neurorehabilitationFromTheTrenches

 As promised, here's a review of Ulralearning This is a must-read for anyone embarking on any type of study. Like so many things I have encountered since, this would have given me a serious boost for my undergraduate studies. It contains many interesting, anecdotal examples of Ultralearning being used to great advantage, not least by the author who, as well as self teaching a full MIT course  (4 years worth in just 12 months), he ultralearned several languages. I was intrigued by this book, and how I might use this method in my neurorehabilitation, so I added the following to my reading list: the following . As soon as I'm happy with what neurology has to say about it I will eagerly take on my own "Ultralearning project" (as such activities are referred to in the book). The final chapter is a step by step guide to help the reader with his or her first, such project. This is a real eye opener. If, like me, you regularly fantasise about traveling back in time, armed wit

I have been reading Ultralearning I will review it next time, but I can already see that it has applications in Neurorehabilitation. I can already see also, if I say so myself, that I have been engaging in misguided Ultralearning . Firstly, what is learning? "the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.", according to The Oxford English Dictionary, or OED to his friends, and what then is learning for my brain, during neurorehabilitation? Well, as a free will denier, I would say it's exactly the same thing. Ultralearning is basically focused "learning through doing". I am enjoying reading it and look forward to continued "meta-learning" through reading, so I'll leave that there except to say I used November as the month, in which I doubled my efforts. I achieved this by timetabling in consistent training. 8:30-09:00 1st half hour on the Gehbarren; 9-12 work (first leg); 12-13 lunch; 13-13:30 2nd half hour on th

This month sees a review of a non-standard book and in spite of that – or because of that – a super read. Many of you will be familiar with the podcast “Making Sense”, which is hosted by Sam Harris – one of the four horsemen – he compiled some of the best conversations to-date, from the podcast, inviting the interviewees to elaborate and enrich the content of each interview, and it resulted in an extremely readable, educational end-product.  The interviewees assembled for this showcase of the excellent podcast, include many scientific minds, which I had not yet encountered, as well as one or two people whom I was familiar with; for example, Professor Robert Sapolsky, who I had always naively thought would make an excellent guest for Sam; I’m glad to say I wouldn’t have been wrong. That reminds me of a youtube video that I watched recently, of a conversation between Joe Rogan and Robert Sapolsky , that you are encouraged to watch, it deals with a subject that is an example of how nuts

My third acciversary came and went this week. It all went Pete Tong on 16th of September, 2017. So here’s an update on my progress thus far. Double Vision This is the most wondrous of my impediments, following the accident. I’m fairly confident that the double vision is being caused by a slowness in the movement of my left eye. What most of you are seeing now is a left eye picture overlayed by a right eye picture, or vice versa; this gives you and your autonomic nervous system the advantage of a perception of depth. The absence of this data is making my life tough, especially with a damaged part of the brain that deals with coordination and balance. Not to mention spasticity affecting my gait. It has seen some improvement but I still need the eye-patch for cane-walking because an incomplete picture is more useful to my autonomic nervous system than a dishonest one.  My Harm My hand and arm will be a problem for life. I broke my Yband. I attempted to have it repaired, when I learned tha

I'd like to thank Nick Lee for writing this. If you enjoy this, you are encouraged to check his website out. It starts in an old dusty gymnasium-turned-theatre in St. Macartan’s College, where Declan, the tenacious purveyor of this most excellent blog and I attend school between the years of 1994 and 2000.  There is a dangerous moment in the theatre which I never discuss with other actors. It’s too dangerous. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve known it to happen. But the first time it happens to me is in that dusty old gymnasium-turned-theatre.  I am performing in a dress rehearsal for the school play. A dress rehearsal is the final rehearsal before performance, for those who don’t know. Some say a bad dress rehearsal means a great first night. Which is bullshit. But it’s comforting if you make a balls of the dress rehearsal. It’s often the first time you wear the costume, the make up, and the lights are on you. You experience the heat of the stage. You can’t see anybody

