Tag Archives: fMRI

Another piece of the puzzle understood, and a Nia rehab plan falling into place

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Yesterday, I went to see a specialist called a neuro-opthamologist.  We only have one in the Pacific Northwest, and it turns out that practices in Spokane, Wa (about 80 miles from where I live).  She grew up in a little tiny town in eastern WA, Famington, and went to the University of Idaho as an undergrad, so I guess she decided to stay closer to home, and I am very grateful for that!

Since I had surgery, I have had a piece of my brain puzzle that was not clear, which has had to do with my vision.  I’ve known that I could not see in a specific area (low and to the right), but I also have known that there was something about seeing certain things that was challenging . . . I have described it by saying that I have to “think to see” sometimes.

The testing that I had done yesterday explained what is going on.  I have, as my doctor describes it, a “double-whammy” to deal with.  I have damage to the part of my brain that sees the lower right side of the visual field in both eyes.  But I also have damage to a part of the brain that tracks fast movements, like a baseball, or a cat flying by (not that my cats fly by quickly these days!).  This area of the brain that tracks fast movement is in the left temporal lobe, and it would have been in the path of the surgical point of entry.

She explained to me that there isn’t a rehab program for restoring this part of the brain. But then, there wasn’t for the other parts of my brain that where compromised by many seizures, an A.V.M., and the surgery.  So, my new challenge is how to work on rehabbing this.  My choice of work will be a Nia technique called “head and eye” movement.  It has to do with moving the arms around the body and tracking them with the eyes.  This will help with the visual field limitation, as I need to learn to turn my head and look, in order to see what is low and to my right.  I need to transform this action of turning my head to see, rather than attempting to see low and to the right with my eyes, which cannot do this.  So with head and eye movements, I will practice turning my head in order to see.

I am also hoping that it will help with the tracking, as I vary the speed of tracking slow moving to quickly moving arms, hands, and fingers.  While I’m not ready to have people throw baseballs at me to practice quick tracking, perhaps hanging out with a bunch of playful, quick-moving kittens?  Or perhaps, just dancing with cats, as the image suggests?

I’ll keep you poster, and here’s a great piece on this part of the brain that I never knew about before yesterday.  It’s amazing how specific certain brain functions can be!  So send me good energy as I attempt to rehab my visual fast track center!  In gratitude and joy for life force energy to continue healing, Kristine

http://www.livescience.com/29417-how-brain-tracks-moving-objects.html

Taking a look inside

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right brain all lit upI’ve had a number of beloved friends who are lately posting ultrasound images of their soon-to-be born babies . . . I love seeing those little ones.  I guess this is what you post when you get older and have epilepsy!  But whether it’s an image of a child we have yet to meet in our world, or the inner workings of our brain, there is something truly miraculous and, to me, sacred, about being able to see the inner workings of ourselves. I’ve never understood how some religious types see science as being opposed to religion and spirituality.  When I see a group of scientists and doctors who work collaboratively to create something like the image you see on the left, it’s like seeing a bit of God’s handiwork, first-hand.

This is one of the beautiful images from a functional MRI scan they did at the Mass General of the right side of my brain working away while I perform a word retrival task.  The fMRI is an interesting process — you are in an MRI tube and they flash words and images on a screen and you “think” the answer.  My biggest challenge during the fMRI was that I wanted to argue with them, or preach, about some of the things they were showing me, and they had to tell me not to move my mouth or throat.  For example, one of the tasks they have you do is to show you a noun, and you have to “think” about whether it is abstract or concrete.  The third noun they showed me was “church.”  You can only imagine everything I had to say about this.  Is “church” a concrete noun — in other words, a place, a building?  Or is it abstract — the people, the energy, the relationships?  Of course, it’s both/and, and I really wanted to preach the sermon, or at least share this with the MRI techs, right then and there.  They kindly asked me, in nice Boston accents, to just “save the sermon for lata’ ” and try and think my way through to one response.

The scans seem to show that, while I have a dominant left temporal lobe, much of my language functioning has shifted into my right frontal lobe, all of which is confusing — they don’t really understand, fully, what this means.  For over 80 percent of the population, language is exclusively in the left temporal lobe, where I have a lesion and seizures begin.  However, it’s also encouraging, because it seems to indicate that my brain already has some plasticity and began this shift awhile ago.  So next time you listen to me “go off” in a sermon or a yoga class, just blame it on my right dominant brain (and tell me, kindly, that you’ve heard enough, for now).