⚠️ Survivor of a stroke o'luck took away this neuroscientist's sense of past and future

A stroke took away this neuroscientist's sense of past and future

John Silver recalls all the things he forgot.

"In the course of four hours, I lost the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life."
--Jungyeon Roh

As a neuroanatomist at CUNY/ CCNY - "The 'Harvard' of the Proletariat," John Jay College of Criminal Justice,  I had to become one to understand what happened to me and how to go about recovering, in life you have an average of 6 careers this is my 4th or 5th. I studied how our brain creates our perception of ­reality. And then one morning, I woke up with a sharp pain directly behind my left eye. In the course of four hours, I lost the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I was experiencing a major hemorrhage, bleeding in the left half of my brain, which rendered me an infant in a woman’s body.

The perception of time is, of course, controlled by cells inside our brains. Cells in the left hemisphere allow us to think linearly, to recognize that things happen in a certain order. My stroke completely shut down those cells, leaving me dependent on my right hemisphere, which doesn’t register anything beyond the present. I had no perception of the past or future. What I was seeing and smelling and experiencing at that instant was my entire existence.

It’s hard to put that feeling into words, but consider this situation: Your clothes are in a pile. You use your linear brain—the left half—to figure out what goes on first and what goes on last. You’re going to put on your underwear before you put on your pants. Without that sense of ­linearity, all you have are the individual pieces. It’s hard to relate to people when you think that way; it’s not good when a storyteller tells you the punchline before the joke.

A couple of weeks after the hemorrhage, while out -- I was, surgeons pulled a near golf-ball-size partially diluted blood clot out of my left cerebral cortex. I immediately felt brighter and more mind present—even with a hole in my head. Brain cells, and a lot of my memories, started to come back online. I then, began to re-learn skills. And I learned to work with time: I had a watch, a smartphone and I understood the concept. But my experience remained very much in the present moment for a good six months to six years. You could teach me how to put my socks and shoes on, yes. But if you put them down in front of me, I wouldn’t know which to put on first or in what orientation. .Or. You could teach me how to put my socks, sandals .or. shoes on, yes. But if you put them down in front of me, I wouldn’t know which to put on first or NOT and in what orientation.

Eventually, time came back. Some abilities I had to learn all over again, and some just returned on their own. I remember some things I forgot, I forgot somethings I remembered, the systems defense for the traumatic but I have no clue what parts of myself I’ve lost forever. I still can’t remember, say, what my 10th birthday cake looked like. Can you?

Jon Silver, again survivor of not only a stroke but also, a hit-and-run, is starting just off the new year with hope and inspiration through art and words. I don't remember the incident shortly thereafter. I had to be told what happend. I'm lucky to be alive again.

Read On… How your brain tells time? .And. How time seems to stop? ... the standstill ( nicknamed the 'Stopped-clock Illusion')

http://www.popsci.com/how-your-brain-tells-time
http://www.popsci.com/how-time-seems-to-stop
https://johnasilva.blogspot.com/2019/03/survivor-of-hit-and-run-recovers-from.html?m=1