Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury
We see many clients who are many years post injury. Generally, they have resigned themselves to being incapacitated. They had been told that significant recovery is impossible after about eighteen months following the brain injury. We now know that is incorrect. What we were taught, until very recently, in medical and graduate schools that the brain is relatively inflexible and concrete, is simply wrong. The brain is remarkably adaptive and plastic so significant improvement is possible long after the brain injury, although the earlier we start neurotherapy the better. In his book Synaptic Self, Dr. Joseph LeDoux discusses some of the important research on brain plasticity.
Brain injury from head trauma, such as would be sustained in an automobile accident, inevitably affects the frontal lobes in the brain. Frontal lobe injury is generally associated with problems related to anger, impulse control and personality. Hence, one region of neurotherapeutic treatment for traumatic brain injury is usually to correct problems in the front part of the brain. Injuries can be at other brain regions as well that cause other problems such as orientation, cognitive processing and motor activity. The first step in the treatment of these conditions is to obtain a full brain map of all brain locations. Treatment is guided by the results of the brain map which show precisely where in the brain the inefficiencies reside.
