I can haz Brain!

I have pictures of my brain now. My dad gave me a brain scan for Xmas. Yes, my family is unique, I come by it naturally. When I can connect with, borrow, an optic scanner, I will get a digital version and post it somewhere. This is the thing that he and I am doing: http://www.amenclinics.com/.

They have you concentrate, shoot you up with some radiation that gets deposited in the busy areas and then take a SPECT scan of your brain to come up with a 3D image of the inside and outside. The next day they do it all over again but with you relaxing. The third day is talking to the Doc to find out what it all means in relationship to your personal history (they spent two hours taking my history on the first day).

Turns out that my brain shows that I am prone to depression, mood swings, and ADD. Anyone surprised? For what I have going on, I am on the proper meds (I still don’t think I am on the right strengths since drugs affect me oddly). What they are suggesting is a laundry list of supplements at which the top is Fish Oil (Omega-3).

The eye shaking thing doesn’t show up. The hypersensitive thing would be on a microscopic level and this isn’t that detailed.

One thing I didn’t know from before was that I am about equally balanced between anger/irritability and internal oriented sadness. I am very aware of the sadness part and thought I had avoided the anger/irritability. Part of my current process is to own up to and process my anger and irritability instead of suppressing it. I wonder if that is why it is showing up as equal when the sadness seems to be much larger in my life or if it has always been equal and I just did a good job of suppressing it before.

Supposedly I am not an addictive personality. I have assumed I was but I haven’t really gotten caught on anything yet. I may just look a little like it but not really be one.

Another funny thing is that it seems that I have much more brain activity at rest than when concentrating. At rest, my cerebellum lights up brightly. When concentrating, it almost goes away and it is my Thalamo-limbic area that becomes almost the only light in my head.

Another interesting odd note is that issue that show up on the right or the left tend to flip between the two different states.

Interesting general brain info includes that sensing your internal state is located in the Temporal Lobes and sensing your external state (data from the 5 senses, being able to close your eyes and point to something specific in the room) is located in the Parietal Lobes.

Also I have more variation in mood compared to a “healthy” brain which leads to creativity. And creativity shows up at the beginning and ending of an up or down swing. To me, this means when you are switching from one direction to the other, that is when I am my most creative and knowing that, I can capitalize on it.

I have issues with organization and motivation. I want to find out how to jump kick motivation. I lack discipline and motivation is how I lever myself into doing things.

The way to improve a lot of things is stuff I have done for years. Own your problems, avoid blame, kill off negative thoughts, focus on joy and being happy, etc. The problem is that I do those things as a survival mechanism so they aren’t as useful as someone that is coming to them fresh. I over use them and block other things with them. What I am doing now is letting those systems go offline so I can lean how to handle the negative stuff better. When it is all Happy Happy Joy Joy, when the bad times show up, and they always will, I have no way of coping. I go way down when I get hit with bad times. When you have a full spectrum of coping skills then you can choose the Happy Happy Joy Joy version when it is an option and deal with the bad things as needed.

I tried to explain all this to my dad and he can’t make heads or tails of it. And he is into this stuff as much as I am. So I don’t expect others to grok it either. But I am putting it out there anyway. (How many sentences can I start with conjunctions?)

One thought on “I can haz Brain!

  1. “How many sentences can I start with conjunctions?”

    All but the first. :P

    Awesome about the brain scan, leery about shooting radioactivity up there.

    You can get vegan omega-3s too (including the all important EPA and DHA), but if you’re a meat-eater, you probably don’t care. I just looked up omega-3s the other day and saw their relation to mood. Apparently they’re really good at mood stabilization. Might interfere with your creativity though, if that really does come from the switch between highs and lows.

    http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/meds/Omega-3.htm

    Thanks for the general brain info, it’s really interesting. And good luck with the development of broader coping mechanisms, we all need more of those.

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