After the stroke I discovered that not only could I not see properly, I also could not visualize, that is create images in my head. I remember trying to visualize the way to my best friend's house and being unable to do so. Then I tried something simpler, I tried to visualize the doors around the hallway in my house, and was equally unable to do it. The part of my brain that made images and held visual memories had been affected by the stroke.
There was another way the visual memory problems evidenced themselves: I would forget objects that I had seen just a few seconds or minutes earlier. For example, as I was being driven around I would look at the car on the freeway lane to the right. Then I would look at something else. And when I would look back again to the right I would be surprised, even startled, to see a car there. It was clear that I did not remember having seen it before.
What did I do? I'm sure that if you have read my previous posts you guessed what I did. I started playing memory games on my iPad and my computer.
There is an app called Cognizin with a game that involves matching pairs of cards with the same designs. I started playing the game with 10 cards, that is 5 pairs. In the beginning I needed lots of repetitions to find the matches. Now I can play the game with 30 cards, that is 15 pairs of cards, and match them with no mistakes. As you can imagine many repetitions of the game were needed before this was achieved. There are also several "brain games" on Cognizin's website, including picture matching games of increasing difficulty. (Click here to access the games page).
On the BrainHQ website and the iPad app there is a game I love. It is called "Eye for Detail" and it improves visual working memory. (Click here to read about it).
Another website and iPad app with visual memory games is Lumosity. I played the game Memory Matrix that exercises spatial recall: the ability to remember an item's location in space. (Click here to see all of Lumosity's games).
To improve my memory of the "road", I started practicing naming the car(s) on the right, their color and position, then looking away, then looking back after a while to see if I would be surprised to see them. Putting words to the picture seemed to help and soon cars coming by on the right did not startle me any more.
By playing memory games online and practicing remembering what I saw in the real world, I started recovering the capacity to visualize, and to remember what I had seen before. I could visualize going through the grocery store, aisle by aisle, and plan my shopping. I could remember all the cars around the car I was in, those to the left, the right and the back. And when I could do that without any problems I knew that I could start driving again without worrying about having an accident. The route to driving will be the topic of my next post.
