Strengthening Your Mind...Use the Internet!

Hi, I read your share post. It's sounds very promising that are use of the computer helps our minds. I know I can use all the help I can get, some days I feel as if I have completely lost it. The more I am on here and the more research I do about Ray's illness and mine disaeases the better I get on the computer.  I took classess in college but that was prehead injury. I am finding with use the more that is coming back to me. Have I told you what I did on some new medication the doctor gave me, I won't ever take that stuff again. I have had a problem taking any narcotics for quite a while for fear of addiction. So here goes, the truth and amazing what your minds remembers how to do but you don't concious remember. About 3 months ago my back went out and pinched the sicatia nerve, I went to the doctor because the pain was so bad I thought I might have broken something, xray all the usual things and that's when I found out my spine is compacting from severe osteoporosis my hips will need to be replace in about two years but my knee needs immediate surgery or I will be wheel chair bound, I am in wheel chair right now but just until surgery and then I will be walking again and out of it, that's my goal. I also learned I have to be very careful my spine is very fragile and it wouldn't take much to break it. No surgery to fix that. So to get through the pain of the pinched nerve they put me on Hydromorophine. Took away the pain but made me do things I have no memory of. I have never shopped on line. One night I couldn't sleep while on this medication, I got up and got in my wheel chair grabbed the computer to, I am not really sure what I was doing. Any way I apparently spent a lot of time that night on the computer shopping. I don't remember doing it I don't even know how I did it. A few days later stuff started arriving from different stores with my name on it. I was as shocked as everyone else. My grand daugther got to checking and found all kinds of different sites I had been on and how much shopping I had done. I was shocked and humiliated, how did I do this I have never shopped on line, needless to say that medication was flushed down the commode and I will never take anything like that again. It took over two weeks to return everything. I have to have knee surgery and have told my grand daughter that should I have to take pain medication she is to keep watch of me and my computer use. I know I will have some pain after this surgery but I will try to deal with it with as little pain medication as possible. Connie

Oh the internet....a marvelous intervention! I never used the computer much before I was diagnosed with dementia and now it has become my lifeline. I can travel the world without paying a dime, a library at my fingertips and a companion. Leah, keep up the wonderful teaching. I still have trouble researching subjects on the internet at times so the pointers I received from you are very helpful. I am sure everyone of your pupils will emerge full of knowledge and be amazed at the wonderful adventures they can experience exploring the internet. Thank you for sharing

Take care........Sandy

Hi Leah.  Funny how the people who might be the most intimidated or resistant to using this tool could benefit so greatly from its use.  I have been trying to get my parents (mostly mom) more and more into the interactive world.  I've taken to putting pictures up on Snapfish and such so they can go to the site, login, search for photos and make their own order and purchase - which this last time she did all on her own.

Anyway, sounds like your class is going well and expanding into new topics and areas - love it!  Keep on keepin' on my friend.  Hope to chat again soon.

All the best, sue

Check out this piece on computer games and memory.

The web is full of "gems" -- pages that themselves are brain-engaging experiences.  I'm talking about data visualizations like the ones cataloged here:  http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html or here: http://www.marumushi.com/ (esp. 'newsmap') or here: http://vizlab.nytimes.com/.  Figuring out what these visualizations are trying to convey often leads to an "Aha!" moment, when the mind grasps the subtle patterns of color or texture and makes a leap to connect the dots.  What's going on at the brain level is a process known as "autopoiesis" -- a filling in of the gaps in our knowledge.  Autopoiesis is extremely important to the human mind, and exercising it throughout one's life keeps the mind open, supple, and quick. 

Searching the net, one sometimes stumbles upon these little gems of visualization, but a better way is to include "sense" terms in your searches as an added extra, after you've winnowed down your original search.  Terms like "visualization", "diagram", "see", "view", "figure", "plot" for the sense of sight...or "sound", "audio", "play" for the sense of hearing.  I'm afraid the web can only manage sight and sound, but you can try other sense words too and see what pops up.

Another, simpler, way to exercise your brain's autopoietic processes is to simply click on the other tabs in the Google interface -- especially if you're having trouble winnowing your search.   I often find that clicking on the Images tab or the News tab will show me such a different view of the search terms I'm working with that I get a little "aha!" and realize another term I need to add to the search to refine it.

Seek the "aha!" moments -- those are moments when your brain is doing its finest work, sewing together disparate information to come up with new connections.  the web is a rich substrate within which to find "aha!'s".