Nothing much new has happened during gamma brain biofeedback for awhile. Hence no posts on it. Until today. Once you’ve been training an area for quite a few sessions, you’re not likely to see dramatic changes anymore in either brainwaves or outwardly in you. You will see previous changes stabilizing. But this week, during…
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Reading and Brain Injury: Stepping Forward Again
Well, it looks like I’m getting back on track with my reading. I am now half reading on my own, half with my neurodoc. When I say with my neurodoc I mean he asks me to read two paragraphs to him so that I don’t have to initiate the reading or have the entire drive…
The Centreboard Life of Brain Injury
When we first came to Canada, my father’s colleague introduced us to the frightening delight of sailing in a tippy boat on a lake with capricious winds in Ontario. Pretty soon, my Dad had his own centreboard sailboat, one that was a little more stable than his colleague’s Albacore. Back then, only rich fat…
Post Brain Injury and PTSD: What Happens If Re-Traumatized?
What happens if one is re-traumatized? If one witnesses something similar to one’s own trauma, especially after acquiring PTSD and/or a brain injury? Like anyone who watches a human bounce off a windshield and fly through the air, you gasp, your heart pounds, you freeze or rush to help. But I did something different in…
Hypnotizing Memories
Hypnotism is a strange, scary process. You put your mind under the control of another’s mind. So you gotta really trust that other person. I didn’t. But after an old friend suicided recently, and my fragmented memories wouldn’t let me remember her properly and were also disturbing my body’s humours (such an old term but…
Growing Social Media Divide Leads to Bad Advice
I’m not often told it might be good to avoid Twitter or to give it a break, but when I am — and when others with brain injury are — it’s by people not on Twitter or who have a lurking-only account. And who don’t know or understand how I use it. They’re unhelpful. They’re…
Happier (Brain-Injured) Heart
The ADD Centre has various ways to measure my stress levels and how well I’m coping through the biometric data gathered during my brain biofeedback sessions. Software reads my heart, skin temperature, breathing, and EEG sensors and analyzes them to give a measure of how well my brain and heart are functioning. This measure is…
How Much Does Social Isolation Slow Down Recovery from Brain Injury? PTSD?
I had a thought (I know, so odd): how much does social isolation, systemic inaccessibility, and opprobrium from family, friends, lawyers, health care professionals, etc. slow down recovery from brain injury and/or PTSD? We’ve read of studies* showing positive effects on the heart of socially cohesive neighbourhoods, lifelong negative effects on children of lack of…
A Poem Read To Me Reveals My Injury
Ever since I got back from England, my neurodoc has been selecting poems and reading one to me at the end of each session. Although he speaks slowly and enunciates fairly well, I have to concentrate hard, keep my eyes on his face, in order to follow and understand. This week, he read out Because…