Glymphatic System

 

 

Could this previously unknown waste system have functioned better through services I received under the service of Boehmer Chiropractic & Accupuncture immediately following the removal of the meningioma from my head? I want to stay with their service to boost my systems. 

This article says more about the announcement of the Glymphatic System: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815142042.htm. 

Resources: Read Online

Can You Make Yourself Smarter? By Dan Hurley, NYTimes Magazine

Neuroscience On Twitter: 30 High-Profile Scientists Who Tweet

I signed up for a twitter account after reading this. I haven’t quite figured out what to do with it, yet.

Question:Self Reflection

How do I foster my own desire to act on what I learn? How does one foster feelings of anticipation, excitement, joy to motivate? What components are important to successfully take into action what one learns? If I have not changed my live and improved the world around me, what would be the point? How do I synthesize and structure the next steps in the process of healing myself?

How can solitude today constitute the right environment for thinking, doing and feeling today but not tomorrow, in the next phase of our lives, when we are living in assisted living facilities?

 What gives? Why can we loose our ability to use solitude constructively?

Relationships in Flow

"Most important, in flow, the relationship between what a person had to do and what he could do was perfect. The challenge wasn’t too easy. Nor was it too difficult. It was a notch or two beyond his current abilities, which stretched the body and mind in a way that made the effort itself a delicious reward. The balance produced a degree of focus and satisfaction that easily surpassed other, more quotidian, experiences. In flow, people lived so deeply in the moment, and felt so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place, and even self melted away.”

~  Dan Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Resources: Memory Software

http://www.lumosity.com
http://www.positscience.com/
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/tmt/
http://www.zefrank.com/memory/flickr_memory/
http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-back.aspx Maybe I can play this someday.

Fact?: Lumosity

After playing Penguin Pursuit by Lumosity several times, it finally occurred to me that my fingers were behaving like they did when I was practicing the piano as a child. For a split second I could feel a naturally “measure” taking place in my fingers as my eyes read the image on the screen. One finger drew up from the key while another was ready to go. No damper pedal required.

The thought shattered the effect for me. The flow was gone the very second my brain associated the thought with the feeling.

Fact?: Barriers

 

My mind needs to allow me to focus and be consciously aware so that I can grow past its barriers.

Fact?: Sophisticated filter

 

My mind is a sophisticated filter. It’s a little protective though.

My thoughts create reality. My thoughts function and process in my overprotective brain. How can it make meaning and process information as well as it does, being that the area it depended on to communicate was invaded by a tumor? It experienced trauma while the mass was cut out, and it was heavily drugged. Yet, it is compelled to make sense of the world around me, even in its crippled state.

It’s having to function in what feels like a semi-permanent survival mode that interferes with my ability to trust my perceptions sometimes. I try to remain aware of this. I try to acknowledge a medical crisis when I am in a medical crisis. My coworkers and family stride through these times. They really are my champions.

The more things that I do, the more variety of things I can do, and (the hardest) the less resistance I have with myself. The healthier I become. The weaker the grip of the distortions.

I know that we all have resistance to transition that everyone needs to actively manage to achieve their maximum success.

I need to hold in-focus an increased awareness of my need to manage my resistance – aggressively, especially as I age.

My plan? The first step is going to be frequently asking myself if I am feeling this resistance.

The second step is asking myself what plan I can implement that will enable me to release it (or dismiss it due to time constraint or such.)
================
*** Note to self, I need to research techniques that I can use to release or dismiss the manifestation consistent with the resection of my mind that creeps in to interrupt my in-focus flow.
Initially, I think the technique should include tests of the biased or skewedness of my perception and if it can be tested in a measured way that doesn’t end up sending signals of struggle to my subconscious mind. I must take care to test my perception without sending it into a protective state. The goal is to use minimal dopamine as I move toward mental images and emotions are alignment in a solid way. A flow in a positive solid way toward a mindful awareness.

