Here's my understanding:

Our brains have developed solid neural pathways over the years for things that we experience or do a lot.

Anything that we do repeatedly or experience repeatedly becomes familiar and somewhat automatic. For example, I don't have to consciously think about which letter my finger is hitting when I type because I have a lot of muscle memory and automaticity associated with it. When I was first learning to type, however, I had to be very conscious of it and even say the letters aloud to myself or in my head.

A concussion disrupts those connections (some things I have read make me think it actually tears the axons that connect the neurons), and it takes time to reconstruct them. As long as they are not disrupted again, the brain does have a lot of neuroplasticity, meaning that it can change and adapt to new circumstances over time.

So, yes, you could have previously had an automatic ability to filter the kids' spoons in the cereal bowl which was then disrupted by the concussion and now is beginning to become more automatic again.

As I understand it, the key is to load the brain just a tiny bit more than it can handle in order to help it grow without doing damage. Kind of like muscle building. You don't immediately go for the 500-pound weight -- you need to gradually work up to that.

Hope somebody will chime in if I have my facts wrong. This is what I understand from the brain-based learning stuff I've seen as a teacher.