cognitive_and_emotional monee Slowed retrieval of long term memories and difficulty making and consolidating memories (particularly short term memories) Prosopagnosia - not being able to recognize faces, even those of close friends and family, (facial agnosia) and also a difficulty associating faces with names Multitasking problems and an inability to learn to perform new tasks. (as well as forgetting how to perform routine tasks) Volitional problems; difficulty starting or stopping tasks and/or cognitive slowing (tasks can take much longer than usual) Impairment of concentration Difficulty with visual and aural comprehension; Difficulty following oral or written directions, trouble distinguishing figure from ground and delayed speech comprehension. Greater difficulty with auditory than visual memory is common Paraphasia - incorrect word selection, such as using the wrong word from the right category or using a word that sounds similar to the correct word but has a different meaning. Word blindness - inability to recognize words. Word, letter and short term ordering problems, for example; transposition - reversal of letters or numbers, or words when speaking or writing (pseudodyslexia) Difficulty/inability to understand speech (Wernicke's Aphasia). and/or an inability to express language ie.speak (Broca's Aphasia). Difficulty pronouncing words intelligibly (Dysarthria) Inability to locate the words for writing (Agraphia) and/or problems with reading (Alexia) Loss of arithmetic skills, inability to do simple addition, count money etc (Dyscalculia) Perceptual and sensory disturbances eg, spatial instability and disorientation and an inability to focus vision. Altered time perception (losing time), feeling 'spaced out' or 'cloudy' or not quite real somehow. Disorders of colour perception - recognizing colors but forgetting what they mean, at traffic lights for example Hypersensitivity to noise and/or emotional overload. An exaggerated response to even small amounts of additional input, incoming messages become scrambled or blurred resulting in distorted signals and odd sensations Difficulty organizing, integrating, and evaluating information to form conclusions or make decisions Personality changes - usually intensification of a previous tendency, mood swings (emotional lability) Crying easily, excessive irritability etc or intense emotions such as rage, terror, overwhelming grief, anxiety, depression and guilt or sometimes, there can be emotional flattening or situations may be erronously interpreted as novel (due to prefrontal cortex dysfunctions) Anxiety and panic attacks (often not tied to environmental triggers) from: http://www.ahummingbirdsguide.com/symptomsofmecfids.htm . 041228 what's it to you? who go blather from