I have apparently had a couple of thrm.

My vision is impaired and my memory is terrible. Saturday, July 14, , started perfectly normal. I drove to the new Raleigh Union Station. My dad, Danny Brown, had a stroke six years ago at age Physically, he's in the best shape since high school, but he suffered cognitive effects that have altered his life, our life.

I'm a 37 year old female now.


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I had a brainstem stroke on Sept 10 when I was I had went to New York City to participate in a 5k with my best friend It was a hot day. For over 30 years we have been the trusted source for free resources and education to the stroke community. Together, we empower survivors and their circle of care to thrive after stroke. Make your tax-deductible donation today to support the growing needs of the stroke community. Apps, Games and Videos Decision Aids.

Ask your legislators to support bills that will help the stroke community. Of these unfortunate souls, one third will die; one third will be seriously disabled; and 50,, the lucky third, will go on to lead fairly normal lives.

I survived a ‘brain attack’ 20 years ago. Now a revolution in care is under way

But what does it mean to have a stroke and what are the routes to recovery? And what does a stroke tell us about the way our brains work? In the last 20 years, in a dynamic interplay between research and ill-health, developments in our understanding of the brain have transformed stroke treatment. In the process, neurology has become the coolest frontline posting in modern medicine, the place where the puzzle of mind and body meets the latest technology. You would have to be made of marble not to become intrigued by the human brain. In March last year, after a flight from the Far East, the broadcaster Chris Tarrant suffered a stroke.

Fully recovered from his attack, he reports: One day she came in with this plastic model of a big, fat, crinkly, porridgy melon. The brain is this most extraordinary, fantastic thing. But it does make you think. According to an old medical joke, the brain is the only organ in the body to have named itself. Each one weighs about 1. You could hold it in the palm of your hand. It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

A brain attack is like having an earthquake at the centre of your fragile self. When the brain fails, for whatever reason, the human animal will find itself in extremis. Insults to the brain usually come out of the blue. I was 42 when, overnight, I experienced a right-hemisphere haemorrhagic infarct. Today, memories of my weeks on the front line of ill-health — the aqueous blue blink-blink-blink of the ambulance, the muffled sounds of the intensive care unit and the cement-mixer roar of the MRI chamber — have faded to the texture of an old nightmare.

I will, however, never cease to be a veteran of that conflict. Scan my cerebral cortex and you will see a fuzzy grey scar, the size of a thumbnail, indicating where the wound in my brain used to be. All I can see in front of me is matter. On its own, a nerve cell is no more effective than an isolated termite worker, but through a sophisticated lattice of nerve stations it creates unique trails that together produce a cosmic highway. No single nerve cell is separated from any other by more than six neurons.

In an ordinary brain, for instance, there are about 20bn neurons and each one makes on average 10, connections. The extraordinary computational power of a healthy brain holds the key to our lives as human beings. To put this another way, if you could somehow connect all the laptop computers of London or New York, you would only just begin to equal the capacity of a single brain. Such an oversimplification is a provocative response to a profound mystery.

For Descartes, in the 17th century, the brain was comparable to the latest, dazzling artistic technology, the hydrostatic fountains of Versailles. After the industrial revolution, doctors revised this metaphor still further, establishing an orthodoxy that persisted to the end of the last century. To the Victorians, therefore, cerebral activity was analagous to the latest technology. The pathways of the brain were seen as fixed and rigid, like a railway network, and later as a telephone exchange.

In neurology today, the role of neuroplasticity is widely recognised in healthy development, learning, memory and in recovery from brain damage. The younger you are, the more adaptable your brain is. In a damaged brain you find some areas taking on the functions of other areas. Compare the liver, for instance. You can lose almost all your liver and it will regenerate.

In the brain, the nerve cells are not the same. It does not regenerate in the same way. Perhaps it was inevitable that I should make my way back to the National Hospital where I had first been treated in There, as part of my coming to terms with what had happened to me, I wrote a kind of war memoir, My Year Off: Rediscovering Life After A Stroke , and have been associated with the hospital ever since.

Still, it was strange and unsettling to return to the world of neuro-rehabilitation. This used to be a depressing and primitive environment. This comes from a renewed sense of wonder at the working of the brain. Neuroscience has almost replaced philosophy and become virtually a surrogate name for philosophy.

At a pioneering neurological hospital like the National, this new mood is symbolised by refurbished wards, shiny new equipment and a reinvigorated attitude to physiotherapy. The brain was considered to be immutable and there was nothing you could do about it. Here, too, the techniques of neuro-rehab have become more brain-aware. If you survive the first few dangerous weeks, it then becomes a question of time and of exactly how much recovery you eventually make.

For Greenwood, his work in neurophysical rehab is now wholly underpinned by plasticity.

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But the task has to be part of our consciousness. The patient has to attend to what he or she is learning. You are teaching the brain — not a muscle.

Enter the Silver Spring monkeys. These 17 macaques from the Philippines, which were kept in the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, in the US state of Maryland, from until , became famous lab animals as a result of a battle between animal researchers, animal advocates, politicians and the courts.

Stroke Statistics: 9 Sobering Survival Facts You Should Know

Among scientists, these monkeys are known for their use in experiments into the ability of the adult primate brain to reorganise itself. So now — to feed and function — the monkeys had somehow to recruit mobility in their disabled right side. In theory, this should have been impossible. Miraculously, their right arms began to work. In neuro-rehab, Greenwood believes that some of the most useful advances in physiotherapy have been inspired by the lessons of plasticity.


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What we do in neuro-rehab is no longer part of the wacky fringe.