The main character in my new novel has no voice. She’s not me, yet, too, I am muted, most recently, in the relationship with my neurodoc. It’s come to an impasse. He is clinging on with rigid ferocity to the DSM and, though he’s interested in the new ideas of neuroplasticity, he continues to adhere…
Category: Brain Power
Musings on what makes for a powerful brain. This category also includes the sub-category Brain Health, which covers all things related to brain injury.
Adventures in Brain Injury: Training Vision in the Winter Light
Winter light is not the same as summer sunlight. You’d think after practicing walking — seeing, perceiving with both eyes and feet together, learning where I am in space — during strong and long summer sunlight hours, I’d have no trouble in the winter. Nope. It isn’t just the snow. The sunlight is sharp, throwing…
Heart and Colours, the Concussion Way
After the amazing HRV numbers a couple of weeks ago, they tanked the following week. Sigh. That’s how brain injury improvement goes, I thought. And then I began getting short of breath in the way that tells me my heart ain’t too happy, which my hypothalamus fix had made better way back when. Oh. Yeah.…
Don’t Read, Watch to Learn!
Although I did well in the Oxford online short courses on philosophy of mind and metaphysics, the reading just about broke me because my neurons in the reading-related networks were injured, and so little is known about how the brain reads that treatment had been a series of guesses and so not hugely effective. Plus…
Eyes and Heart, Neurons and Brain Connecting Again
Last year, after eye surgery, my iPhone display looked enormous. These days, it looks teeny weeny. Amazing how adaptation changes perception. I no longer get dizzy moving my eyes across a wide screen. My brain is used to the sharper-looking text and more depth in the screen colours. My panoramic vision isn’t solid yet, but…
Proprioception Efficiency Improving after Eye Surgery
I’m back on the weekly brain training track: enhance gamma (39-42 Hz) brainwaves for three neurofeedback screens; inhibit 16-20 Hz and enhance SMR (12-15 Hz) brainwaves for the next three neurofeedback screens. The latter three are supposed to help me adapt to and keep my improved and more efficient vision, perception, and proprioception. Right after…
Miracles of Biofeedback
Something spectacular happened. And happened again. My heart rate dropped into the 70s and stayed in the 80s during brain biofeedback two weeks in a row. And my HRV (heart rate variability) hit 6. Six!!! Back in 2012, two was good news, and ten was the goal. So five years later, more than halfway there.…
Returning to Brain Training Routine
I had problems with my WordPress app when I went to post this blog post. Totally forgot I hadn’t once I got the app working again. So here it is, a few weeks late! My brain trainer was off on a well-earned, long-overdue vacation. So I got three weeks (two sessions) off too! All the…
A Whale of a Post
I wanted to see the Blue Whale heart at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), but I hadn’t been there in years, never mind in the year since my eye surgery. Navigating large indoor spaces with my new vision still makes my head spin. Yet I asked my CNIB orientation mobility trainer if he could take…