Not paying attention - smartphone

Last week Thursday at the client I managed to have my smartphone unclip from the belt and fall into the toilet. At least it was after the flush. I should have been on the lookout since the weekend of the wine party I managed to bounce the phone off the toilet seat onto the floor. That night on the flight home it managed to sporadically be useable, most of the time just flashing pixels at me. Luckily when I got my phone a month ago it automatically came with insurance.  The replacement showed up at my apartment today(Monday) while I'm in New York again with a loaner phone, texting and phone calls basically. Luckily I must have somehow put my hundreds of contacts into the cloud and thus didn't have to try to recreate that. My pictures I don't know if they are salvageable yet.

Triple dissociation of attention networks in stroke according to lesion location

Your doctor can come up with some protocols for this. ASK  I know my doctor did nothing about this. My attention was so bad I once fell asleep listening to my speech therapist.
http://www.neurology.org/content/81/9/812.abstract?sid=7b7456af-c9a4-4426-b8f6-4cae6e552b3d

1. Paul Rinne, MSc,
2. Mursyida Hassan, MSc,
3. Despina Goniotakis, MSc,
4. Kiran Chohan, DPhil,
5. Pankaj Sharma, MD, FRCP, PhD,
6. Dawn Langdon, PhD,
7. David Soto, PhD and
8. Paul Bentley, MRCP, PhD

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1. Correspondence to Dr. Bentley: p.bentley@imperial.ac.uk

1. Published online before print July 31, 2013, doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182a2ca34 Neurology August 27, 2013 vol. 81 no. 9 812-820

• Abstract
• Full Text
• Full Text (PDF)

1. Also available:
2. Figures Only
3. Data Supplement
4. Accompanying Editorial
5. PPT Slides of All Figures

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether behavioral dissociations and interactions occur between the attentional functions—alerting, orienting, and conflict resolution—depending upon stroke location and to determine the approximate proportion of patients who can be classified into 1 of these 3 anatomical networks.

Methods: We recruited 110 anatomically unselected acute stroke patients and 62 age-matched controls. Subjects underwent the attention network test (ANT), which provides a measure of each attention type. Their performance was related to lesion anatomy on MRI using a voxel-lesion mapping approach.

Results: Patients as a whole performed poorer than controls, but there were no group differences in the size of attentional effects. Specific deficits in 1 of the 3 ANT-tested functions were found in the following lesion locations: alerting deficiency with bilateral anteromedial thalamus and upper brainstem (17% of patients); orienting impairment with right pulvinar and right temporoparietal cortex (15%); conflict resolution with bilateral prefrontal and premotor areas (23%). Lesions to right frontoparietal regions also modified interactions among the 3 types of attention.

Conclusions: More than half of all stroke patients can be expected to have a lesion location classifiable into 1 of the 3 principal attention networks. Our results have potential implications for therapy personalization in focal brain diseases including stroke.

Not all minds that wander are lost: the importance of a balanced perspective on the mind-wandering state

You will need to make sure your doctor doesn't immediately assign inattention as a sign of cognitive dysfunction and use Occams' razor to blame the stroke. Challenge your doctor about everything that comes out of her/his mouth. Supposedly they should be able to run rings about you cognitively since you are the stroke-addled one.
My next stroke is going to be so much fun, I plan on leaving all the medical staff sputtering in impotent rage.
And exactly what research/references proves what you are suggesting for recovery works? Print them out for me.
What is the efficacy percent? 
What is Your efficacy percent? 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23966961?dopt=Abstract

Smallwood J, Andrews-Hanna J.

Source

The Department of Social Neuroscience, The Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive Brain Sciences Leipzig, Germany.

