According to the Brain Injury Association of America, a person in the U.S. will experience a brain injury every 13 seconds. With the high volume of brain injuries on a daily basis, it is only right that we would stay vigilant to what traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are caused by and can result in. What better month to discuss this important topic than March, National Brain Injury month?
Traumatic brain injuries vary in their cause and severity but all represent an event that causes an impact on your brain. Whether the brain is penetrated by an object (e.g., gunshot wound) or jostled around in a fall, car wreck, or motorcycle accident, traumatic brain injuries can cause long-term effects. Recovery times vary by patient and injury but some level of rehabilitation treatment is possible for these types of injuries.
Possible Causes:
- Gunshot Wounds
- Blunt Object fracture to skull
- Slips/falls
- Automobile accidents
- Concussions
- Brain Hemorrhage – brain bleed inside the brain or inbetween the brain and skull
- Brain Hematoma – blood pooling in the brain
There is a wide variety of symptoms that can result from TBIs but you will likely see deficits in attention. Not every individual will experience the same symptoms, nor will the symptoms always present themselves immediately. As in every injury, severity varies, so attention deficits could vary from general lack of awareness of surroundings to deficits in higher levels of attention (i.e., divided and alternating attention). Severe injuries may see symptoms in orientation, whether it be to familiar people and places or where the individual is in time and space. Memory is also likely affected secondary to attention deficits, with short-term memory being the most vulnerable to encoding concerns. In other words, if you cannot pay attention to the stimuli or information, the ability to encode that information for later retrieval is immensely difficult. Pragmatics, or the social components of language, can also take a turn with the affected individual losing the ability to initiate conversation, inhibit inappropriate social behaviors, and facilitate turn-taking. Lastly, the individual will likely notice deficits in higher level cognitive executive functions, such as the ability to use judgment, verbal reasoning (whether with abstract or concrete material), organize, and problem solve information.
Possible Deficits:
- Attention/Arousal
- Orientation
- Memory
- Pragmatics
- Higher Level Executive Functioning Processes
