I keep going through the same thought processes without resolution

Yeah, the more complex it becomes, the more brain capacity to hold info is required. The importance of the ability to hold info and juggle in your head is often under-appreciated in intellectual capacity.

Organizing on paper may help some. But paper is no substitute for the brain. You may look up item A and remember. But by the time you get to C, you may forget A and have to go back. Go back to A, and C slips away, ad infimum. It's like dementia patient in the worst case. It gets problematic with things like camera even in a mild case. You look up the manual for switch focus mode, for example, which is contingent on something like program mode. So you look up the p.64 for it and have to go back and forth between the two. If there is a 3rd variable, it becomes practically impossible to figure out even with the manual.

 

I see this discussion has largely focused on decisions and choices. For me that is less of a problem and the issues you detail here for me are generally related to any cognitive processes.

For example if I were to try to read a piece of text that has some complexity involved that I used to be able to understand without a single problem, say someone sort of argument with more than one logical step but certainly not a complicated argument or even a very simple logical statement from something as basic as my own bachelor thesis (in fact I cannot understand any sentence that involves any logical complexity even if it was written by myself when I was healthy) then I simply cannot understand these things at all, no matter how much time I am given.

It’s as if my head can’t wrap itself around more complex cognitive problems, no matter what time it is given and just starts going into hopeless loops that lead nowhere, rethinking something without being able to wrap itself around anything sensible at all.

So it’s certainly not an executive dysfunction problem for me, it’s a more general problem of cognitive dysfunction.

This sometimes reminds me of people with dementia that perform things in repetition and where thoughts are clearly following some sort of loops for which there is 0 reason (something like a dementia patient getting out of bed to put on their shoes to go back into bed, being told there is no reason to wear shoes in bed, only for this process to be repeated 10 minutes later again and over and over again).

This feeling off my brain going in loops, is something I had rarely experienced in my previous life before, however on the extremely rare occasion when this was the case (maybe somewhere around twice a year) it was always because I had spent the entire day working on some very complex logical problem for 10+ hours (or multiple days/weeks/months) and my head was trying to resolve this problem, even though I wasn't actively working on it anymore (it would lead to a terrible and interrupted sleep in which these loops of thoughts would continue even if they made 0 sense, luckily in the next morning my brain would be fresh again and I could tackle the problem with a fresh perspective/mind).

It's as if I'm purely lacking "brain power" nowadays.

Edit: I just saw this is very similar to what @poetinsf described above and I can relate to everything that was said there.

 

I have experienced these “loops” but only on a very small scale. I tend to recognise it and distract myself when I notice it happening.

Which is the weird thing - being able to acknowledge your cognitive dysfunction and think about it. Are there any other patient groups who do this?

 

Yes, I am sometimes also able to distract myself from these loops, but it isn't always easy or quickly possible.

Such a distraction is however of no help, because it doesn't change the fact that I'm not able to understand any complex problems because if I was to try to think about them again, I simply couldn't do it all over again.

So distracting myself from the loops might prevent me regurgitating pointless thought processes, but it resolves absolutely nothing as I still don't have a coherent thought process as soon as any information has some sort of complexity.

A bit like avoiding PEM by simply doing nothing ever again.

 

I find at some later point I can discuss the issue, or deal with it better. This is a nightmare if there’s a deadline.

 

I assume you're reffering to things such as decisions/choices/isssues?

I'm not (at least not only) referring to things such as decisions, choices, issues or other things may involve deadlines or things that somehow require personal evaluation or psychology. I'm referring to cognitive tasks such as a scientific arguments or understanding extremely basic logical or mathematical concepts or reading a good book (simple things that are easy to completely understand within a few seconds when I was healthy, but not possible anymore no matter the amount of time spent on them). I think this could even show up on an IQ test if one has before ME and after ME values and if IQ tests measure things such as solving complex problems.

@poetinsf characterised it as a "memory problem", whilst I see that playing a role in myself as well, I feel, at least in my case, it is even more so driven by a "CPU problem" or "brain power problem" for lack of a better word.

 

No I was specifically thinking of learning biochemistry, or law/legal arguments. When I worked I attended court/prepared responses etc, now I can’t learn new legal concepts, or recall old ones well.

 

Yes, that would seem similar to what I experience as well, however that doesn't get better as time progresses, which is why I was confused by your comment, i.e. learning a new legal concept doesn't become easier simply because one has progressed to a later time point or once one has given the cognitive task some time to simmer, at least that is the case for me (perhaps that may have to do with there also being some threshold where "no amount of simmering" is sufficient because one cannot grasp the complexity anymore). I also saw your earlier comment on double negatives and can entirely relate to that as well (this most definitely never was a problem before onset).

I feel there's somewhat of 3 components for me to this:
-"brain power problems"
-"concentration problems"
-"memory problems (long-term, short-term and some things inbetween)"

I had a sudden onset of cognitive dysfunction overnight and feel like the "brain power problems" somewhat dominate the other factors. The concentration problems and short-term memory problems certainly play a role in not being able to do things like reading books anymore and holding conversations, but they don't seem to explain the full picture and both can be somewhat overcome by writing things down and using a lot of focus and time on something, however that doesn't help when there is "not sufficient CPU to do the necessary computations".

 

It’s very frustrating because I know I am/was intellectually capable of understanding.

But my cognitive fatigue isn’t stable, it has highs and lows, so I guess if I wait for a “good bit” to come along, I can make progress.

 

Its called pacing, but doing pacing perfectly is an oxymoron.

 

I used to write science commentaries, but once I could no longer keep a myriad of facts in my head to reason with I was done.

There is a concept in computer science called satisficing a problem. Its about getting a solution good enough for all the criteria. That is what I try to do now, for the things I can recall.

Acting on my decisions is a whole other problem. I need total brain focus and that is becoming rarer and rarer.

I just discovered a commentary from a circadian scientist, an interview not a paper though, that many of my issues occur in rats when they destroy the master clock in the brain, the SCN. The rats sleep just like I do. It also disrupts memory.

 

Oxymoron is the word I was trying to find!