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Sora
Love all, trust a few
Joined: Sep 16, 2006
Age: 20
Posts: 2667
Location: Europe
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 Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: Sudden loss and reacquiring of abilities |
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I was wondering about sudden loss of abilities. Why it happens so suddenly, if there are many reasons, if it is a frequent occurrence etc. ?
I was really brilliant speller until the end of 4th grade. The teacher thought I was gifted in language stuff (after overcoming her ridiculous suspicion that I faked), as I would just see a word once (or speak it, in German) and then know the spelling.
In 5th grade, secondary school, I suddenly lost the ability to spell almost completely.
That was just 6-8 weeks after 4th grade. Teachers said my spelling was on 1st grade level! I misspelled even simple words. Training in spelling didn't help.
I gradually reacquired the ability to spell in the recent years (7-9 years later after the loss). I'm still not a perfect speller by sight as before, but I keep going there. It's funny, I just suddenly wrote words correctly again, more and more words over time. As if my memory for spelling decided to work again, slowly. I didn't notice at first.
Nobody knows what caused the sudden total loss of my ability to spell. Or the regain, for that matter.
Anybody lived through similar experiences and/or can give any explanation on this topic?
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett |
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2ukenkerl
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 20, 2007
Posts: 4626
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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OK, this is SICK, SAD, but, according to current science, TRUE....
The brain undergoes periods of growth and PARING BACK. There are at least 3 major events. One is like 2-3. Another is like 8-10. Another is like 13-15. Unfortunately, if you were REALLY good, have unusual study habits in some area, or really look, it may seem a drastic change. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off if I never went through puberty. It seems almost like up to that point it tries to get better, and past that gear up for a final hurrah of reproduction.
Anyway, maybe parts of your brain saw SO MUCH activity that the parts that remembered spelling were selected to be pared back. LUCKILY, most of the memory is probably still there, but you have to build new pathways back to that. That means you have to relearn it, but relearning may be a lot simpler. |
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craola
Deinonychus
Joined: Mar 21, 2008
Age: 20
Posts: 342
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Obviously its nothing so important but I was a capable sewer and then suddenly I totally lost the ability, I was clumsy, before I could visualise patterns in my head and put them together and suddenly I couldn't get my head around the simplist things. I'm just teaching myself again now. |
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sinsboldly
Free Range Aspie
Joined: Nov 22, 2006
Age: 57
Posts: 7623
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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If it is any help to you, I have found I acquire abilities and then lose them quite regularly.
I used to sew, you know, on a sewing machine. I did so well sewing my own clothes from commercial patterns ( Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue) that I started designing my own patterns and cutting them from newsprint. I started selling the capes and designer medieval dresses and they wanted my sewing because it was well finished and built to last.
Then in about a week. . I just didn't anymore. I didn't have the 'urge' to sew, my fingers weren't nimble with pins and feeding the fabric through the sewing machine. I closed up my sewing machine one day and took all my projects off the table. I was done. I had lost my skills.
I kept going to work, and sorta messed about on the internet. One day I started cooking again. I was a chef for 22 years and had 'lost' that skill too, back in the 1990's. And there I was. . cooking again with passion and creative flair.
Where do these skills go? I don't know. Am I able to dredge them up when I don't feel like doing them - not with out mediocre results. Do I know why this happens? Absolutely not!
I am starting to see that it happens to more than just me. Is it an Aspie thing, do you think?
Merle
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The economy is getting so bad my dog is worried.
Alpo is up to $4.00 USD a can and that is $12.00 USD in dog dollars! |
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Age1600
Bonita-Azul
Joined: Apr 23, 2007
Age: 23
Posts: 1831
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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Yea I think every autistic goes through periods of regression or loss of skills/abilities. It sucks because there was a time I could straighten my hair, took me over 4-5 hours but i did it, so proud of myself, now I can't even brush my own hair. I have no idea why it happens, wish i knew, but its a mystery.
_________________
Dxed Classic Autism(moderate to severe as a child, now moderate to high functioning as an adult) & Dxed Tourette Syndrome... 
I'm one ticcing, stimming chica from the Jersey Shore 
Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated  |
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Sorenna
Toucan
Joined: May 13, 2008
Posts: 254
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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Very true.
I have lost skills in periods of stress only to acquire new more difficult ones.
Very bizarre. |
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lelia
Pika
Joined: Apr 12, 2007
Age: 56
Posts: 1426
Location: Vancouver not BC, Washington not DC
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| A kind of stroke called Landau-Kleffner can be responsible of sudden loss of language. |
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DJRnold
Velociraptor
Joined: Jan 25, 2008
Age: 17
Posts: 482
Location: Barrie, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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| 2ukenkerl wrote: | OK, this is SICK, SAD, but, according to current science, TRUE....
The brain undergoes periods of growth and PARING BACK. There are at least 3 major events. One is like 2-3. Another is like 8-10. Another is like 13-15. Unfortunately, if you were REALLY good, have unusual study habits in some area, or really look, it may seem a drastic change. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off if I never went through puberty. It seems almost like up to that point it tries to get better, and past that gear up for a final hurrah of reproduction.
