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As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again, much less learning to walk and do ordinary things you take for g

As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again, much less learning to walk and do ordinary things you take for granted. Brains are amazingly plastic, but usually not at age 75. It take incredible will power to get back to this point. Without video it might have been impossible to recreate her unusual technique.

fezfight 4y ago
Will power comes from the brain, too. We are lucky that wasn't the part that she needed to relearn.
worker_person 4y ago
It's not fun. I had a small stroke while in a music lesson. Instructor was very confused as to why I suddenly couldn't play or follow any instructions. Programming has been this weird mix where I would see a simple problem. Say a fibonacci sequence. Something I could do in my sleep. I would look at it. Understand that I can solve this in seconds. Then it would take me a week to muddle through it, badly. So I know how to program just fine, but I somehow I can't actually do it. So it's been relearning things I think I know how to do. The saving grace is people would often ask how to approach a difficult problem and I could still quickly figure out what the issue is, and what approach to take to resolve it. So I was very helpful to others, but I couldn't do the work I suggested. Weird stuff.
- ryanianian 4y ago
  Glad you are able to see the bright side. Are you employed as a developer? I'm curious how disability policies or laws etc might impact you.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- klenwell 4y ago
  Reminds me of this story from This American Life that they replayed recently about a retired physicist diagnosed with Alzheimer's who loses the ability to read a clock: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-youre-older/act-four-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-yo... What is interesting is he is able to analyze why he has difficulty reading a clock. (As he explains, it's a surprisingly difficult problem.) Fascinating and a bit heartbreaking. I'm happy to hear you're coping and recovering. Best of luck!
  - bavell 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Reminds me a lot of my grandfather who survived 10yrs post-diagnosis. Couldn't recognize his children most of the time near the end but he was a great guy and thankfully he kept most of his affable nature until he passed.
- jfarina 4y ago
  Can you work in a paired setting?
  - worker_person 4y ago
    I used to love paired programming. I've done it successfully a number of times, but I had a few years where I did't know if I could function or not at any given moment. One minute I'm solving the hardest problems a company has. Next I can't remember where I'm working, Resolves itself in a few minutes, but leaves me exhausted for a couple hours. Scares the crap out of people.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  What you're describing fits well with the description of declarative versus imperative knowledge [1], the subject of a recent thread here. Perhaps your experience suggests they are encoded by different neurological structures! I hope you continue to recover. [1] example: knowing what a square root is, and all the common roots, but not knowing Newtons method or any trick for finding them.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Are you better now ? these events taught me patience.. way more than I wanted to but still.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Maursault 4y ago
> As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again Then you should remember, if you practiced an hour everyday, it took you less than a month to learn to play guitar and less than a few to be proficient (especially with folk music as opposed to classical or jazz). Guitar is among the easiest instruments to learn. What is exceptional about Mitchell is that she probably lost fine motor control entirely, and no doubt with great effort and determination, created new neural pathways in her brain in order to duplicate the fine motor control she once had. Learning to play guitar is not all that impressive, but reconfiguring the brain to bypass permanent brain damage truly is.
- stakkur 4y ago
  I don’t know if you’re a guitar player or not, but I am and I disagree with just about everything you said. It also seems like you didn’t read the article.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    I'm sorry, you're just being way too specific. Can you please be any more vague about what you disagree with? Thanks.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  It's incredibly easy to learn the four guitar chords and a few plucking techniques to play some pop music, like 3 days for strumming chords and a month or two for something like Green Day's "Good Riddance." Playing at Joni Mitchell's level with all of her alternate tunings is something that fewer than 0.01% of guitar players will ever achieve regardless of the hours invested.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    No disrespect to Mitchell, who notably doesn't make many if any mistakes during performances, no small feat, but alternate tunings do not increase the difficulty of fingering 6 strings. In fact, alternate tunings nearly always decrease the difficulty of fingering, requiring less fingers per chord. Folk guitar is folk guitar, it is open chords and strumming, majors and minors, always with 4/4 signature, not much to it. Classical uses the same chords as folk but requires a rather uncomfortable form as well as odd timing signatures such as 5/4, while Jazz employs Majors 7th & 6th, Minors 7th, 6th, 9th, 11th, and 7th b5, dominants 7th, 9th, 13th, diminished 7th, and altered dominants with b9 or #9, b5 or #5, #11 or b13. Again, no disrespect to the artist, but Joni Mitchell is not Eddie Van Halen or Jerry Garcia or Pat Metheny. She is a folk artist that plays guitar, not a guitar player in the sense of Steve Vai or Carlos Santana. Mitchell's guitar is her accompaniment; her instrument is her voice.
snapdeus 4y ago
I mean, it's not really like he started from scratch. He had to redevelop muscle memory, sure, but much of guitar playing is knowing what will sound good and that doesn't go away even if you lose the whole arm...

