Cortical plasticity in episodic and chronic cluste

[spiny]

Oh, as for neural plasticity. There was a case several  years ago regarding a young girl with epilepsy. It was so severe that they eventually removed about half her brain. In pretty short order, that remaining half took over all functions of the removed. She talked, walked, learned, everything.

Pretty amazing. But, at the time, they also said that only a young person could fully recover from such a surgery. Maybe that is not quite true. 

[diamondmaker]

Another example of the flexibility of our brains... but I wonder if like the beast, epilepsy again returned to the parts left?

[spiny]

At the time of the article, which was about a year after the surgery, I not think so. At this point, who knows.

I find it odd that they have also cut the bundle of fibers that connect the left and right hemispheres for epilepsy and had some success too. After that, how do the two communicate?

[CHfather]

spiny, here's an article that answers your question -- and more. http://www.nature.com/news/the-split-brain-a-tale-of-two-halves-1.10213 

My favorite part, not directly related to split-brain theory, is about the "interpreter":

>>Gazzaniga developed what he calls the interpreter theory to explain why people — including split-brain patients — have a unified sense of self and mental life. It grew out of tasks in which he asked a split-brain person to explain in words, which uses the left hemisphere, an action that had been directed to and carried out only by the right one. “The left hemisphere made up a post hoc answer that fit the situation.” In one of Gazzaniga's favourite examples, he flashed the word 'smile' to a patient's right hemisphere and the word 'face' to the left hemisphere, and asked the patient to draw what he'd seen. “His right hand drew a smiling face,” Gazzaniga recalled. “'Why did you do that?' I asked. He said, 'What do you want, a sad face? Who wants a sad face around?'.” The left-brain interpreter, Gazzaniga says, is what everyone uses to seek explanations for events, triage the barrage of incoming information and construct narratives that help to make sense of the world.<<

[spiny]

corpus callosum

Yep, that is it. Thank you CHF. I find these studies fascinating.

I wonder if left sided Cher's are different from right sided Cher's? Like, if you are right sided, are your lingering effects different from a leftie? Lots of questions there for me. Are you more prone to PTSD depending on side? Are your warnings different based on side? Each side has different functions so you would suspect the damage would be different based on side.  :-? The symptoms appear to be the same.

Just one of those things.  It appears, from reading this board that most are rightie's. Why???????

[alleyoop]

I'm a lefty, always have been.

[CHfather]

In Rozen's study, 49 percent were righties and 44 percent lefties. 3 percent both. I don't know about the other 4 percent.  In an earlier, smaller study, it was 60 right, 38 left, and 2 both.

When you wrote "righties," my first thought was about handedness, As you probably know, there was a time just a couple of decades ago when it was believed that CH and migraine were proportionally more common among left-handers than right-handers.  I think that was shown not to be true (just as it wasn't true, as some believed, that people with hazel eyes were more prone to CH).

[spiny]

Me too alley.

CHF: The smaller study is the one I remember. Seems like it is more balanced, the more they look. Sort of like the percentage of male to female has really changed! It all appears to be getting closer to 50-50. Where it has likely been all along, but females too often got/get shoved into the migraine group.

I still have a multiple diagnoses: Ch and Trigeminal Neuralgia. Not sure why he maintains that I have both, except perhaps the excessive nerve pain with the Ch.

[drewzee87t]

I think it's information overload, and not because we can't process what everyone else can, rather because we receive multitudes more data than they do.

During my periods, I most frequently get the 1 hour after sleep attacks and usually upon awakening to the beast I am deeply involved in some semi-lucid dreaming that involves truths and math that are far beyond my comprehension when conscious, but that during that sleepy time are very real, very true and indisputable.

My wife recites to me some of my nonsense and it can be quite humorous. I often in waking to the pain am really somewhere else and think that whatever I was dreaming is really true, and sometimes I still "have" it consciously during the attack. I am not talking flying around with dogs, I am talking about mathematical and philosophical truths that are mind-boggling, and make perfect sense at the time.

I am certainly not adding anything scientific here, but have we considered that the mind is a huge antennae and that perhaps we are picking up frequencies that are unusual? How does a mind deal with serious information overload if there are not the capacity to apply patches to the system?

Would you expect to have problems if your internet connection was so fast that your computer could not keep up?

Just some juice to the thread. I think it's related to having a frequency channel turned on that most people don't, and that that channel is blasting us with serious amounts of data that we can't process without overloading the system. And then you get to dance.

Thanks, enjoyed the readings.

[spiny]

Would you expect to have problems if your internet connection was so fast that your computer could not keep up?

Interesting approach drew. Lately, I have seen two reports of vivid dreams being a signal of an approaching cycle. Now, you report a similar phenomena! Perhaps that is part of the pic.

It is sort of like MS. In that people get the same symptoms often, but different symptoms can apply too. It all depends on where the brain lesions are apparently. Patients get plateaus where there is no advance, then periods of degeneration start again. But the progression or lack thereof in CH is very different. Well, maybe not so much. For both you get worsening periods and periods of improvement. The brain is so freaking complex it is amazing that we understand any or it!

I do like dm's idea 

The way the beast morphs and adjusts to medications... like it is learning its own work-arounds.

Most of us have experienced this problem.

Now, I wonder if MM or similar would work to help MS patients too???????????