Anyway, maybe parts of your brain saw SO MUCH activity that the parts that remembered spelling were selected to be pared back. LUCKILY, most of the memory is probably still there, but you have to build new pathways back to that. That means you have to relearn it, but relearning may be a lot simpler. |
I wanted more information about this "Paring Back" that you're taking about, so I searched "paring back brain development" in Google (not in quotes), but I couldn't find what I was looking for. Where did you get your information from? Where can I learn more about it? |
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2ukenkerl
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 20, 2007
Posts: 4626
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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WOW, my current interest is Language. Sometimes, I am practically fluent, and then I lose it. I figured it was like a 50 first dates type thing(with memory consolidation failing) I would hate to think that AS causes this to fail, though the two parts of the brain that really control consolidation ARE different in people with AS.  |
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sinsboldly
Free Range Aspie
Joined: Nov 22, 2006
Age: 57
Posts: 7623
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| 2ukenkerl wrote: | Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off if I never went through puberty. It seems almost like up to that point it tries to get better, and past that gear up for a final hurrah of reproduction.
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oh, I am so fortunate in having passed menopause, because I have been liberated from the domination of breeding hormones! Do men have that return to hormonal innocence, too, in age?
Merle
_________________
The economy is getting so bad my dog is worried.
Alpo is up to $4.00 USD a can and that is $12.00 USD in dog dollars! |
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DJRnold
Velociraptor
Joined: Jan 25, 2008
Age: 17
Posts: 482
Location: Barrie, Ontario, Canada
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2ukenkerl
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 20, 2007
Posts: 4626
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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| sinsboldly wrote: | | 2ukenkerl wrote: | Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off if I never went through puberty. It seems almost like up to that point it tries to get better, and past that gear up for a final hurrah of reproduction.
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oh, I am so fortunate in having passed menopause, because I have been liberated from the domination of breeding hormones! Do men have that return to hormonal innocence, too, in age?
Merle |
I don't know if I EVER had "hormonal innocence"! When I was in the first grade I was interested in Females!!!!! Luckily, I never found REAL perfection. My perfectionist tendencies were always used to rationalize away any further pushing.
When I was about 13, I saw my desire peak to a level that I really couldn't stand. I really DID fight with it. I was like the vulcans on the enterprise during the Pon'far. But I was human, and managed to contain myself. BELIEVE ME, it wasn't easy.
As for statements about "paring", I apologize. That term HAS been used, etc... but pruning is more popular. Here is like the first site popping up:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/adolescent.html
Here is a partial quote:
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The fact that this area was still growing surprised the scientists. Although they knew that the brain of a baby grew by over-producing synapses, or connections, they had not known that there was a second period of over-production. In a baby, the brain over-produces brain cells (neurons) and connections between brain cells (synapses) and then starts pruning them back around the age of three. The process is much like the pruning of a tree. By cutting back weak branches, others flourish. The second wave of synapse formation described by Giedd showed a spurt of growth in the frontal cortex just before puberty (age 11 in girls, 12 in boys) and then a pruning back in adolescence.
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The whole thing is scary. Apparently, even as BABIES we had like 3 areas of the brain that were VERY powerful, and they basically just disappear. It DOES explain how babies do things that almost no adult seems to be able to do. Babies have a better sense of patterns, inate logic, and pitch than almost any adult. GRANTED, some, ESPECIALLY some autistics, keep SOME of that, but it is very rare to keep all of it. |
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Sorenna
Toucan
Joined: May 13, 2008
Posts: 254
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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| 2ukenkerl wrote: | | WOW, my current interest is Language. |
Language here, too. Interestingly enough it kicked in big time after a neuro event. |
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2ukenkerl
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 20, 2007
Posts: 4626
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Sorenna wrote: | | 2ukenkerl wrote: | | WOW, my current interest is Language. |
Language here, too. Interestingly enough it kicked in big time after a neuro event. |
Well, I don't imagine it is very uncommon for AS people. BTW I am, for the first time in a few months, studying a french workbook. So far, I remember almost all of the words. I probably couldn't say much in it to save my life, but I can read ok, and understand a number of things said. For the record though, that is one of 6 languages I am studying.
It IS amazing how you can keep all the words straight! I ONCE though I slipped up and used a spanish word as german, but it was valid in BOTH! And I have noticed some german words in hindi also! Of course, there is a lot of english in hindi as well. Bandit, for example, can be thug in Hindi! |
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Sorenna
Toucan
Joined: May 13, 2008
Posts: 254
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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It's weird how it just kicks in, too.
I was doing Latin and then added Greek and actually kept them apart.
Then, under stress, it was like I had to go back to the FIRST CHAPTER of Latin!!!! I picked it up easily the second time, but it was so weird how the only learning I Could do was making it part of who I am .
Maybe that is why some of us do stuff over and over and over. I have a hard time learning something just for the sake of memory. In order to learn, I have to really learn it like it's a part of my life. Takes time, but then it sticks. |
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