What's It Like?

In chapter 2, I discuss what it's like have MCI.  What I wrote likely applied specifically to MCI resulting from Alzheimer's disease.  I discussed both sensations and issues with self-worth.  But the other day I was talking with a neighbor who, like me, has been experiencing MCI, and he's close to my stage.  He brought up something that I'd thought about, but never discussed.

He said that he was frustrated about how all of his mental functions have slowed down.  I could relate.  The slowdown was reflected in how he formulated things he wanted to say, in decision-making processes, and in many other mental activities.  I'm not an expert on this, but I would speculate that there is an analogy in the computer microprocessor.

The language of the microprocessor is a binary system of numbers.  I don't know if the brain uses numbers, but the parts of the brain must have some kind of language for communicating with each other, and it's likely analogous to the computer's numeric language.

When we learned to add a column of numbers in the second grade, we learned to "carry the one" over to the 10's column, when the sum of the ones was greater than 10.  We were taught to store that information in a little "one" that we wrote at the top of the 10's column.  In the same way, the microprocessor must temporarily store information in very fast memory ("registers") on the microchip.  It stores the information for a very short time.  In our 2nd grade analogy, the register is where the computer keeps the 1 that was carried over from the 1's column.

It seems to me very likely that the brain must temporarily store pieces of the information that it is in the process of manipulating.  Where does it store it?  Likely somewhere that is being attacked by Alzheimer's disease.  Therefore, if damaged memory is bogging down the process of temporarily storing the information, this will, in turn, bog down the speed at which the person is able to think, reason, plan, and conduct other mental activities.