MY MIND

Minding My Mind

There is a plethora of information about how our minds and brains function and volumes of research on mental health and mental illnesses.  I have tried to take care of my mind, as well as my body and spirit, and yet, there are no guarantees about the future.  That is why I try to do the best I can with what mind I have, while I still have it. It may be diminishing with age but so far, it’s still quite active.

When I access some storage files in my memory bank I remember much that has happened and I have forgotten more than I remember.

Lately, perhaps because of traveling and looking at maps and following a GPS, I see my mind like a map. It is filled with streets, roads, neighborhoods, highways, intersections, bridges, towns and cities, Zooming in I can see more details and Zooming out, topography with mountains, rivers, oceans, countries , borders and continents.

There are dead ends, u-turns, speed bumps, traffic lights and speed limits. tThere is heavy and light traffic, object on the road ahead, and a diversion here and there. I am not going to try and map my mind.  It is too complicated and I have other things on my mind this morning, like “What’s for lunch?”

My mind is a maze of information, some stored, some current and active. My mind, actually my brain, is fond of dopamine which acts on areas of the brain to give me feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. Dopamine also has a role in controlling memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, movement and other body functions.

There are foods known to increase dopamine. These include chicken, almonds, apples, avocados, bananas, beets, chocolate, green leafy vegetables, green tea, lima beans, oatmeal, oranges, peas, sesame and pumpkin seeds, tomatoes, turmeric, watermelon and wheat germ.  I like all of those except for chocolate.  Activities that increase dopamine include time spent in nature, physical exercises, walking, biking and hiking, listening to music, sleeping and meditation.   

Our minds are different from our brains.  My brain is the physical organ inside my skull while my mind is a sense of consciousness that takes place inside the mind. My memories are stored by my brain in neuron fibres in three areas - the hippocampus, the neo-cortex and the amygdala.. Imagine that activity!  The basic functions of a neuron are to receive signals (or information, integrate incoming signals to determine whether or not the information should be passed along and communicate signals to target cells (other neurons or muscles or glands).

I am content to know that so far, my mind and brain seem to be working well enough to keep functioning at an acceptable level - mentally, physically, socially and emotionally,  There may be a few who would disagree with my observation!  My brain can process 11 million bits of information every second. But my conscious mind can handle only 40 to 50 bits of information a second and that seems enough for now.

What about those whose minds and brains are damaged and who cannot function at a “normal” level?  Remembering two people and my experiences with them was the genesis of this post.

In 1965, I met an elderly neighbor, a widow, who had suffered a severe stroke. She had 24-7 nursing care.  She was partially paralyzed, in a wheelchair, and could not walk without assistance. She could not speak except for two words that she said repeatedly.  The two words were, “my mind.”  Apparently she could hear most of what I said to her but she could not respond as the left side of her brain, which controls speech and communication, was damaged by the stroke.  Aphasia comes in different types with different symptoms. Maybe she didn’t understand what I said but we had this strange back and forth conversation that was obviously limited by her condition.

When I would stop in for a visit, my neighbor would smile and offer me a handshake and a greeting, which was, “My mind, my mind, my mind.”  I would share some local news, a few observations from the neighborhood, and admire her flower garden.  She would respond to whatever I said with the same two words, so it seemed like a conversation although I had no idea of what she wanted to say. After a 15 minute visit, I would say “good-bye” and “I’ll see you another day soon.”  On one occasion, as she said “my mind” as good-bye, she got tears in her eyes which I took as being frustrated at not being able to communicate and I was sad for both of us.

Fast forward to 10 years ago when my sister-in-law was diagnosed with two different kinds of cancer which then metastasized into a tumor in her brain. She underwent treatments for all 3 cancers and had several surgeries including removing the tumor from her brain.  Afterwards she had seizures and other complications that resulted in a debilitated condition affecting her mobility and speech.  She can communicate but it is difficult and challenging, for her and for the person on the other end.  She also requires full time assistance.

Remembering these experiences gave me pause to reflect on my mind and how it seems to work most of the time. There are many different functions that my brain processes in a given day.  In trying to understand this from a non-scientific view, I came across the following by Alexander L. described as Spatial Magician, Class S+ on Quora:

“If the human brain was a disk drive, it would start out with less than 1 MB of storage. As time passes by, and more information is consumed, the disk drive grows in space—as needed—to accommodate more information. The more information you store, the larger the drive grows.

Around 12–13 years after you first acquired it, the disk begins to grow in space exponentially. 10 GB, then 100 GB, and then 1 TB.

By now, you’ve owned and used this drive for 25 years, and the rate at which its space grows is beginning to slow down. And yet, it still has the potential to store almost infinitely more information.

Hypothetically, it sounds like a great disk drive to have… right?

But not really.

Yes, you’d have lots of space, but you’d frequently run into errors—errors so extreme, that you would never find on any other kind of drive:

·       Periodic deletion of random information.

·       Periodic allocation of random information to random folders.

·       Periodic allocation of random information to random hidden folders.

In addition, all information stored on this drive is stored using lossy compression, with extremely severe data-discarding.  (In lossy compression, the data in a file is removed and not restored to its original form after decompression. Specifically, data is permanently removed, which is why this method is also known as irreversible compression. This data loss is not usually noticeable.)

But that’s not the worst of it.

What’s worse, stored information often loses up to half of its data in this disk drive—and sometimes, in order to make up for this loss of data, the drive fabricates random shit to fill in the gaps. All in all, this drive has so much potential for space, yet so much potential to fail.”  (End quote)

So much potential, and so much potential to fail, for many different reasons. Imagine a damaged disk drive beyond repair.  Why are some of us spared from damage and failure while others through a variety of occurrences suffer from mental and brain disorders?  Chance or circumstance?

I have a wandering mind and I know there are mindful exercises that can significantly reduce mind wandering. Through daily mindfulness meditation sessions I can train my mind to stay in the present moment, and I can become more aware of when it begins to wander. Staying focused and paying attention. OK!  Enough for now. I like my wandering mind.