Thanks for visiting today.
I will be starting my new blog on Friday 1st August.
I will be writing on a number of topics. I hope you will feel able to contribute constructively with your own experiences or questions.
1. Inability or Limited Ability to Visualise (“Cannot visualise”, “unable to visualise”).
For many years now I have noticed that I can no longer bring forward detailed images in my mind’s eye. I can provide some descriptive details about things, but cannot actually picture the image clearly. For example, I can describe a ripe banana as a curved yellow fruit often with a polygonal shape in cross-section with a tough outer blotchy skin and soft interior, and the fruit tapering at either end.
The variation is ability to visualise seems only recently to have been acknowledged medically. So far I have found only one study, but this has found correlations between both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and novel psychophysiological test and test subjects’ subjective appraisal of their ability to visualise.
I offer a forum to others who experience this or who wish to understand more about the phenomenon. I especially would like to hear from researchers or medical practitioners who know more about it.
2. Poor Visual Memory Recall (With Poor Episodic Memory).
I think, though ironically cannot be certain, that before I first encountered the visualisation problem described above, I had near-photographic memory. Since then my memory also deteriorated. I can best describe the situation now as like having a photo album in which someone else wrote vague descriptions on my life events such as “I think that was so-and-so”, or “I think I was in such-and-such place”, or “This would be about 1994”, and then removed all the photographs. As such when asked to rely on episodic memory recall this can be unreliable. Linguistically descriptive recollection can take me so far. In work environments I compensate by taking organised notes (and making use of any supplied software). In social environments it makes small-talk difficult, since I cannot so easily organise the things others have said and the time to recall past events by other routes often means the conversation has moved on. It also makes finding questions to ask others about themselves difficult. As a result, I find many friendships don’t last.
The memory problem also does not appear to be described at all in medical literature. This may explain why I have had no luck in getting any kind of response at all from doctors on this. I do know of two other people who say they have this problem, both of which also report inability to visualise.
I note that the memory must exist in order for the description to be possible, and because I have vivid dreams. But places visited or lived in after the problem first started are substituted by others that have some contextual similarity. For example, the university I recently worked at may appear as my high school from before the start of this condition.
I offer a forum to others who experience this or who wish to understand more about the phenomenon. I especially would like to hear from researchers or medical practitioners who know more about it.
3. Migraine.
I am currently unable to work because of migraine attacks (usually with aura) between 1 and 2 per week, with significant variation. The memory problem above, and lack of medical recognition, also means that it is difficult to help my consultant diagnostically when he asks such questions as “Do your migraine attacks favour the left or right side of your head?”
The problem is complicated because I also have 10% mobility in my neck and shoulder muscles that itself causes chronic (and possibly acute) head pain. At present I am unclear whether this is related to an underlying migraine cause, or is a distinct condition. I have noted one classical migraine attack after which my neck movement freed up for a short while, though. Chronic pain is that which persists over a long period, acute is usually much shorter (though acute migraine pain can last up to 72 hours in rare occurrences).
Migraine aura mean neurological phenomena usually of a subjective nature that the sufferer can observe but is not observable to another (with certain exceptions, such as vomiting). Common acute examples include:
- Nausea,
- Pins and needles followed by numbness,
- Scintillating scotoma – a visual effect characterised by flickering bright light.
Other aura that seem to be chronic include:
- “Visual snow” – an appearance like dancing fireflies but in bright light such as when looking at blue sky (not entirely sure if this is the right name),
- Palinopsia – a variation of the normal “afterimages” seen to persist after looking at a bright light,
- “Spontaneous afterimages” in which such afterimages appear without stimulus,
- “Pinpoint flashes” – brief, tiny and infrequent flashes of light in a dark environment,
- “Twitches” – twitching of individual muscle fibres or nerves.
These are examples of chronic aura that I have. The first two are described medically and associated with a variant of migraine called “persistent aura without infarction”, in which the sufferer basically has a prolonged aura state. This is poorly understood at present. The latter three are examples I gave other sufferers in a forum, which some agreed they also have. I have been unable to find specific medical descriptions for these.
I offer a forum to others who experience this or who wish to understand more about the phenomenon.
4. Dynamical Systems.
These relate to a certain class of systems across many scientific disciplines (such as physics, chemistry, biology and so on), that display self-organising behaviour. Strictly, though, the mathematical description relates to the mathematical description of systems’ behaviour in its ambient space. This relates to an area of mathematics and interrelated disciplines called complexity theory.
One theory of migraine causation suggests that scintillating scotoma are the sufferer’s observed result of a cortical spreading depression. This is an example of a self-propagating wave of cellular depolarisation in the structure in the brain concerned with memory, attention, awareness and so on called the cortex.
I believe much of the work in this field may have application in sociology and psychology also, and be translatable into a new approach to philosophy. I would like to have taken up research on this and had a place at Warwick University in England, a leading university in psychological research. But health problems and employment instability have meant I could not afford to take up the place. But I have maintained an amateur interest.
5. Buddhism.
I am also a practising Buddhist, though not member of a geographical sangha at present because of health constraints.
6. Creative Writing and Writing Novels and Screenplays.
In the past I have enjoyed writing short stories, within the limitations imposed by my problems with visualisation and memory. With the availability of the Internet and sites such as Flickr, I can now search for and find information and images to describe that overcome the handicap.
I am working on a theory of the story, and am working on a screenplay and on a novel. I swap between the two whenever I get stuck on one of them! I will share the ups and downs of this process.
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I look forward to meeting you.
PORILLION 