My hypoxia injured the right side of my brain more. so it makes sense that my attention & problem solving ability should be effected. I figured out (problem solved), how to improve my problem solving ability. I just take longer figuring out how to come up wt solutions, and can do it a a a lot better now. I even figured out ways to improve my memory, by associating what I have to remember wt something familiar. The thing about attention is, good attention ability, requires speed, and you can't spend time, figuring out how you missed something. Whenever I'm wt my brother and he's driving, he always mentions when he sees a hawk. The thing is I don't even usually see it, even when he says, 'over to the right by the trees.' I always had poor eyesight, even before my injury, so that doesn't help much, but I know the injury isn't helping the situation. A girl I dated before my injury, told me after it, how I had once just missed a stop sign. So this problem isn't exactly new, but now it's is leagues worse. Does anyone, have any ideas, on improving attentional ability?
Any ideas on improving attention: My hypoxia injured... - Headway
Any ideas on improving attention
There are a few "brain training" sites on the internet that I used for a while. The were great in the beginning and I improved a bit but once I became familiar with the games their use became limited.
One of the best (and strangest) thing I have found is the free "simpsons tapped out" game on Ipad and Android. Simple game where you have to rebuild Springfield and collect the characters. Improved my ability to track time and concentrate on the game play - and its free.
The other thing I found good but also frustrating is cooking.
My visual scanning is very, very fast. Even now I see things outside and on TV and films that my family don't see. I think that can be part of the problem where I get splitting headaches after watching too much tv - my brain can't cope with what it receiving from my senses.
TV hurts me badly too.
Flashing lights and flashing images !!!
Rapidly changing images every second.
Too much input of rapidly changing visual and audio imagery !!!
My mind either shuts down and I subconsciously reject it or I get blinding headaches within minutes.
I can't watch tv for the reason of sensory overload.
Apart from the fact the programs are pap and the adverts are worse.
I put my hand over my eyes to block out the flashing images, but when you think they've stopped, they start again.
Thats why I do the internet because its mostly still images.
It sounds like your having a little bit of filtering trouble, in what you see. Everything is getting registered. My problem is almost the opposite. I become fixated on one thing, and have trouble seeing the larger picture, or forrest for the trees.
I like cooking, even if the recipe is complicated. The one thing I don't like about it, is whenever I have to cut the food to be prepared, because I have a weaker left hand. I also hate the clean up ... LOL
I like to play LookAgain, and Words Wt Friends on my iPod, & DualNBack, on my computer. I've also been playing Lumosity everyday, for free, for almost a year. If you remember to play everyday, the games continue to get harder, and it's almost like paying. I don't really play Lumosity to improve my abilities so much, but more as a way to just gauge them day to day. I've noticed that my brain functions change from day to day, and it has no rhyme or reason behind it.
Me too , I buy the Daily Mail every day for the range of puzzles in the centre, some days I'm better at some than others. In fact since my BI I'm better at the word ones than I was before, strange.
Buy bags of frozen chopped onion. Life's too short to chase an onion around a chopping board with a hand that won't behave.
I've tried Lumosity, but got bored. I never get beyond a certain score. My maths ability has gone from brilliant to rubbish, with subtraction being a major problem.
I played Lumosity every day for a long time then I realised that on really poor days my scores were going up quite a bit. The puzzles don't change much, it also got quite boring doing it.
I play the free version of Lumosity, once everyday, and I've been doing it for a year. When I play everyday I do notice that the games do increase in difficulty., and my scores also increase. Just don't forget more then three days, or you scores will reset. Happened to me once last year, and I was really PO'd! They do artificially increase your score occasionally, but what I like about the scoring is when I'm having a bad attention day, my score won't move in that area. On days when my attentions doing rather well, my score in that area will go up. If a any area drops, it is a good indication that I should try to work on those skills that day. So I use the scoring to gauge my abilities. This works, because on days that my attention is lower, I am unfortunately usually not looking at how much I am paying attention, so the game does help me to try and focus a bit more. The one thing I don't like about Lumosity, and the reason I would never pay for it, is the way your scores are artificially elevated. Not so much, in a day to day kind of way (it can unexpectedly occur though , but when you advance to a higher game level, your scores advance almost exponentially. This unrealistic scoring technique they use keeps paying customers happy, and paying, but also keeps me playing everyday for free 
Another pretty cool brain game site that I use is called cognitivefun.net. They have a lot of very scientific type games, and even some experimental games, in the areas of attention, perception, executive, item span, memory, an attention. The games don't have as many bells and whistles as Lumosity, but the games really seem helpful. One of the people running the site, saw me post on Facebook, and actually gave me free access to the site, so that was a bonus! The thing I like most about this site, is all of the Dual-N-Back games it has. For an introduction to Dual-N-Back check out brainworkshop.sourceforge.net, for a completely free desktop download. Dual-N-Back is the only confirmed brain game, that can help your brain. It can be frustrating at first, but it does work ...
