Acquired brain injury

Acquired brain injury
Brain injury with herniation MRI
Specialty	Neurology

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is

While research has demonstrated that thinking and behavior may be altered in virtually all forms of ABI, brain injury is itself a very complex phenomenon having dramatically varied effects.[2] No two persons can expect the same outcome or resulting difficulties.^[2] The brain controls every part of human life: physical, intellectual, behavioral, social and emotional. When the brain is damaged, some part of a person's life will be adversely affected.^[2]

Consequences of ABI often require a major life adjustment around the person's new circumstances, and making that adjustment is a critical factor in recovery and rehabilitation.^[2] While the outcome of a given injury depends largely upon the nature and severity of the injury itself, appropriate treatment plays a vital role in determining the level of recovery.

Signs and symptoms

Emotional

ABI has been associated with a number of emotional difficulties such as

In order to cope more efficiently with memory disorders many people with ABI use memory aids; these included external items such as diaries, notebooks and electronic organizers, internal strategies such as visual associations, and environmental adaptations such as labelling kitchen cupboards.[8] Research has found that ABI patients use an increased number of memory aids after their injury than they did prior to it and these aids vary in their degree of effectiveness.^[8] One popular aid is the use of a diary. Studies have found that the use of a diary is more effective if it is paired with self-instructional training, as training leads to more frequent use of the diary over time and thus more successful use as a memory aid.^[6]

Cause

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2024)

Management

Rehabilitation following an acquired brain injury does not follow a set protocol, due to the variety of mechanisms of injury and structures affected. Rather, rehabilitation is an individualized process that will often involve a multi-disciplinary approach.

There is some evidence that rhythmic auditory stimulation is beneficial in gait rehabilitation following a brain injury. Music therapy may assist patients to improve gait, arm swing while walking, communication, and quality of life after experiencing a stroke.^[11] Newer treatment methods such as virtual reality and robotics remain under-researched; however, there is reason to believe that virtual reality in upper limb rehabilitation may be useful, following an acquired brain injury.^[13]

Due to few random control trials and generally weak evidence, more research is needed to gain a complete understanding of the ideal type and parameters of therapeutic interventions for treatment of acquired brain injuries.^[13]

For more information on therapeutic interventions for acquired brain injury, see stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Memory

Some strategies for rehabilitating the memory of those affected by ABI have used repetitive tasks to attempt to increase the patients' ability to recall information.^[14] While this type of training increases performance on the task at hand, there is little evidence that the skills translate to improved performance on memory challenges outside of the laboratory.^[14] Awareness of memory strategies, motivation and dedication to increasing memory have been related to successful increases in memory capability among patients^[14] an example of this could be the use of attention process training and brain injury education in patients with memory disorders related to brain injury.^[7] These have been shown to increase memory functioning in patients based on self-report measures.^[7]

Another strategy for improvement amongst individuals with poor memory functioning is the use of elaboration to improve encoding of items, one form of this strategy is called self-imagining whereby the patient imagines the event to be recalled from a more personal perspective.^[15] Self-imagining has been found to improve recognition memory by coding the event in a manner that is more individually salient to the subject.^[15] This effect has been found to improve recall in individuals with and without memory disorders.^[15]

There is research evidence to suggest that rehabilitation programs that are geared toward the individual may have greater results than group-based interventions for improving memory in ABI patients because they are tailored to the symptoms experienced by the individual.^[4]

More research is necessary in order to draw conclusions on how to improve memory among individuals with ABI that experience memory loss.^{[citation needed]}

Special population

Children

In children and youth with

There have been many popularized cases of various forms of ABI such as:

• Phineas Gage's case of traumatic brain injury that greatly stimulated discussion on brain function and physiology
• epileptic seizures, neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville performed the surgery which created bilateral lesions near the hippocampus.^[18] These lesions helped remove symptoms of the epilepsy in Molaison but resulted in anterograde amnesia.^[18] Molaison has been studied by hundreds of researchers since this time, most notably Brenda Milner, and has been greatly influential in the study of memory and the brain.^[18]
• Zasetsky injured in the Battle of Smolensk, bullet entered his left parieto-occipital area and resulted in a long coma. Following this, he developed a form of agnosia
  and became unable to perceive the right side of things.

References