For some reason, I am thinking of the runner who runs farther the previous day than this particular day. He struggles even though the nights before he had the same quality of sleep and same types of meals. In this example, the only significant difference in his life is an increase in stress.
*************
What can be sources of resistance? Can I list all of them, regardless of whether I perceive them as relevant to me or not?
- My nonverbal communications sent through my body language, tone of voice, facial expression, or posture.
- My Sense-of-Self or Identity – How I see myself, what I think of myself, or how I feel about myself.
- My Values – Things that are such powerful motivators to me that they don’t require my conscious awareness to influence my choices and actions.
- My Strongly-Held Beliefs – As a literalist who lives in a world perceived in terms of metaphors. Right or wrong…good or bad…helpful can be crippling resistances.
- My Memories and Experiences
- My doing of the same thing as yesterday 90%/75%/70% of the time in what I think about, how many words I say, or how I feel.
- My Survival Needs – like seizure activity.
My self-fulfilling prophecies and self-reinforcing cycles of questioning myself with transparency and brutal honesty. The pay-off is going to be that I am going to relax into my perception of reality that is so correct enough for me.

So little Dopamine, So little Time

‘Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage, but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.’ ~ Elbert Hubbard

My understanding of this quote has changed for me out of necessity.

I always bought the idea that good things come to those who worked. I have always worked a lot. My husband, Bear, thinks I always work, because if I don’t have work to do, I make some.

There have been days when doing this has worked against me. These days would be the ones when I crossed an exhaustion barrier. An extreme example of one of those times is when I chose to return to work 18 days after a surgeon cut a 7 inch incision in my head to remove a brain tumor.

Those days aren’t long gone. They can’t be, because I can’t not be true to myself and I truly enjoy what I choose to do because I do many things enthusiastically for many people.

Consistently, however, my days go much, much better. I am not as physically exhausted or emotionally drained. This is because I navigate my goal every day around my dopamine. I consciously choose not to feel drawn toward too much too fast because I can’t afford to cross my boundaries. I have to respect my body’s physical and my mind’s emotional limitations. I have to manage my resources.

I can choose to wait to approach a situation later, or I can grant myself an allowance for living up to a reduced standard out of necessity because I am doing the best I can.

My world is a very healthy environment where I can choose to live in harmony with myself in a mindful way.
I like that very, very much!

List: Memory Measurements

Attention (how one acquires memory through attention to detail) 1. Focused attention, 2. Sustained attention. 3. Divided attention.
Speed (how one accesses memory and draw connections between memories)
Flexibility (how one draws new connections)
Location memory
Math processing speed
Processing speed
Short term memory (per sort memory)
Spatial memory
Visual memory
Speed
Sense memory (Visual, Feeling, Hearing, Touch, Smell – elements within working memory)
Does experience emotionally belong here? Do we experience emotions like we sense?
Abstract concepts (an element of working memory)
Notes (often from) http://www.positscience.com/human-brain/brain-fitness/brain-fitness-tips

7 Internal Noises that Can Cause Problems

Doubt, fear, impulse, imagination, resistance, pain, and adrenaline

List – Kinds of Memory

Autobiographical Memory
Explicit Memory
Implicit Memory
Long-Term Memory
Short-Term Memory – passive
Short-Term Memory – working memory (using it, storing it, and so on?)
Notes from: http://www.positscience.com/human-brain/brain-fitness/brain-fitness-tips (Minus the question.)
This list just started looking really small… until I looked here at the site below!!!

 

The goal of neuroscience is to discover the relationships between brain, behavior, and disease. Using the Brain Systems, Connections, Associations, and Network Relationships (brainSCANr) engine, you can explore the relationships between neuroscience terms in peer reviewed publications.

Write Myself Well – Equilibrium

Apparently, my mind wants to remain in what I perceive as limited in capacity.

Me? I want to log the small things that I am trying to focus deeper on for clarity so I can be happy with today’s “normalcy.”

Every bit of me wants “fast and easy” change, so I will log my time to prove to myself that I am getting fast and easy solutions by consistently focusing with repetition on things that I feel are important to resolve.

For this to work, I think that I need to consistently: 1.) Find interesting ways for my supportive friends, family and care team members to find mutually beneficial ways to fuel my efforts; 2.) Trying to inspire my body and mind and body to remain grateful/motivated/disciplined, and 3.) Monitor/manage my body’s release of dopamine.

I believe that I need to discover how my body releases its limited resource of dopamine and how it can best recycles/replenishes the dopamine.

Write Myself Well – Limited Capacity

What limits capacity? Can I stimulate my sense by paying attention to them more in repetitious ways? Let’s say I can only memorize “x” or pay attention to an amount equivalent to “y”. Can the area of x and/or y be used faster, focus with deeper clarity or exist in a different way if I pay more to my senses?

Withdrawing awareness and knowing what to withdraw awareness from and exhaustion of stimulation. Now, those are some topics that interest me.