Abstract

The waking mind is often occupied with mental contents that are minimally constrained by events in the here and now. These self-generated thoughts-e.g., mind-wandering or daydreaming-interfere with external task performance and can be a marker for unhappiness and even psychiatric problems. They also occupy our thoughts for upwards of half of the time, and under non-demanding conditions they (i) allow us to connect our past and future selves together, (ii) help us make successful long-term plans and (iii) can provide a source of creative inspiration. The lengths that the mind goes to self-generate thought, coupled with its apparent functionality, suggest that the mind places a higher priority on such cognition than on many other mental acts. Although mind-wandering may be unpleasant for the individual who experiences it and disruptive to the tasks of the moment, self-generated thought allows consciousness freedom from the here and now and so reflects a key evolutionary adaptation for the mind. Here we synthesize recent literature from cognitive and clinical psychology and propose two formal hypotheses that (1) highlight task context and thought content as critical factors that constrain the costs and benefits of self-generated thought and (2) provide direction on ways to investigate the costs and benefits from an impartial perspective.

A "virtually minimal" visuo-haptic training of attention in severe traumatic brain injury

This should be able to be applied to stroke survivors so ask your doctor to do that. Which means thousands of individual doctors need to independently do this. Instead of just having a great stroke association take care of it for everyone. It makes so much sense that I'm obviously stupid in not seeing all the stroke associations in the world collaborating on this stuff.
http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/10/1/92/abstract

Abstract (provisional)

Background

Although common during the early stages of recovery from severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), attention deficits have been scarcely investigated. Encouraging evidence suggests beneficial effects of attention training in more chronic and higher functioning patients. Interactive technology may provide new opportunities for rehabilitation in inpatients who are earlier in their recovery.

Methods

We designed a "virtually minimal" approach using robot-rendered haptics in a virtual environment to train severely injured inpatients in the early stages of recovery to sustain attention to a visuo-motor task. 21 inpatients with severe TBI completed repetitive reaching toward targets that were both seen and felt. Patients were tested over two consecutive days, experiencing 3 conditions (no haptic feedback, a break-through force, and haptic nudge) in 12 successive, 4-minute blocks.

Results

The interactive visuo-haptic environments were well-tolerated and engaging. Patients typically remained attentive to the task. However, patients exhibited attention loss both before (prolonged initiation) and during (pauses during motion) a movement. Compared to no haptic feedback, patients benefited from haptic nudge cues but not break-through forces. As training progressed, patients increased the number of targets acquired and spontaneously improved from one day to the next.

Conclusions

Interactive visuo-haptic environments could be beneficial for attention training for severe TBI patients in the early stages of recovery and warrants further and more prolonged clinical testing.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Skin patch improves attention span in stroke patients

So I wonder what else stimulates dopamine receptors? maybe Ritalin from this research in 1998. Doesn't anyone follow previous research? Where is the 1998 research in the stroke therapy protocol? Who has the stroke therapy protocol?
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-skin-patch-attention-span-patients.html
Hemi-spatial neglect, a severe and common form of inattention that can be caused by brain damage following a stroke, is one of the most debilitating symptoms, frequently preventing patients from living independently. When the right side of the brain has suffered damage, the patient may have little awareness of their left-hand side and have poor memory of objects that they have seen, leaving them inattentive and forgetful. Currently there are few treatment options.
The randomised control trial took 16 patients who had suffered a stroke on the right-hand side of their brain and assessed to see whether giving the drug rotigotine improved their ability to concentrate on their left-hand side. The results showed that even with treatment for just over a week, patients who received the drug performed significantly better on attention tests than when they received the placebo treatment.
Rotigotine acts by stimulating receptors on nerve cells for dopamine, a chemical normally produced within the brain.
Professor Masud Husain who led the study at the Institute of Neurology at UCL says: “Inattention can have a devastating effect on stroke patients and their families. It impacts on all aspects of their lives. If the results of our clinical trial are replicated in further, larger studies, we will have overcome a major hurdle towards providing a new treatment for this important consequence of stroke.
“Milder forms of inattention occur in other brain disorders, across all ages - from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to Parkinson’s disease. Our findings show that it is possible to alter attention by using a drug that acts at specific receptors in the brain, and therefore have implications for understanding the mechanisms that might cause inattention in conditions other than stroke.”
The work, published in the journal Brain, was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Wellcome Trust.