Walked in to see Dr D this morning. Left the house at 0730, took the accelerated direct route and arrived Portage Bridge by 0830. Lots of early morning bike traffic. The day was chill but I was fine with shorts, silk weight T, and an over-shirt.

From the bridge, it was only a half hour to Dr D’s offices. I had estimated 3 hours to get to Dr D’s location. The outbound leg only required 1 hour 30 min. Returned via Somerset and the Champlain Bridge for a total distance of 10.5 miles and a travel time of 3 hours 18 minutes. Cold rain fell on the return trip along with grain of rice hail. It stung my bare legs.

This trip tends to confirm the perfusion theory of brain function. What the heck are we talking about here?

I am attempting to understand the physical workings of my own brain. I discussed some of the following with Dr D but have omitted extremely technical medical terms such as The Gestalt Whole Schmeer.

Suspect Trans-formative Improvement

For the past week I have been pondering my performance when composing submissions to the Tribunal Administratif du Québec (TAQ). In drafting these submissions I reviewed letters written in 2012. When reading the 2012 documents, I remembered the struggle associated with their creation, the reduced cognitive awareness, the narrowness of my vision, of my conceptual workspace. Language is a difficulty here. Basically the Gestalt Whole Schmeer (GWS – no good medical term lacks an acronym) was fundamentally different and much more constricted in 2012. I gained a sense of the contrast between the 2012 GWS and the 2015 GWS.

My first interpretation of these events is that they heralded a trans-formative change in my cognitive processes – I had somehow managed to recover much of my prior performance. This resulted in the concepts Landscape Vision and Foxhole Vision.

But when I began to prepare similar documents I again found myself encountering difficulties similar to those encountered in 2012. My belief in a substantive recovery was undermined.

An Alternate Improvement Hypothesis

What followed was the development of this alternate hypothesis. During the period February to April 2015 I made multiple abortive attempts to draft the TAQ submission. These attempts, while unsuccessful, had the effect of cognitive priming. They resulted in my becoming reacquainted with details of my insurance claim involvement that I would sooner forget. Then in April, I significantly increased my exercise mileage. I was expecting a noticeable “pop” but this did not occur. At least it did not occur as it was experienced in 2014. The increased oxygen perfusion, coupled with the cognitive priming, facilitated TAQ document production in 2015.

I was able to test this hypothesis this morning. In drafting subsequent letters I have encountered difficulties. These problems arise in part from the fact I have not spent the past two months attempting to construct these documents. I lacked the two months of cognitive priming associated with the TAQ submission. A maximum of two weeks had been spent on these new documents.

This morning, on the walk in to see Dr D, these documents came to mind. I was able to develop a GWS that resulted in a new document structure that resolved the prior roadblocks. I arrived at Dr D’s office an hour early and spent that hour writing out a new draft based on the insights gained on the walk.

During the walk, there would have been increased blood flow to the brain. This would have resulted in increased glucose transport and increased oxygen perfusion. Taken together these two elements resulted in a setting in which I was able to overcome deficits and complete a document draft. This outcome and the setting that produced it, is likely very similar to the setting that resulted in my TAQ “breakthrough.”

Some confirmation of this hypothesis may be found in an article which recently ran in the National Post on February 24th, 2014.

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