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dysgeographica · 9 months

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there’s nothing wrong with needing to use gps directions to get everywhere.

it doesn’t mean you’re “stupid”, it doesn’t mean you’re not trying hard enough or not paying enough attention. it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong or taking the easy way out. it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to be independent.

yes, even if you need it to get somewhere you’ve been a million times before. even if you need it to get around the town you’ve lived in your entire life. even if other people think you should be able to go without it.

if you wouldn’t judge another disabled person for using certain tools that let them live more independently, don’t judge yourself for doing the same.

and never ever let someone else shame you into going out into the world without the tools that allow you to feel safe.

these tools exist to be used, so use them if you need them. there’s no shame in needing help.

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mogai-headcanons · 9 months

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Turnip from Chicory: A Colorful Tale has dysgeographica!

tags: @dysgeographica | dni link

#turnip #chicory: a colorful tale #dysgeographica #developmental topographical disorientation #mogai headcanon #dexter's headcanons #tagging that blog because this is basically canon and i figure other dysgeographics might appreciate the representation!!#the main character helps him when he's lost and learns from his family that he gets extremely lost very often #including an incident where he was trying to go to a shop in his hometown and ended up in a different town #i love him

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fluttering-slips · 19 days

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ON WHETHER THE EARTH IS FLAT, ROUND, OR THERE AT ALL

dyspraxia, developmental topographical disorientation

It means not knowing where you are in space,

your arms and legs, your clumsy feet, your hands;

the door, and how you get from here to there,

forgetting how this puppet walks or stands

(exhausting). And, more broadly, means not knowing

where you are in the building, or the street,

the suburb where you’ve lived for twenty years.

Means driving round till you admit defeat

in a tangle of roads that disconnect,

trying to find the familiar shop or school,

your work, your friends; this often brings on tears.

To travel is to struggle like a fool

because, despite the Google maps, the signs,

the sun, you stay as lost as when, at three,

you let go of your mother’s hand and stood

terrified, mouthing shopping-centre pleas;

it’s why you take a taxi, not a train,

miss entrances, ask people where things are,

eat in the one cafe you know, again,

because you dare not walk a bridge too far.

It makes the world veer, shift, and be nowhere.

Come here to me. Don’t make me meet you there.

Esther Ottaway

#poetry #esther ottaway

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faetedforglory · 2 years

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slapping down some headcanons I'm gonna work into bios later

Leon has developmental topographical disorientation, it's extremely difficult for him to form mental maps and get oriented when trying to navigate. Some places aren't as difficult to navigate but he needs extremely detailed directions he can always refer back to as he's traveling.

Hop has ADHD and dyslexia. While he is on track with peers, he works a lot harder to stay on track than they do. He does have support and some accommodations when needed, but it doesn't tend to get to be too much of a problem outside of schooling that he's noticed other than reading things wrong at times or longer words and names being difficult for his mind to process as anything beyond a keyboard smash unless he really, really focuses.

#( headcanon. )

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study-to-rule-the-world · 3 years

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Living with No Sense of Direction

(developmental topographical disorientation)

We all know people who say they have “no sense of direction,” and our tendency is almost always to minimize such claims rather than take them at full force.

Yet for some people that description is literally true, and true in all circumstances: If they take a single wrong turn on an established route they often become totally lost. This happens even when they are just a few miles from where they live.

Developmental topographical disorientation (DTD) refers to the inability to orient from childhood despite the absence of any apparent brain damage, neurological condition or general cognitive defects. Individuals affected by DTD are unable to generate a mental representation of the environment (i.e. a cognitive map) and therefore unable to make use of it while orienting (a process that usually people go through while orienting).

Sources: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77759-8

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographical_disorientation

#interesting facts #psychology #sense of direction #dyspraxia #autism #synesthesia #lost #dtd #developmental topographical disorientation

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infpisme · 5 years

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#life struggles #directionally challenged #lost in my own world #lost in my head #lost #i have no idea #where am i #help me #Developmental Topographical Disorientation #DTD #existential humour #adult fail

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nerianasims · 4 years

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I have this, it sucks, and it’d be great if people were more understanding about it. I got it from my mother who got it from her father, so it’s definitely hereditary.

#developmental topographic disorientation

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sorakh28 · 4 years

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The ShuMasa Whumptober Special, Day 20

It exists, I found it on Wikipedia

“Developmental topographical disorientation…” Masaki took the book from Shu. “Yeah, got tested for it before. I…” he paused, exhaling slightly. “The results were inconclusive because of how often I moved addresses, so I, uh... never really got a diagnosis. From what I’ve been reading, it… I dunno.”