This month's article has a very specific, target audience. Namely, people who stutter. According to National Stuttering Association of the USA that's about 1% of you. I am an ex-stutterer. One of the consequences of the accident, to me, was that I began speaking correctly and I feel it's only correct that I share with you, how I feel that was achieved. Firstly, a short disclaimer; I am not a medical professional, nor have I studied anything in the area of speech. I simply find myself as part of a rare group (definitely more rare than 1%), of people who used to, but no longer stutter.  The brain controls everything; the infrastructure that is responsible for human speech involves an extensive subset of those systems. Although I don't know anything about the speaker here , he outlines the basics around my journey from stutterer to regular person (normal), although I didn't know much about that journey while I was on it.  I'll guesstimate that I was around 10 yea

Some problem with the editor meant that I was unable to upload any pictures this month This month will see a book review of The Four Horsemen You may have noticed a pattern; that only positive book reviews make it as a subject of a coma2tri blog article. That's because life's too short to invest time reading something that might be no-good. In this case, I knew I was on a winner, having watched the conversation , upon which this book was based. As the four contributors are listed on the cover, they each, in turn, alphabetically, contributed an essay, on the subject of religiosity, all following an excellent foreward by Stephen Fry. I allowed myself to suppose that Hitchens would get his turn, by way of an essay he had completed on his death-bed. Well -- spoiler alert -- there is no such essay. It gets started, as I've said, with an excellent forward by Stephen Fry. The three :( following essays whet the appetite sufficiently, for the extremely well conducted discussion

It's been a while, and a taste of things to come. For too long have I allowed myself to become stressed out, trying to submit an article per week. I've decided that enough is enough, so I'm lowering my expectations as follows; this is May's article and you can expect a monthly article from now on. So you can expect a new article sometime in June. Obviously any guest articles will be a bonus in the month, in which they arrive, but they've been pretty thin on the ground so don't expect many of them. This week I'll address Biokiste . This is another positive development of the corona crisis. For some weeks we have been receiving a crate (see picture) of fresh fruit and veg, One can pretty much choose the contents but we seldom deviate far from the standard offering. Every Thursday, we could receive, for example, some tomatoes, parsnip, asparagus, carrots, lettuce, mushrooms, onions and then some of the following fruit; apples, bananas, blueberries etc..  As you

I could not have picked a better time, during which to be housebound. Oh, is it very inconvenient for you? not to be able to leave the house, or dart to the shops to grab a bit of fruit, or whatever, well, welcome to my world. Claire wonders how I do it. I just do, but hopefully I can give you some pointers that can help. My first piece of advice is around sleep. I recommend using this forced lull to improve your sleeping habits. 7-9 hours is the recommended amount of sleep a human requires in order to function correctly the next day. I recommend experimenting by starting to aim for 9, slowly curtailing your slumber daily until you find the optimal duration for you, because it's different for everyone. Further to this, I recommend adhering to the old adage, as though going to bed early and waking early will make you healthy, wealthy and wise. This has the added bonus of regulating a healthy diet, consisting of three square meals, no snacking. The secret to fending off boredom,

As the title suggests, I'm going to talk once more about my double vision. What do you mean that wasn't clear? OK, I'll admit it, that was a cynical ploy by me to appeal to my Japanese and Honduran readerships. More on that in the Appeal section. One of the many take-homes I had from Autonomie was a factoid I learned from my Logopädin. Namely, the reason for the ubiquitous eye-patch seen on a pirate, is not what you might believe. My memories of pirates, from my childhood, were based on the stereotypical pirate with the eye-patch and hook-for-a-hand. I put 2 and 2 together, with no google to research, and deduced that he must have accidentally gouged his eye out. I thought it was safe to assume that an eyepatch is to prevent infection of, and staring at, a wound the pirate had received or inadvertently given to himself. I could not have been more wrong. As I have since confirmed, the eye-patch was used unintuitively to give the wearer the power to see in the dark. Imag

Happy brain injury awareness month! I failed in my new year's resolution, to submit an article each week. This necessitates two actions. Firstly, and most importantly, I need to urge you to submit a guest article, as I've said, in any language, declan.treanor@gmail.com -- we have google translate, so it's not too much to expect readers of this blog to use it -- and, secondly, I mean to compensate for a weak February, with a busier-than-usual March. We might even break our current record of 8 in a single month. This month is perfectly primed for a record, given that it started with a weekend and has 31 days. Last weekend, I enjoyed a visit from my friends Cathal and Stephen. As you can see Cathal introduced sophistication to Bergedorf with his coat. It even got its own seat on the plane, both ways. This was helped by the corona virus, but who'd expect a coat like that to have to stay crumpled in a ball in the overhead luggage compartment?

