Looking for authoritative explainer of cognitive dysfunction

I'm engaged on a piece of self-advocacy that has reached the point where I must explain how serious the effects of cognitive dysfunction can be in ME.

I'll be writing a summary of my personal experience of this symptom, which has been crippling right from the start of my ME.

I'm also considering seeking out a specialist medical report on the subject.

But I'd also like to include any good general piece that's been produced. Is anyone aware of a statement from any of the charities on this subject? Or anyone else who could be considered an authority? Is there any good research that I could cite? Thank you.

 

Many thanks @NelliePledge. I'll take a look at both of those.

 

i doubt this will help but i have difficulty getting across that i hve cognitive issues that are cripping.

i wrote this poist on a thread on related paper and nobody responded. idk if my issues are similar to yours.

[also eneral inability to cogitate, pea soup. also in ability to deal with social reasoning. worse if vertical. lost math ability.]

[moderators please feel free to make a new thread or puit in an appropriate thread of not appropriate to this one.]

 

Thanks so much for responding @Samuel. I will take a look back at your old post and at the paper you mention (when I have available attention to do so!).

I certainly recognise lots of what you talk about in your experience, though I suspect all of us are slightly different in this. It's beyond frustrating to have a cognitive problem that's so difficult to explain because you have a cognitive problem, isn't it?

I'm going to take a long time, split up into short bursts, to try and explain my experience of this as clearly as I can.

I'm going to start with a general description of having difficulty in absorbing, processing, organising and expressing information - and with memory. And then I'm going to pick a single mental task and break it down into the laborious component parts I have to split it into in order to complete it. This will include the fact that when I have to 'pause' a task to rest for some weeks, I then have to go through all the basic steps to 're-learn' how to do it after that interval.

If a task is complex this means that only about forty per cent of the energy I expend on it is ever available to move it forward, however slowly, the rest is needed to maintain my awareness and grasp of what the task might involve - the basic mental scaffolding needed to attempt it.