“Masaki?”

“I… Well, it would be an explanation, right? But…” Masaki sighed as he leaned back on his chair. “I don’t… lose myself at home in Langran. I know what’s generally inside each room, I know the floor plan…”

“You feel like you don’t have one of the major requirements, am I correct?”

#whumptober2020 #no.20 #lost #super robot wars #masou kishin #behold the only moment Masaki admits he's bad at directions

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imsassylassie · 7 years

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I Can't Follow A Map Or Directions, And At 61 I Still Get Lost And Frightened

I Can’t Follow A Map Or Directions, And At 61 I Still Get Lost And Frightened

Thrilled beyond measure to be Featured in the Health and Science section on The Washington Post. It’s posted in their digital media and in print.

(more…)

View On WordPress

#Developmental Topographical Disorientation #DTD #GPS #lost #Map #navigation #Topographical Map

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autistictic · 3 years

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mysurveys · 6 years

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Random Qs

Survey #47 on the Countdown to 2018!

Here's the last survey from the 9th before I post some from the 12th.

Here's to catching up!

What three major things are you looking forward to right now?

We're probably going to Galveston after Christmas and then there's Christmas day itself, but those are the only big things I've got going on right now. I'm not sure what's going to happen next year yet.

How many sexual partners would you consider to be a lot?

It depends on your age, I guess. It would seem like a lot to me if someone had 10+ toward the end of their life if they weren't just a promiscuous type of person. I've only had the one and I shouldn't have slept with him.

What do you watch on TV before 3 PM?

Toons that come on super early or educational programming, my main viewing habits.

What're you doing for Thanksgiving?

My 'rents took Wyatt and my maternal grandmother over to my cousin’s where we had a small but nice meal.

How many people have you dated, and are you picky or will you date anyone?

I haven't done traditional dating, but I've had several minor relationships and three more serious ones. I'm not into dating just anyone since I have standards and things I want in a partner, though.

Maybe I'm too picky, but I'm not in need of a man to make me whole or fulfilled or satisfied in life. Having an SO and getting married are the last things on my mind.

Have you ever seen the movie Waiting For "Superman" and if so, what did you think?

I've never heard of it before, but I'm going to Google it right now…

It's just a documentary on the educational system. I'm really not interested in it.

What have you been missing the most lately?

I haven't missed anything lately, and I don't miss anyone chronically either since I'm not clingy or codependent.

If you have a car, who bought it for you and if you don’t then why not, and what kind of car do you have or want?

I don't drive because I have DTD (Developmental Topographical Disorientation).

Have you tried Mountain Dew White Out?

I've never seen it before.

What’s your favorite place to go in your city and why?

There aren't many good places here, but I do love Cali Kitchen which is a Vietnamese restaurant.

What're the best stores in your mall?

We don't have a local mall. The nearest one is literally across the divide and it sucks.

Have your feelings about survey-taking changed since you first started and how if so?

I don't have deep feels about them or anything, they're just good time-wasters that I enjoy filling out.

It's more my attitude as a person that has evolved as I've been doing these things. I've become better and stronger through the years. It shows in my answers especially in recent posts.

What new albums are you excited for?

I don't pay attention to such.

What’s the worst part about your job?

I can't work a paid job, but I do have a small nonprofit group. Nothing's really that bad about it either. I'm the Lady Boss so everything is under my control and I'd just change things if I weren't happy with them.

Where do you do your banking and what does your bank card look like?

I use two different banks right now, but why would anyone want to know about my card?

Do you think losing your virginity is different for a girl than it is for a guy?

“It’s different for everyone.” ← This exactly, even before I read it.

What does your favorite accessory look like and where did you get it?

My Christian fish ring is my fave. I only take it off to shower or do handwriting these days, unless I'm cleaning it.

Is it harder for you to save money or spend money?

It's definitely harder to save it, but I'm never in dire straits.

Do a lot of people bike in your area?

No, not really. We don't have sidewalks and a lot of people just walk.

Have you ever been fired and if so, for what?

I've never been hired because I got onto disability at seventeen. I'm not on it now because the social security office has been giving us constant issues lately. It's not something we can deal with until after the holidays, though.

