Closed Head & Traumatic Brain Injury

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, approximately 1 million head-injured people are treated every year in emergency rooms. Out of them, 270,000 experience a moderate to severe brain injury. The Institute estimates the cost of such brain injuries to the US economy at close to 50 billion dollars.

A brain injury happens as a result of trauma to the head. This trauma can involve a direct injury of an object penetrating through the skull or when the head hits an object fiercely, causing damage to the brain in one or more areas. Head injuries are caused by accidents, falls or assaults. Depending on the severity of the injury, they may result in concussion, which is a milder injury, to more severe one such as hematoma, which happens when internal bleeding occurs. Many individuals experience a short-term loss of consciousness after a trauma to the head. In more severe cases, a long-term coma can occur.

Head injuries can cause many changes on a physical, mental and emotional well being, with memory loss one of the most prevalent ones. A number of cognitive functions may become impaired. Negative effects include poor concentration, memory impairment and impairment of the so-called executive functions, especially reasoning, organizing, problem solving, controlling behavior and impulses and decision making. In more severe cases, individuals may experience post-traumatic amnesia.

Recovering from a head injury takes time and requires a multi-disciplinary approach, which takes all the aspects of the injury into consideration. The rehabilitation process may involve the help of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, pain management, psychotherapy, and of course cognitive training.

In the Advanced Cognitive Enhancement (ACE) clinic, many such individuals have been successfully treated. They came for treatment after completing a number of rehabilitation programs and were told that they had accomplished the maximal level of function or very close to it. The Revolutionary Memory Course has been shown to continue the process of rehabilitation and promote further improvement. Except for very severe cases, this course enables individuals recovering from brain injuries to improve these following cognitive skills:

Concept comprehension - understanding tasks and concepts

Working memory - retaining necessary information for short periods of time, yet long enough to complete specific tasks

Sequential processing - working with pieces of information, one after another

Simultaneous processing or multitasking - processing a few pieces of information at the same time

Attention duration - sustaining attention for longer periods

Processing speed - increasing the speed with which information is processed

Selective attention - focusing on one task at a time

Divided attention - focusing on more than one task at a time

Sensory motor coordination - coordinating sensory and motor skills

Visual processing - working with visual images

Auditory processing - working with sounds

Audio-visual coordination - working with both sound and visuals, simultaneously

Peripheral vision - noticing background details while focusing on a task