Hockey,

I never could do the NY Times crossword. My word recall has always been my week point. Even my Verbal SAT was always a struggle. I have come to realize in the past decade that my verbal processing has been much less that my abstract and technical (hard science/math/physics) skills. I believe it has been a result of my concussions. Yet, even in the period just after my bad concussion at 10 years old, I always lead my classes in reading speed and comprehension.

btw, My 84 year old mother still does the NYT crossword in pen. She can finish it through Wednesday. Thursday usually gives her a struggle. My neuro believes I get much my neuro genetics from her heritage of Northern Europeans. He noticed genetic traits in my qEEG wave forms. I don't know if he is a racist, too or just a researcher who noticed strong patterns in Northern European brain waveforms.

With my struggles with verbal mental functions, I would have made a horrible attorney. They can get so wrapped up in convoluted words. I like a simpler verbal structure.

The best test of intellectual capabilities I have ever taken was the Armed Forces Exam. I took it in high school when they were doing research with it. Today it is called the ASVAB. It includes a lot of spacial relations and other non-academic skills. I can still do quite well if I am not rushed, especially if I can jot things down to help with my memory struggles.

I got my neuro-psych report about 14 months after my injury. The timing was about right for me too. Earlier, I was still too confused.

I learned an important fact about brain injury the other day. After a minor brain trauma, imaging needs to be done on the third day. If it is done sooner, the mild injury will not yet be visible. If it is done too long after the third day, the body will have absorbed the damaged cells and filled the area with the existing good cells from the adjoining area.

I watch lectures from University of Washinton and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on the Research Channel. Neurology is a common topic. I learned that there are over 5000 different classes of neurons. The complexity of how the brain develops and specializes makes any hope of broad use stem cell therapy for brain injury to be a far off dream.

They will need to learn how to turn on the specific specialization signals so that the new grafted cells will have the correct specialization. Then, they will need to wait as these cells make connections to the correct adjoining cells. It is a very complex network structure of binary development.

A comparison would be writing computer software in binary. It has taken the industry decades to add to the binary codes developed starting in the 1940's. Each level of new binary coding doubles the combinations in the network.