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Evaluating my cognition over time.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:15 pm
by stjohnh
I play Solitaire on my phone or tablet frequently as a way of distraction (usually standing up LOL). The solitaire app I use is by Brainium. It collects cumulative usage statistics. By checking the percentage of games won, I can get an idea of how well my thinking is doing. I noticed that throughout 2016 mostly I ran around 43 - 45%. For the last 6 months I run around 48%. This does seem to correlate with my impression that I am a little less tired than previously and I am a little less grumpy than previously.

I have had no medication changes in approximately the last 2 years.

Since I play Solitaire regularly in any case, this seems a simple way to give a number to how well I am thinking. Does anyone else do something like that to indicate how well their thinking is doing?

Re: Evaluating my cognition over time.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:11 pm
by ViewsAskew
Great news! And a good idea of how to use tech to keep track of this.

Re: Evaluating my cognition over time.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:47 pm
by Polar Bear
I also play the Brainium Solitaire (for the past few months) as it's a quick game and easy to do while walking.
However, I only try to beat my own score and haven't gone beyond that to look at statistics.

Re: Evaluating my cognition over time.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:34 am
by badnights
I don't do anything quantitative, but I do remember in the first years after the disease went nuts in me, I was trying to finish my Masters thesis (I went back to school in my 40s), and I always expected to be able to do a task in the same amount of time it would have taken me when I was healthy. The amount of time I actually took was consistently about 5 times longer. One day became 5. 1 hour became 5. It took me many years to lower my expectations appropriately.

But that was largely due to sleep loss, I think. Do you attribute your previously lower scores to sleep loss or other reasons or you just don't know? I remember a 2011 paper that suggested there was a cognitive decline associated with WED/RLS apart from whatever might be caused by sleep loss or the distraction of WED sensations. I don't know how they figured it out.

Re: Evaluating my cognition over time.

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:36 pm
by legsbestill
It's a great idea to measure yourself over time. You must be very pleased to see the number going up. I do sudoku and killer puzzles as well as other number puzzles and crosswords but I do them on paper to avoid having the blue (allegedly melatonin destroying) light. I play chess online but I lose so consistently that I doubt there would be any meaningful statistics available. I do notice that I go through phases of feeling like I do the puzzles more quickly and cleverly and others when I am very slow. I have never managed to find a correlation between the amount of sleep I am getting or the drugs I am on and the clever phases. Earlier in 2017 I went through a really clever quick phase and I was taking loads of kratom and cannabis and getting very little sleep due to nocturnal alerting. Needless to say as soon as I resumed work all the cleverness deserted me and all I am left with is an appalling short term memory and a reasonable ability to wing it and also to look intelligent while saying nothing.