About Acquired Brain Injuries

What is an acquired brain injury?
An acquired brain injury (ABI) is defined as damage to the brain that occurs after birth, that is not related to a degenerative disease. Aperson can be injured through trauma, like a physical blow to the head, shaking, or other injury, and may or may not involve a skull fracture. Brain injuries can also be acquired through "non-traumatic" means, such as infection,lack of oxygen, poisoning, tumours, ruptured aneurysms or other medical conditions.

Who is affected?
It is estimated that as many as 250 to 300 people in the Grey Bruce area experience a brain injury each year, about half of whom will have significant long-term effects ranging from mild to severe. Because the difficulties are often cognitive, and not readily visible, you may know someone living with the effects of a brain injury and not realize it.

Each of these individuals are part of a family and a circle of friends, neighbours, classmates and co-workers whose lives are affected by the injury. While theses people work at being supportive to the individual as they recover, they are also coping with some loss themselves, as the person they knew may now be very different.

How does a brain injury affect someone?
Because we use our brains for virtually everything, an injury to this complex organ affects a person in many ways. The effect of every brain injury is different, but some common changes include:
-Memory problems
-Difficulty concentrating
-Difficulty making decisions
-Speech and Language problems
-Difficulty understanding others
-Social, Emotional and Personality changes
-Physical weakness or paralysis
-In coordination and impaired balance
-Fatigue

These challenges often mean changes in a person's work, home, school, and social life.

Changes can appear subtle or even invisible to others, and affect not only the person, but those close to them.

Types of Brain Injuries
Acquired Brain Injury (ABI): which is injury to the brain after birth and is not caused by congenital disorders or degenerative disease.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): which are classified in two categories; these are Traumatic and Non-Traumatic.

Non-Traumatic Brain Injury: caused by internal disease or oxygen deprivation i.e. Aneurysm, Stroke, Encephalitis (swelling of the brain), tumours.

Types of Traumatic Brain Injury
Immediate or Primary Injury: This injury can occur in specific areas of the brain. It may cause contusions or bruising (this type of injury usually heals and has no lasting affects), or may cause bleeding or hermatomas, lacerations or cuts, penetrating wounds and fractures to the skull as well as shearing and tearing to the brain as it bounces around inside the skull. This type of damage to the brain usually has long lasting effects.

Delayed or Secondary Injury: Is the result of changes in the brain caused by immediate injury, however there are no changes noticed till hours, days, weeks or months after the immediate injury i.e. swelling in parts of the brain, causing pressure.

Mild traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI): The survivor may loose consciousness for a few seconds or minutes. Some symptoms may result in poor memory and concentration, irritability, fatigue, poor sleeping patterns, balance problems. These symptoms quite often become permanent.

Moderate and Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: can cause many changes in all aspects of a person's life. In these types of injuries recovery is variable. The survivor may learn to adapt, so they are able to do most things for themselves. Some need long-term care and in severe trauma the result maybe persistent coma or death.

CEREBELLUM

• Balance and equilibrium
• Controls dizziness, tremours, slurred speech, rapid movement
• Coordination of time motor
• Ability to walk
• Ability to reach out and grab objects
• Appetite control

OCCIPTAL LOBE

• Vision
• Visual Field
• Ability to locate and see objects or words
• Identify colour
• Reading and writing abilities
• Hallucinations

PARIETAL LOBE

• Word finding
• Reading ability
• Ability to draw objects
• Ability to distinguish left from right
• Math ability (Dyscalculia)
• Reading ability (Alexia)
• Awareness of certain body parts and/or surrounding space
• Location of Visual attention and focus
• Eye hand coordination
• Hand eye coordination
• Ability to manipulate objects
• Ability to attend to more than one object at a time

FRONTAL LOBE

• Ability to Initiate
• Judgement, Planning, Problem Solving
• Emotions and ability to control them
• Expressive language
• Memory for habits & motor activity (paralysis)
• Sequencing
• Attention
• Personality
• Ability to appreciate

TEMPORAL LOBE

• Hearing
• Some visual perceptions
• Ability to categorize
• Ability to recognize faces
• Ability to understand spoken words
• Long and short term memory
• Sexual behaviour
• Control
of Persistent talking
• Control of aggressive behaviour

BRAIN STEM

• Breathing
• Heart rate
• Swallowing
• Startle reflexes
• Controls sweating, blood pressure, digestion, temperature (Autonomic Nervous System)
• Levels of alertness
• Ability to sleep
• Sense of balance