fezfight 4y ago

Will power comes from the brain, too. We are lucky that wasn't the part that she needed to relearn.

worker_person 4y ago

It's not fun. I had a small stroke while in a music lesson. Instructor was very confused as to why I suddenly couldn't play or follow any instructions. Programming has been this weird mix where I would see a simple problem. Say a fibonacci sequence. Something I could do in my sleep. I would look at it. Understand that I can solve this in seconds. Then it would take me a week to muddle through it, badly. So I know how to program just fine, but I somehow I can't actually do it. So it's been relearning things I think I know how to do. The saving grace is people would often ask how to approach a difficult problem and I could still quickly figure out what the issue is, and what approach to take to resolve it. So I was very helpful to others, but I couldn't do the work I suggested. Weird stuff.

ryanianian 4y ago
Glad you are able to see the bright side. Are you employed as a developer? I'm curious how disability policies or laws etc might impact you.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
klenwell 4y ago
Reminds me of this story from This American Life that they replayed recently about a retired physicist diagnosed with Alzheimer's who loses the ability to read a clock: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-youre-older/act-four-11 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/583/itll-make-sense-when-yo... What is interesting is he is able to analyze why he has difficulty reading a clock. (As he explains, it's a surprisingly difficult problem.) Fascinating and a bit heartbreaking. I'm happy to hear you're coping and recovering. Best of luck!
- bavell 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Reminds me a lot of my grandfather who survived 10yrs post-diagnosis. Couldn't recognize his children most of the time near the end but he was a great guy and thankfully he kept most of his affable nature until he passed.
jfarina 4y ago
Can you work in a paired setting?
- worker_person 4y ago
  I used to love paired programming. I've done it successfully a number of times, but I had a few years where I did't know if I could function or not at any given moment. One minute I'm solving the hardest problems a company has. Next I can't remember where I'm working, Resolves itself in a few minutes, but leaves me exhausted for a couple hours. Scares the crap out of people.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
What you're describing fits well with the description of declarative versus imperative knowledge [1], the subject of a recent thread here. Perhaps your experience suggests they are encoded by different neurological structures! I hope you continue to recover. [1] example: knowing what a square root is, and all the common roots, but not knowing Newtons method or any trick for finding them.
agumonkey 4y ago
Are you better now ? these events taught me patience.. way more than I wanted to but still.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Maursault 4y ago

> As a guitar player I can't even imagine relearning a lifetime of experience from scratch again Then you should remember, if you practiced an hour everyday, it took you less than a month to learn to play guitar and less than a few to be proficient (especially with folk music as opposed to classical or jazz). Guitar is among the easiest instruments to learn. What is exceptional about Mitchell is that she probably lost fine motor control entirely, and no doubt with great effort and determination, created new neural pathways in her brain in order to duplicate the fine motor control she once had. Learning to play guitar is not all that impressive, but reconfiguring the brain to bypass permanent brain damage truly is.

stakkur 4y ago
I don’t know if you’re a guitar player or not, but I am and I disagree with just about everything you said. It also seems like you didn’t read the article.
- Maursault 4y ago
  I'm sorry, you're just being way too specific. Can you please be any more vague about what you disagree with? Thanks.
spoonjim 4y ago
It's incredibly easy to learn the four guitar chords and a few plucking techniques to play some pop music, like 3 days for strumming chords and a month or two for something like Green Day's "Good Riddance." Playing at Joni Mitchell's level with all of her alternate tunings is something that fewer than 0.01% of guitar players will ever achieve regardless of the hours invested.
- Maursault 4y ago
  No disrespect to Mitchell, who notably doesn't make many if any mistakes during performances, no small feat, but alternate tunings do not increase the difficulty of fingering 6 strings. In fact, alternate tunings nearly always decrease the difficulty of fingering, requiring less fingers per chord. Folk guitar is folk guitar, it is open chords and strumming, majors and minors, always with 4/4 signature, not much to it. Classical uses the same chords as folk but requires a rather uncomfortable form as well as odd timing signatures such as 5/4, while Jazz employs Majors 7th & 6th, Minors 7th, 6th, 9th, 11th, and 7th b5, dominants 7th, 9th, 13th, diminished 7th, and altered dominants with b9 or #9, b5 or #5, #11 or b13. Again, no disrespect to the artist, but Joni Mitchell is not Eddie Van Halen or Jerry Garcia or Pat Metheny. She is a folk artist that plays guitar, not a guitar player in the sense of Steve Vai or Carlos Santana. Mitchell's guitar is her accompaniment; her instrument is her voice.

snapdeus 4y ago

I mean, it's not really like he started from scratch. He had to redevelop muscle memory, sure, but much of guitar playing is knowing what will sound good and that doesn't go away even if you lose the whole arm...