[Fabalicious]

Ok y'all,, I usually try not to post too much under this Tab, I read it all, but when I post I feel like a 2nd grader about to give a speech at MIT. : But I just have to say, you all are totally amazing! What a think tank we have here! Hugs and PFW and keep on doing what you are doing! I would not be shocked if the person to finally figure this out is right here on this site.  ;D

[diamondmaker]

I think it's information overload, and not because we can't process what everyone else can, rather because we receive multitudes more data than they do. 

That is certainly one view I have considered... but I think we all are, or have the ability to be, plugged into the "information stream". I just think most people effectively partition it out of their conscious life... to busy to even notice things.

I find your dreams interesting. I remember in college I would go to sleep and do serious math and physics problems in my sleep. They were so accurate that I sincerely felt it better prepared me for tests than staying up and studying. I even remember the night when I wrote out the equations for something like the transporter on star trek. It was so perfectly real and true... and I can remember my understanding of it slowly evaporating as I slowly began to wake and come back to consciousness. Just wish I could train myself to plug in when not asleep. But then I also feel like that may be a sort of safety mechanism on the akashic record... to prevent overload and misuse... and maybe it is the "proper" safety mechanism we lack.

Anyone ever heard of Edgar Cayce... what he did tore him up pretty badly.

Edit: Most "geniuses", for instance Einstein, did not believe they were exceptional people. He never attributed his insights to his intellect... rather something of a gift from an information source outside of himself he was able to tap into with mind exercises. Same with great composers and artists. My favorite is what Michelangelo said about the statue already being in the rock... he just had to free it (or something like that).

[spiny]

Can you try to achieve the Lucid Dream State dm?

Many 'brilliant' people were able to put themselves into an extremely focused state in various ways. Einsteins' brain is different too! Perhaps from his meditative state. The brain of a much younger man when he died.

Edgar Cayce was an amazing person. And yes, he died from being overtaxed helping others.  His wife tried to shield and protect him from so many readings, but he would have none of it.

[diamondmaker]

I think the dream state I was achieving was sparked by doing math and physics (engineering) problems day and night... maybe a kind of intense and focused mathematical meditation of sorts... so I do believe it is something that you can train yourself to do.

I have no desire to go back there, but I have recently been intensely focusing inwards to look at my "internal operations" in hopes of better understanding my issues and how to treat them. For this exercise I am also finding I see things in my sleep. Meditating on large doses of MM is working well to peel things apart as well. I ask a question going in... and usually emerge with an answer, or at least a better understanding of where I want to go next. It really is interesting.

[spiny]

That is very interesting dm!!! Knowledge is power, right?

For me, it would be nice to have a good dream and remember it.  I must dream when out of cycle, but I don't ever remember them. Every few years I will have a nightmare that I remember vividly and totally. It will wake me up. But, that is as far as it goes.

[diamondmaker]

When I am understanding something, in a dream, and I begin to become aware it is a dream (awaking), I find if I try to grasp or hold on to the understanding I am propelled awake and it vanishes... however, if I can relax my eagerness to have conscious understanding and go into a sort of meditation at that point instead, I can linger in both worlds with awareness of the understanding... and upon awakening retain small bits of it. Over time and many dreams I come to understand better and better. Does that qualify as lucid dreaming? It is really so very brief and fleeting.

[spiny]

Excerpt from Wicki: Paul Tholey, an oneirologist and Gestalt theorist laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams. His work laid the foreground for further researchers to categorize what a lucid dream is. Tholey (1980, 1981) defined seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill in order to be defined as a lucid dream:[26][27]

    Awareness of the dream state (orientation);

    Awareness of the capacity to make decisions;

    Awareness of memory functions;

    Awareness of identity;

    Awareness of the dream environment;

    Awareness of the meaning of the dream;

    Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state).

For a dream to be lucid as defined by Tholey, it must fulfill all 7 factors together. Tholey replaces the word ‘Klarheit’ (clarity) with the word ‘awareness’, which is a well known and central term in Gestalt therapy theory and describes the subjective experience of the conscious dream state quite well (Lucid dreaming – dreams of clarity).[28]

There is a lot more info there, but this seemed a good piece to post. It even covers your wakefulness thing. 

With this definition, I have had something similar to 'Lucid Dreams'. As in I knew that it was a dream and woke myself up or changed the direction of the dream. But, it has been years since I had one. I was told, by a specialist (well, educated person) in dreams, that the repetitive dream I was having meant that I had severe issues with my life at the time. True about that one!!!

Otherwise, I don't remember dreams anymore as a rule. Although I will have whacked out dreams that are quite circular and only occur when I have overslept. I can tell myself that it is a dream and that I need to wake up. It works. Weird...... Since I seldom oversleep anymore, I don't get those either as a rule.

[drewzee87t]

DM- cool stuff. I can't even start to figure it out, some of my dreams the TRUTH is just so clear and it kills me that I get this kind of "this is disturbing" feeling, yet feel very comforted in "knowing", what I cannot remember as soon as I wake.

This has nothing to do with medication for our condition, it is entirely outside of that (e.g. I am not tripping

I had an interesting experience with the last maintenance therapy where I started behaving like I was having a cluster and just felt like pushing on my skull and crunching the top of my head and I started to freak and then I was like, "there is no pain at all, why am I doing this?" No idea.

It's like I was having a cluster and I was reacting to it, but I could not feel the pain, so I was dumbfounded to sit there rubbing my head for no reason. Hmmm.

Very interesting thread, thanks again.

[diamondmaker]

It's like I was having a cluster and I was reacting to it, but I could not feel the pain

I call those ghost attacks... a sort of painless shadow. I have gotten those most frequently since I started busting. Seems busting displaces the pain, but not the actual physical response.