Thinking and memory problems

Just my tuppence-worth.

I understand both versions of ‘distraction’. I am very familiar with that ‘what was I just going to do?’…’ or ‘what should I be doing now?’ … etc etc feeling. I think that our lives are just too busy these days, and given that something is misfiring in our brains, we have trouble keeping up.

I also know that, even when the world is rockin’ 'n rolling, if I sit down and concentrate on something that I enjoy and get absorbed in - in my case that is doing stained glass - things seem to stabilize and I can function much better…but then get up to get on with preparing the supper…and everything kicks into gear again. Revolver has mentioned the same when sh plays an instrument. Interesting to note, but unfortunately life does not just let us do what makes us happy!

It definitely can/does for me. Brain fog/lack of concentration/memory/spacial relations/reasoning - all can be effected. I had a doctor [who went on to Johns Hopkins] explain it to me. Your brain evolved along with your body. Over the course of eons head injuries/brain injuries happened. The brain evolved [like everything in evolution] to help the survival of the species. If your injured brain favored higher reasoning over being able to run from that bear/tiger/whatever wanted to eat you, you got eaten and that trait was not passed on. Our brains evolved to prioritize standing/running over higher cognitive ability. Makes sense once you look at it from an evolutionary standpoint. Brain injuries are common, they always have been. Our brains/bodies evolved to allow us to survive. But is sure does suck to have your mental abilities affected, to know it and to not be able to think/read/reason your way out of it.

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Hi there. Sorry to hear that you have this problem too. It can be frustrating can’t it!. I can understand the idea that the parts of the brain that were used for memory and thought are now working to help with balance. But I don’t actually believe in evolution, I believe that we created by God and that when sin entered the world, sickness came with it.

I think the ‘vestibular’ challenge requires some of the most complex processing we ever do. Visual processing apparently requires at between 30 & 60 percent of the brain (depending on how you define visual processing if you include ‘vestibular processing’ , ‘sight and sound’ etc.). So involved is the visual processing that there is actually a time lag between hearing something and seeing it: you process any noise first (assuming its nearby of course - perhaps it’s very lucky the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound!)

I agree the brain is extremely ‘plastic’ especially when we are kids and is able to adapt and compensate, but yes, interesting that you detect a decrease in cognitive ability. I wonder if that’s only when your symptoms are particularly bad, so the brain starts to perform more laborious ‘last resort’ first principles processing rather than relying on purely learned patterns.

During a demonstration, scientists put a well known violinist (Vanessa Mae) in a functional MRI scanner and asked her to play the violin with both her right and left hands. When she played with the wrong hand the number of neurons excited was orders of magnitude more. In other words when the brain finds an unusual situation in which it can no longer rely so much on learned patterns, a lot more of the brain is involved. This might explain your observations.

I hope it gets better for you over time (you may find it does!) as the brain learns to optimise the new situation.