#survey #surveys #questions #randomqs #personal

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dysgeographica · 9 months

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what’s dysgeographica?

dysgeographica, also known as developmental topographical disorientation, is a form of neurodivergence in which a person has difficulty creating mental maps, orienting themselves or a location in space, and navigating from place to place.

some common symptoms of dysgeographica include:

getting lost easily, even in one's own neighborhood or other extremely familiar locations

difficulty memorizing even simple or frequently traveled routes

no internal compass (i.e. no sense of which way one is facing or if one has been turned around)

no sense of where familiar locations are in relation to each other

difficulty making a mental map of a building or area's layout

uncertainty about which direction a location is in, even if one knows how to get there

complete reliance on GPS navigation while traveling

rigidly following one familiar route to get somewhere, even if a better route may be available

anxiety around driving a car due to lack of confidence in one's ability to navigate as the driver

is dysgeographica just a poor sense of direction?

while many people struggle to read maps or navigate unfamiliar places, being dysgeographic means struggling with very familiar locations as well as unfamiliar ones, potentially getting lost in one's own neighborhood or workplace.

additionally, while someone who just has a poor sense of direction will generally still be able to move through the world and perform daily life activities with little to no added difficulty or distress, dysgeographic people will often find that their difficulty navigating makes day-to-day functioning more difficult (e.g. being late to work regularly due to getting lost, not being able to drive a car or travel alone).

is dysgeographica part of adhd/autism/etc?

it is possible to have dysgeographica with comorbid autism, adhd, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, etc. it's also possible to experience dysgeographic symptoms as secondary to one of those (e.g. having trouble navigating due to adhd inattention).

that being said, dysgeographica is not inherently connected to any other form of neurodivergence, and can be the only neurodivergence someone has. you don't need to be diagnosed with anything else to have dysgeographica.

is dysgeographica a disability?

yes, dysgeographica is a neurodevelopmental disability.

it is not, however, recognized as such by the DSM or ICD, despite research showing evidence of its existence and the impact it can have on people's lives. that doesn’t mean it’s not a real disability — what it does mean is that it can be very difficult (if not impossible) to get accommodations.

while dysgeographica would most likely not be categorized as a specific learning disability, it does have some overlap with dyscalculia and dyslexia, and can be considered a “cousin” of the specific learning disabilities much in the same way as dyspraxia.

#resource #dysgeographica #actually dysgeographic #developmental topographical disorientation #neurodivergent #actually neurodivergent #neurodivergent community #neurodiversity #neuroqueer #neurospicy #developmentally disabled #developmental disabilities #neurodevelopmental disorders #disability education #disability awareness #disability community #disability #directionally challenged #sense of direction

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anti-sjw-kashiyuka · 6 years

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In a Second, the Entire World Shape-Shifts

After hiding her condition for 15 years, Roseman was diagnosed with Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD), a rare neurological disorder ... from Google Alert - neurological https://ift.tt/2OTjYej

#IFTTT #Google Alert - neurological

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Strange Stories of Extraordinary Brains—and What We Can Learn From Them

By Helen Thomson, WSJ, June 29, 2018

Sharon remembers the first day it happened, in 1952. She was 5 years old and blindfolded while her friends ran around her, laughing, trying not to be caught in a game of blindman’s bluff. But when she whipped off the scarf, panic set in. The house, the street, even the mountains were in the wrong place. She was totally disoriented.

Sharon, who lives in Denver, didn’t know it at the time, but she had lost the ability to create a mental map of her environment. Her disorientation began to occur more frequently until it became a constant presence throughout her day. She became almost permanently lost.

Yet she didn’t mention her problem to anyone. Instead, she hid it for 25 years, using her sense of humor and intelligence to complete her education, make friends and even get married without anyone ever knowing her secret. At home, she followed the cries of her children to find their bedroom at night. Her saving grace was a trick she had learned early on--spinning around seemed to temporarily correct her mental map. “My Wonder Woman impression,” she calls it.

She eventually learned she had an unusual condition called developmental topographical disorientation disorder, or DTD.

Throughout history, unfortunate accidents, maverick surgeries, disease and genetic mutations have helped scientists learn how different parts of the brain work. Phineas Gage, who turned from jovial and kind to aggressive and rude after a metal rod shot through his head in 1848, showed us that our personalities are intimately tied up in the front regions of the brains. Savants like Alonzo Clemons--who sadly suffered a traumatic head injury as a toddler, leaving him with learning difficulties and a low IQ but an incredible ability to sculpt--have helped propel our understanding of creativity.

We are by no means close to understanding the mind in its entirety. None of what we call our “higher” functions--memories, decision-making, creativity, consciousness--are close to having a satisfying explanation.

