Thursday May 27th

Brain, Behavior & Cognitive Deficits: Neurorehabilitation Interventions for Individuals with Acquired Brain Injuries

Dr. Kristine Kingsley

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is a broad term which encompasses such neurological disorders as traumatic brain injury, cerebrovascular accidents, encephalopathies, hypoxia / anoxia, and brain neoplasms. Mild to moderate ABIs can cause a major disruption in the life of the individual who has been afflicted, leading to varying degrees of physical, emotional / behavioral, cognitive, and social deficits and disability. Areas of a person’s life with respect to occupational and personal well- being can be irreversibly affected. Interventions for ABI have been under investigation over the past thirty years and mostly involve pharmacology, psychotherapy, family (systems) work and cognitive rehabilitation. 

What is cognitive remediation or rehabilitation?

The Brain Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group (BI-ISIG) of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine provided a definition on cognitive rehabilitation:

Cognitive rehabilitation is a systematic, functionally oriented service of therapeutic cognitive activities, based on an assessment and understanding of the person’s brain-behavior deficits. Services are directed to achieve functional changes by (1) reinforcing, strengthening, or reestablishing previously learned patterns of behavior; or (2) establishing new patterns of cognitive activity or compensatory mechanisms for impaired neurological systems. (Harley et al., 1992)

A major target of rehabilitation is to improve the areas of functioning which pertain to memory, attention, visual-spatial abilities, information processing speed, language, and executive functions / problem solving. 

This workshop aims to provide attendees with: 1) an overview of the principles, clinical practice, and research in the application of cognitive rehabilitation to individuals with acquired brain injury, and 2) the necessary conceptual and practical tools to practice it in a supervised setting.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, attendees will be able to:

1. Define and discuss common types of cognitive of challenges post ABI;

2. Discuss the evaluation process of an acquired brain injury;

3. Define changes and how those may impact the individual and his family within the realm of professional and interpersonal interactions;

1. Define and differentiate between various cognitive rehabilitation interventions for the management of cognitive symptoms of ABI.