As the survivor of a traumatic brain injury and his or her friends and family struggle to comes to terms with what has happened and what the future holds, many questions are raised. It’s helpful if both the survivor and his or her family have some general information about traumatic brain injury at this time.

Population Affected By Traumatic Brain Injury

Approximately 1.4 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury each year, and of these, 1.1 million are treated and released from the hospital, 235,000 are hospitalized, and 50,000 die.

The leading cause of brain injury is falls among those between the ages of 0 and 4, and those over the age of 75. Other common causes of traumatic brain injury are motor vehicle accidents, being struck by or struck against a moving or stationary object, and assaults and other physical violence. Motor vehicle accidents is the cause most likely to result in hospitalization.

Signs and Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury

The most common signs of traumatic brain injury are:

• Headaches and neck pain
• Difficulty remembering or concentrating
• Issues with thinking, speaking, acting, or reading
• Fatigue, lack of energy, and decreased motivation
• Changes in sleep patterns
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Nausea and vomiting
• Blurred vision
• Increased sensitivity to noise, lights, or distractions
• Loss of the senses, such as smell or taste

Long-term Outcome of Traumatic Brain Injury

According to the Center for Disease Control about 5.3 percent of Americans—that’s two percent of the U.S population—need help performing everyday activities as a result of traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injury frequently causes issues that can affect thinking, emotions, sensation, and language. Seizures that result from traumatic brain injury can cause age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

This week’s resource of note is Palliative care.

Palliative care is designed to compliment the treatment you are receiving for illness and injuries such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI) or spinal cord injuries (SCI). The goal is to relieve the patient of pain, stress, fatigue, loss of appetite, constipation, nausea and difficulty sleeping with will result in a better overall quality of life for the person in treatment.

Those who provide Palliative care typically are part of a team that can be comprised of nutritionists, doctors and social workers. Together they work to generate a plan that will alleviate the symptoms mentioned above while giving support to both the patient and his or her family.

These services are provided by numerous hospitals and care centers across the United States. For a directory, please click here.

For an excellent description of this form of care, visit Get Palliative Care’s Website.

There are some significant differences between post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but those differences are often eclipsed by the similarities. With all of the discussion regarding Iraq soldiers who are returning with cognitive problems, it’s not hard to mix them up.

Here are some ways you can differentiate between the two.

A TBI is caused by a physical trauma to the brain tissue that creates symptoms such as memory loss, anxiety and confusion, while PTSD happens after an emotional trauma and can have many of the same symptoms.

PTSD can be caused by many different things - childhood abuse, accidents, natural disasters and witnessing or experiencing violence such as happens in war. Emotions arise such as fear, anger, anxiety that can appear immediately, but often show up later. Depression, difficulty focusing and a sense of being out of control can begin to negatively affect the person’s life and lead them to find treatment.

TBI’s can also lead to depression and agitation, but they tend to create physically symptoms that PTSD doesn’t. Dizziness, blurred vision and interrupted sleep patterns are all common side effects. TBI’s can be verified through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and can be treated through both physical and psychological rehabilitation.

There aren’t any guaranteed treatments for either condition, though researchers have been working hard on finding ways to help people reduce, if not cure, their symptoms.

Two good resources for information on these injuries are the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Top Three Things to Know for New Brain Injury Patients

The time following a brain injury can be confusing, overwhelming, and emotional. There are three things that new brain injury patients should be aware of to help them through this difficult time.

1. You Are Not Alone

Every year 1.4 million people in the United States seek medical care for traumatic brain injury. Survivors should be willing to ask for—and receive—help from family, friends, and other loved ones when needed. Support groups, resources, and the survivor’s medical team are all there to help the patient navigate the time following traumatic brain injury. If the patient is not able to advocate for himself or herself, caregivers should be willing to call on the medical team, support groups, and other resources for help.

2. There are Different Types of Treatment and Rehabilitation

Survivors should be aware that there are a variety of types of treatments and rehabilitation available, depending upon individual needs, as well as where they are in the recovery process. No two treatment and rehabilitation programs are the same. Instead, they are individualized based on the location and severity of the injury. The goal of treatment and rehabilitation is to restore as much function to the survivor as possible. The plan should be to focus on the particular issues the survivor faces, and to structure therapies accordingly.