What is clear is that the unusual brain provides a unique window into the mysteries of the so-called normal one. It reveals some of the extraordinary talents locked up inside us all, waiting to be unleashed. It shows us that our perceptions of the world aren’t always the same. It even forces us to question whether our own brain is as normal as it would have us believe.

For two years, I traveled around the world to meet people with extraordinary brains. They have all been tested, scanned and analyzed by multiple doctors and researchers. Through their stories I uncovered the mysterious manner in which the brain can shape our lives in unexpected--and, in some cases, brilliant or alarming--ways. They also taught me some of the secrets of my own mind.

Take Sharon. We only began to understand how we navigate in the 1960s, when neuroscientist John O’Keefe, at University College London, placed a set of electrodes into the hippocampi of rats, to record the spikes of electricity that occur in this brain region as the animals explored their environment. In doing so, he discovered “place cells”--cells that only fire when a rat is in a specific location. The combination of their activity forms a kind of electrical map inside the brain.

But place cells can’t do this job alone. Later research showed that they communicate with many other cells, those that process which way our head is turned and where walls and boundaries are, together with an important brain region called the retrosplenial cortex, responsible for incorporating permanent landmarks into our mental map.

It wasn’t until 2009, however, that it was discovered that this map could go terribly wrong. Giuseppe Iaria, then at the University of British Columbia, was investigating why some people are better navigators than others. In the process, he met a patient who, like Sharon, was permanently lost. He called the condition DTD and later published a paper in Neuropsychologia stating that the problem resulted from a lack of communication between all the regions of the brain involved in creating a mental map.

For anyone who has a bad sense of direction, Dr. Iaria says it’s never too late to improve your navigational skills. “If you’re in a new area, you should return to one point often, as this will help you build a better mental map,” he says. Paying attention to specific landmarks and their orientation to one another can also assist your retrosplenial cortex in building these into your mental map and help you find your way home.

Not all brain disorders are as detrimental as DTD. Bob, a TV producer from Los Angeles, remembers every day of his life as if it happened yesterday. His perfect memory is a gift, he says: “I don’t have to mourn people after they’ve passed away because my memory of them is so clear.”

The condition was discovered by James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine, in 2001, after he received a peculiar email from a woman named Jill. “Since I was 11 I have had this unbelievable ability to recall my past,” she said. “When I see a date…I go back to that day and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on and on and on.”

The exact nature of memory is hotly debated, but the general consensus is that memories are stored at synapses--gaps between brain cells called neurons. As one neuron sends signals to another, the connection between these two cells strengthens, gluing different aspects of a memory together.

Dr. McGaugh wondered whether Jill’s unprecedented memory came down to the way she stored memories. But he soon discovered that Jill wasn’t great at other memory tasks, like remembering strings of numbers. In 2006, he published a paper naming the condition Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM).

While we may not be able to remember as much as Bob or Jill, there are tricks we can learn to forge more permanent memories. Studies by Eleanor Maguire at University College London and her colleagues helped demonstrate that the brain prefers to store memories as images in an orderly location. They did this by comparing the brain activity of world memory champions with a control group, while they memorized lists of items.

Results showed the only difference was that the champions preferentially used parts of the brain responsible for navigation and spatial awareness during the tasks. It turned out that they had better memories purely because they were placing items they needed to remember as images around a “mind palace.” A mind palace is a location you know well, like your walk to work--and anyone can use it. Simply place items you want to remember along this route and you’ll be able to recall them easily by mentally retracing your steps and picking them up.

Joel, a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has a unique condition that has both benefits and drawbacks. It is called mirror-touch synesthesia, and it’s the ability to feel other people’s touch, pain and emotions as if they are happening to your own body. A scratch of the head, a frown, a punch on the arm--if Joel sees it, he feels it. In other words, he is hyper-empathetic.

We all experience others’ worlds to some extent. For that we can thank our mirror neurons--brain cells that act in the same way whether I make a movement or see someone else make that same movement. Most of us receive veto signals from other cells that damp our mirror neuron activity and allow us to distinguish between what’s happening to us and what’s happening to those around us. When Michael Banissy at Goldsmiths, University of London, scanned the brains of 16 mirror-touch synesthetes, he discovered that they lack these veto signals and have less brain tissue in an area that helps us distinguish the self from other.

When Joel injects a person, he feels the sensation of a needle entering his own skin; upon seeing an amputated arm, his own arm feels as though it has been ripped apart. He feels other people’s emotions, too, which he says helps him to connect with patients. “If someone looks nervous, then my brain will feel those movements as if they are happening to my own face and say, ‘You’re nervous.’ It helps me understand what they’re really feeling.”