I agree Luminosity gets boring especially on the free version. Words with Friends is good and 94o Degrees 94-degrees.com/ 4 pics one word and 94 seconds 94seconds.com/ Try them they are really Good and they helped me!
It can get boring, as a lot of the games I haven't seen in ages, probably because I was so bad at them. They probably thought if they gave me those games, my score would decrease. I just looked into how many games they have, and it's about 60. I've only ever seen about 20 of them, and only about 10 games recently are in higher rotation.
Cool I love word games & WWF. Thanx for the links!
OK gr33nmind have you tried any of the links I gave you got the 97o 97 seconds?? Tried to looked for your user name on words with friends couldn't find you ?? Look for me? Anyone else here tried anything else for concentration and multi taking? As I get tired quickly with high fatigue, after exercise which I love but start to close eyes struggling to open them when I'm on way home on the bus. I have on times fallen asleep on the Bus missing my stop, what!
I just installed 97 seconds on my iPod. Thank you. I think that in order to be able to play you in words, I would have to first friend you on Facebook.
KK, You can locate me on Facebook, by my name James Burke ...
Hello gr33nminnd
Now this might sound a bit silly but have you thought about getting some puzzles or where's wally books I'm having the same sort of issues as you and went on eBay, got some where's wally books and a few puzzles. I also got a few brain training/stimulating games. My head has been to poorly, unable to cope with anything over the last week, so haven't really sat down yet to try any but, I'm now at a point where anything is worth a go & my son can also join in with me & help make it more fun as we can do them together or challenge each other with the books/brain teasing games! I hope this helps.
Thanx Dora, I'll look into that.
I suppose that I should have described how my attention is hindered. It mostly occurs because I already have awful eyesight, that I've had from even years before getting my brain injury. I was born wt a lazy eye that legally blind, and the other eye, I don't see a whole lot better out of. In fact after my injury,, when they were evaluating me, and before they knew I wore corrective lenses, they wrote down that they thought the injury had seriously affected my eye sight. I'll be in the car wt my brother, and he will see a hawk, and he'll try and point it out to me. I'll never see it. I know that it's more then just my vision, but also a right brain attention thing, but I wish I could learn too see the trees in the forest. I occasionally play Eagle Eye in Lumosity, but although I figured out how to get better in every other game, that game just leaves me feeling frustrated, and defeated.
How do you know what side of the brain it effected?
My left side of my body has problems wt balance, speech, and dexterity. Your right brain controls the left side of your body. Cognitively my problems are mostly attention, problem solving, directional finding, and memory. The right brain also controls these functions. I don't 'know' that my right brain is effected, but it does seem to make a lot more sense that it is.
Very strangely I also do get mild headaches on my left side though. My theory about them, is that the healthier side of my brain (the left), is creating new pathways. The creation of pathways causes the headaches.
I have found that by trying do things purposely, but also slowly tends to help increase my attention. Last night, I visited a friends new apartment, and although I don't remember exactly where he lives, I think it's about 3 blocks north of me. Directions are something I have a lot of trouble wt. That reminds, think I'm going to pay him a visit : )
My brother recommended a game for my phone called Look Again. It contains two shapes on top of one another, and you have to choose the two shapes out of the surroumding 12 that make up the inside design in 45 seconds. Each level gets progressively harder. For the longest time, I was stuck, on only level 3, for the longest time, but wt practice it gets easier. Levels 1-10 just have the shapes. Levels 11-20 the outside shapes slowly rotate. Levels 21-30 the outside shapes are hidden until you choose one. Levels 31-40 the outside shapes randomly appear then disappear making it , kinda frustrating. I somehow got to level 31 two days ago. There are 270 levels currently, wt more on the way. I can only imagine what challenges are in store. This game is almost entirely visual attention, wt some memory thrown in, for the moving and hidden levels. This video is of just the first 8 levels. Check it out! youtube.com/watch?v=EXZOLQo...
I've just looked at first bit of Look Again: REALLY hard - mostly, one was quite easy. And sometimes I sort of went into daze and wasn't actively looking, why? Sort of forgot, just busy looking at shapes. Odd.
But I'm VERY tired right now. Maybe I'd be better at it in morning before doing LOADS as have today.
I remember (2007?) did few tests with bloke at uni, a researcher. But the scrambled images ones were easy. Maybe coz on paper and it was just recognising/picking out shapes (like violin I think) and that's easier than having to unscramble then MATCH.
But also I had BAD fever nov/dec 2012 and brain's been worse since.
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