in Alzheimer's patients.

"There is something immensely tenacious about musical memory," Dr. Sacks said. "And I think this is partly because musical memory or performing memory is lodged in parts of the brain which are not attacked by amnesia."

Another example of the power of music is what Dr. Sacks calls "earworms."

"I think everyone has the experience sometimes of a piece of music which catches their mind, which hooks them, which bores into them, and keeps repeating," Sacks said. "If one looks at functional brain imaging, you will see a repetitive pattern going again and again across the cortex. I think it's almost like a sort of little epilepsy or something like this. But music is more prone to repeat itself than anything else - more prone than words, I think."

Dr. Sacks says humans are naturally musical.

"The ability to respond to rhythm seems to be exclusively human," he said. "It appears spontaneously in every human child. It's not seen in any other animal."

And, he says, music is instrumental to our well being.

"There is something health-giving, I think, about music," Dr. Sacks said. "One's blood pressure comes down. One's pulse is more regular. One's muscles relax when one listens to music. One's spirit is lifted and one is energized. I mean, music just has so much health-giving power." NEXT