Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho

Jeffrey,

Memory has many different functions. There is long term memory: Lucille ball and the I Love Lucy Show. Short Term or Intermediate memory: what you had for breakfast. And Immediate memory, what I just typed or someone just said.

Long term memory is well established and hard to damage. In fact, as other memory functions decline, often long term memories become more readily available. Long term muscle memory helps people do movements when their cognitive functions may be absent.

Of the Short and Immediate Term memory functions, you have an auditory and visual part. Immediate and Short term memory are combined into working memory. This combination is the most frequently injured in brain injuries, especially concussion or diffuse axonal injuries.

One of the ways working memory breaks down is by the central switchboard of the brain failing to work properly. The part of the brain that acts like a central switchboard has to gate information to the proper memory and processing areas. The information may not be gated to the proper channels or may be allowed to flow unrestricted with no 'speed control' or 'filtering' of extraneous information.

The failure in the gating mechanism is what makes many PCS subjects easily overloaded by stimuli. For example, my neuro says that in my brain, the incoming processing is working at 25% of normal power. My frontal lobes work very fast Up to 10 times faster than a normal brain. This creates a lack of synchronicity between the two areas. To make matters worse, the gating function is all messed up. It results in a "can't get there from here" problem. I can present information very well but I can not intake information very well.

More on this later if you have more questions.

My best to you.