3. Recovery Will Be a Challenge

There’s nothing easy about recovery, and the new brain injury patient should realize this. As a matter of fact, without the many “challenges” that go hand-in-hand with recovery, the brain can’t rewire itself. While recovery can be extremely frustrating—with the gains offset by steps backward—perseverance, patience, and celebrating all forward progress, no matter how small, can keep the survivor in a positive frame of mind.

This week’s technology report isn’t on something you can use - yet. ScienceDaily reports that a team at the University of Reading has created a robot that is controlled by an actual biological brain. This has a great deal of potential applications as it continues to develop and become more complex.

Using cultured neurons, the scientists developed this brain in a move to determine how memories manifest and how the brain “stores specific pieces of data”. The neurons are placed into a dish called a multi-electrode array (MEA) that has 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals sent by the cells. These signals are what determine how the robot moves.

As researchers figure out how to get the robot to learn, they hope to be able to watch the actual process of how memories manifest themselves when the robot travels over known territory.

Knowing more about how memory forms will help researchers understand how memory is damaged in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and eventually, how to repair it!

To keep an eye on this research, visit the University of Reading.

We’ve talked about nutrition and how researchers are finding correlations between ingesting optimal amounts of vitamins and minerals and decreased brain damage after an injury. For this post we are going to explore one of the oft times touted supplements, fish oil.

According to a handful of studies, to be listed in the end, fish oil’s mega-3s (DHA) from sources such as tuna or salmon have the ability to reduce the risk of stroke, dementia and cognitive as well as brain abnormalities. In addition to this, it may also help with brain recovery after a traumatic injury.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential nutrients that are obtained from food. There are three omega-3s, ALA, DHA and EPA. Of those, DHA is the form most usable by the body. Fatty acids are needed for normal growth and they benefit kidney function and support skin integrity as well as regulate inflammation and control hormones and cell growth.

The recommended dose varies depending on age and whether or not you are taking other supplements or medications. If you are in good health, taking 1,000 mg once a day should provide an adequate amount.

There have been some concerns regarding mercury in fish, as an increase in mercury levels can lead to brain damage, the very thing we are trying to counteract. To avoid this you can either stick to the fish oil capsules which have had the impurities taken out, or eat fish with lower amounts such as Alaskan cod or sockeye salmon (tuna contains the highest level of mercury).

Of course, as in all studies, there are possible variables such as the age of those who tend to use fish oil, so keep in mind that while it may have been shown to improve cognitive functioning, it may not work for you. Research into supplements such as omega-3s are still in the early stages, but the potential benefits make them worth watching.

Studies: One, two, three, and some good information on Wikipedia. For more on the dangers of mercury, click here.

Four men are “wheeling” across Canada with the use of hand cycles in order to bring awareness and generate donations to research for conditions such as concussive head injury and Alzheimer’s. They believe that a donation of 30 cents by each Canadian citizen for “breakthrough” research will allow them to walk again.

This research comes from a Canadian research team at McMaster University in Hamilton. Dr. Michel Rathbone and Dr. Shucui Jiang successfully regenerated nerves in the chronically damaged spinal cords of rats with the use of adult enteric glia cells. These cells are abundant in human and animal intestines and have been found to support the nervous system.

The enteric glia cells were grown in cell cultures and then transplanted into the rat’s spinal cords where they stimulated nerves to grow, reducing the damage in the spinal cord. These cells are not only stable, they have bypassed the problem of tissue rejection by the host. In addition, this team of scientists found that a naturally occurring molecule in the body, guanosine, stimulates stem cells already present in the spinal cord to grow and develop into cells that insulate the nerve processes.

Even more interesting, this medical approach and application can be used on other diseases as well, including those of the brain.

To progress beyond animal testing, the researchers need support. You don’t have to be Canadian to pitch it - visit Wheel to Walk for more information!

This week’s resource is the Traumatic Brain Injury Model System. We have been talking about ways to increase your brain’s ability to recall and process information after a TBI, and this site has some good data that can help with the process.