As promised, here is my review of the wonderful establishment, that is  Autonomie Therapiezentrum Aschaffenburg .  I have it on good authority that their website will be updated soon. I made it home on Friday with the help of Claire's brother, Jack. This was my second 2-week period of neuro-rehabilitation there, and it won't be my last, here's why: They offer an intensive neuro-rehabilitation program, consisting of Logopädie (speech, in my case), Ergotherapie (equivalent to occupational therapy), and, of course, Physiotherapie. All this therapy occurs, for the most part, with the aid of  'cutting-edge' technology, with an emphasis on the brain. So, the clientele include patients with neurological conditions, such as Stroke, Parkinsons and TBI. The practice is staffed with young, enthusiastic people, complete with murals such as the following on the wall. Thanks to therapy that focused on my breathing, while talking, the logopaedie helped me to make gain

Greetings from Aschaffenburg. That’s where Autonomie is, and so where I am, following the first week of my second round of intensive therapies. Expect a full review, later this week, as soon as I get a few pictures, of this wonderful facility. That’s the song DKV, my health insurer, employs to pacify their customers, while they’re on hold. Claire has spent several hours, since September 2017, listening to this. In my case, it’s very apt. When Dr Ottes first recommended Autonomie, last summer, I was still a bit delusional about my prognosis, half expecting to be skipping out of there after two weeks; I think I even enquired about that very likelihood during my initial consultation, prior to starting with them last time. The thing about neurorehabilitation is that it requires complete dedication; the willingness to do whatever it takes. I count myself very lucky to have Claire on my team, as I would have given up by now, if left to my own devices, and resigned myself to a comfortabl

I finally got finished reading Professor Robert Sapolsky’s first book . I’ve been reading it for over a month. This was down to my slowed processing, but also because, about half way through it, I decided to use the process of reading the book as training for the return of my single-vision, by removing the eye patch during reading. It was a triumph for my vision but also my education. This is more science than we saw with the Baboons in A Primates Memoir, but don’t be put-off, it’s every bit as engaging, which would be expected from this fellow; the cover of the book brags of him, the following compliment, from no less of a man than Oliver Sacks CBE FRCP, “one of the best scientist-writers of our time”, and, based on my experience, I’ve no reason to suspect even a slight exaggeration. I’ll say this for him, only Professor Richard Dawkins had less noticeable, grammatical errors. I only noticed one in the two books I’ve read of his, so far, but that’s perhaps down to good editor

Guest Article: This is a timely guest article from none other than Claire Fastner, reliable as always and moving me to the resolution's promise of 4 in January. This is a picture of the actual postcard Declan wrote and sent to ourselves while on our fateful holiday in Malta. I am not superstitious, so I just wanted to share this as it is pretty remarkable how well he captured what lay ahead. If the accident hadn't happened, we would have thought nothing of this postcard. Since the accident happened it has become a treasured artefact. I still remember the moment Declan wrote it. We had just gone to St. Paul's bay and had returned from a trip to a tiny island.  Here's actual footage of our journey. We sat in the sun and had a spare postcard, one depicting the salt pans on Gozo, which we had visited days prior when we had stayed on Gozo.  Thinking back to Gozo, another memory flashes back: We went on a scooter ride through Gozo. Suddenly, it sta

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to submit a minimum of one blog article every week, so here I am. This will be the first article containing my new section, called 'Records'. This will provide a status update on the three records, mentioned last week; namely, exercise biking, rowing and ski-erging. My new fitness regime is going well, in Veganuary. It consists of the usual, with the additional, weekly record attempts, which will be dealt with later, in the new 'Records' section. As well as these, I have also started new training for my arm, which will also be covered later, in the ‘ My Tree’ section. This section will be used from now on, for commentary on my ongoing training for my hand and arm (henceforth, H arm, note the capital ‘ H’, very Germanically, denoting a noun ). I have finally almost finished Professor Robert Sapolsky’s first book “ Why Zebra’s don’t get Ulcers ’ , so, you can expect a glowing review next time. Which reminds me, This blog