As we unravel the mysteries of the mind, it is becoming clearer that all our perceptions of the world may be unique. We all possess a remarkable feat of neural engineering. Let’s celebrate its differences.

#brain #developmental topographical disorientation disorder #human brain

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audiopedia2016 · 7 years

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What is TOPOGRAPHICAL DISORIENTATION? What does TOPOGRAPHICAL DISINTEGRATION mean? TOPOGRAPHICAL DISORIENTATION meaning - TOPOGRAPHICAL DISORIENTATION definition - TOPOGRAPHICAL DISORIENTATION explanation. Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under http://ift.tt/yjiNZw license. Topographical disorientation, also known as topographical agnosia and topographagnosia, is the inability to orient oneself in one's surroundings as a result of focal brain damage. This disability may result from the inability to make use of selective spatial information (e.g., environmental landmarks) or to orient by means of specific cognitive strategies such as the ability to form a mental representation of the environment, also known as a cognitive map. It may be part of a syndrome known as visuospatial dysgnosia. Topographical disorientation is the inability to orient in the surrounding as a result of focal brain damage. Topographical Disorientation has been studied for decades using case studies of patients who have selectively lost their ability to find their way within large-scale, locomotor environments. Several dozen case reports of topographical disorientation have been presented over the last century. Studying these people will aid in the understanding of the complex, multi-component behavior of navigation. Topographical disorientation may result from a stroke or part of a progressive illness, hemispatial neglect, dementia, Alzheimer's disease. Developmental topographical disorientation (DTD) refers to the inability to orient from childhood despite the absence of any apparent brain damage, neurological condition or general cognitive defects. Individuals affected by DTD are unable to generate a mental representation of the environment (i.e. a cognitive map) and therefore unable to make use of it while orienting (a process that usually people go through while orienting). Not to be confused with healthy individuals who have a poor sense of direction, individuals affected by DTD get lost in very familiar surroundings, such as their house or neighborhood, daily. Egocentric disorientation is marked by the inability to represent the location of objects with respect to self. This is usually due to lesions in the posterior parietal lobe. Patients experience no difficulty recognizing or naming people or objects. They are unable to accurately reach for visual objects and are unable to state the relationship between an objects with oneself (above, below, left, right, nearer or farther). In a case study presented by Stark and colleagues, a patient named GW described the inability to accurately reach for visual targets despite normal vision. She had no difficulty recognizing and naming objects presented to her, but was unable to point to locations of targets defined by visual, proprioceptive, or audio input. The loss of an egocentric spatial representation system left her unable to position herself in space. Most indicative of her disability is that she often turned in the wrong direction when greeted by someone who she was not facing Heading disorientation is marked by the inability to represent direction of orientation with respect to external environment. This is usually due to lesions in the posterior cingulate. Patients show no signs of visuo-spatial agnosia. Patients are able to determine their location using landmarks, but are unable to determine which direction to proceed from those landmarks in order to reach their destination. They are also impaired in map drawing tasks and are unable to describe routes between familiar locations. Takahashi and colleagues presented three cases of focal brain damage to the right retrosplenial region through a cerebral hemorrhage that caused a loss in sense of direction. All three patients showed normal visual perception, were able to identify familiar buildings and landscapes, were able to determine and remember locations of objects that could be seen from where they were standing, but were unable to recall direction from selective familiar landmarks. Symptoms of topographical disorientation disappeared in all three patients after two months.

#dictionary #online dictionary #vocabulary #online vocabulary #how to pronounce words #what do words

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sorakh28 · 4 years

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The ShuMasa Whumptober Special, Day 25

Still a talk about Masaki’s sense of direction

“You know the layouts of the Space Noah classes, right? The Kurogane and Hagane?”

Masaki looked over to Shu. “Well, I guess…? I mean, the bigger the size and the more rooms there are, the less likely I’ll remember things. I can still remember my dorm room clearly. Those two, eh… it’s getting better each time I visit them, but I do get things mixed up because they’re sibling ships.”

“So that’s another strike against developmental topographical disorientation, then,” Shu suggested.

“I mean, I guess?” Masaki leaned back in his chair. “Like I said, moved too much for a diagnosis...”

#whumptober2020 #no.25 #disorientation #Super Robot Wars #masou kishin #hey look a sequel to an earlier fill #I love making sequels

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