Run by the University of Alabama, this Website provides activities that are created to enhance cognitive function in people with brain injuries. According to their introduction page, “Each activity provides a group of tasks listed by their level of difficulty…you can select activities you feel might be appropriate and increase the level of difficulty by selecting appropriate task as progress warrants.”

They include 48 activities, a skill index that organizes the tasks according to which thinking skills are used and an appendices that has additional resources. You can choose to practice your Fine Motor Control, Attention/Concentration Skills, Memory-Oriented Skills, Reasoning/Problem Solving Skills, Visual Spatial Skills and Language Skills.

We found this site to be both helpful and easy to use. Let us know what you think!

Q: Since my brain injury, I have memory loss and difficulty concentrating. Is there anything I can do to improve this?

A: There was a time when doctors assumed that the brain, once damaged, couldn’t regain any of it’s previous functions, but thankfully we have progressed beyond that limited evaluation.

We now know that there are things we can do to improve brain functioning after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). In addition to the rehabilitation that the doctor will recommend after an injury, there are a variety of exercises that you can do on your own that will help to boost brain power.

Some researchers claim that music incites increased brain function by creating connections between the right and left brain hemisphere. The interplay that allows you to learn music utilizes both your creativity and your reasoning, strengthening cognitive capacities and developing better organization skills. By learning a new musical skill, you potentially improve your mind’s flexibility.

Others stress the importance of physical exercise, especially aerobic activities. While this area still needs more study in order to clarify what specific processes are happening to cause improved memory and general mental function, there have been a handful of seemingly conclusive tests creating a definite link between the two. Some speculate that it’s the increased blood flow bringing oxygen to the brain that promotes these beneficial effects. This doesn’t mean that you need to run for hours a day. Find an activity that you enjoy, be it running or biking, hiking or swimming, and try to increase the time spent doing it.

Besides learning a new musical skill or upping your aerobic activity, you can also practice brain exercises that will help you to increase your capacity to process information with speed and efficiency. There are a wide assortment of books and Websites that not only detail different activities, but walk you through them. Here are a few to get you started:

COM

Workbook for Cognitive Skills

The Brain Injury Workbook

Whichever steps you decide to take to improve and even regain your cognitive capabilities, keep in mind that scientists are just starting to discover the brain’s recuperative abilities. Don’t give up hope!

We’ve mentioned brain plasticity in a couple of our post regarding brain injury and brain repair, so this post is going to delve into exactly what this term means and why it’s so important.

Brain plasticity, also called neuroplasticity, cortical plasticity and cortical re-mapping, is a term used to describe the way the brain organizes itself in response to experience. More specifically, “neuro” stands for neuron, the nerve cells in our brains and nervous centers, and “plasticity” for changeable or malleable. Since scientists began to study the brain, the idea was fairly set in stone that it was hardwired to respond in certain ways, and much like a computer, when one drive failed, that drive and all of it’s information was gone for good. The knowledge (read synaptic connections) contained in that portion of the brain would be wiped out if damaged, to never be regained.

Looking back now, it seems surprising that people who could easily grasp that the brain grows both in physical size and knowledge from childhood to adulthood, would assume that such an amazing organ was as unchanging as a machine. When scientists in the late 60s and early 70s began to discover that the brain was able to change what parts it used for different activities, switching over to other areas as the previously used portions stopped working or were utilized for different functions, the idea of brain plasticity was born.

Now decades of research have given credence to the idea that the brain changes in reaction to new situations or in counterbalance to brain injury. Thinking, learning and even acting change not only the brain’s organization but its actual physical structure. Called “maps”, the way the sensory system in the brain is organized changes with stimulus, often moving from one part of the brain to the other. Picture a map overlaying the brain, then move it from one area to another and you have an idea of how it works.

No longer are we limited by the idea of a never changing mind… we can now work on various aspects that are poorly formed or badly damaged with the hope of creating the necessary connections in some other part of the brain - a part capable of the needed responses. For a great book on this process and how to help your own brain function better, visit Norman Doidge’s Website or order his book, The Brain that Changes Itself.