After this course, participants will be able to:
- Describe the common characteristics of cognitive communication disorder following traumatic brain injury.
- Identify evidence-based tools for the assessment of cognitive-communication disorder following traumatic brain injury.
- Describe evidence-based treatment approaches to address cognitive-communication disorder following traumatic brain injury.
I just want to reiterate that this course is indeed meant to be a basic or introductory level course about brain injury, including its characteristics, both in terms of injury mechanism as well as behavioral characteristics, and then some basic ideas of what the evidence is for assessment and treatment. These are broad-stroke overviews. I do try to give some specific breakdowns for different subpopulations within TBI, but it is really meant as a jumping-off block for more in-depth exploration of these topics.
ABI vs. TBI
To begin, I wanted to discuss the differences and similarities between the terms acquired brain injury, or ABI, and traumatic brain injury, or TBI. The term “acquired brain injury” is an umbrella term that encompasses all brain injuries of all types that occur after birth. These could include a wide range of causes such as stroke, infection, tumor or poisoning. What we are concerned about in this presentation is the idea of “traumatic brain injury,” or TBI. Again, this is a brain injury that occurs after birth. In that way, it falls under the umbrella of an acquired brain injury. The injury is specific to the nervous system or to the brain, but for today, we are focusing on the injury specifically caused by an external force that is applied to the head.
While there are many similarities in characteristics that cross the mechanisms that result in acquired brain injury, traumatic brain injury tends to have a relatively specific set of presentations. Keep in mind that no one individual with a head injury will present exactly like another person with a head injury. Under the idea of traumatic brain injury, this can include characteristics such as loss of consciousness, memory loss around the time of the injury or surrounding the event on the range of minutes to hours to days, possibly an altered mental state or ability to know who you are, where you are, your temporal orientation. It can also include the possibility of an intracranial lesion, so that there is area of focal damage within the brain that is possible under the term traumatic brain injury.
