Brain Progress

In an effort to try and retain some of my brain back, I've started doing Lumosity puzzles again. I mentioned this a while back and thought I'd note how I'm doing. And I have to say, until tonight, I wasn't doing that hot. It's been a slow rebuild. The first couple of nights that I worked on their puzzles again, I really, really sucked. My brain was pretty out of the loop on how to do those things. I was frustrated and more than a little scared.

Tonight, I actually got in the top 3 of my highest scores again. It's the first time since I started this process that I felt like I was making progress. I could honestly cry about it at the moment. My time reaction skills still aren't up to par, but I'm slowly starting to get my memory and attention skills back, at least to some extent.

Though I've noticed some things with the memory skills. When it comes to the facial recognition tests, I notice women better than I do men. Mind you, this may be because there is usually more variation in the women. Most of the men they use look traditionally gendered (short hair, conservative colors, etc) where the women have a variety of hair styles and colors. It's easier to pick out details to remember.

When it comes to random pattern memory tests, I do better when the blocks make shapes. I can remember 18 block locations if they form shapes than I can 8 block locations if they're just random. The shapes not only make more sense to me, they also put me at ease. The random patterns set off a low level of panic in me. I'm not sure, as of yet, how to work around that.

Overall, I am hesitantly pleased with the results. I'm starting to get some of my mental muscles back in shape and we all know I need them. Senility may take me one of these days, but I'm certainly going to try and put it off as long as I can.