Topic > Influence of traumatic brain injury on neuroplasticity

IndexIntroductionCognitivePerceptualBehavioral/EmotionalConclusionIntroductionThere are approximately 57 million people worldwide who have been hospitalized due to traumatic brain injury. Some people die or become disabled due to this injury, for example in India 30,000 people have died. People who are at the highest risk of suffering a traumatic brain injury are children, adolescents, and young adults between the ages of 15 and 25. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a brain injury when the brain suffers sudden damage from a blow or shock to the head. For example, these causes include car accidents, falls, sports injuries and much more. These injuries include from mild concussions to severe permanent brain damage. Primary injury occurs when people experience the injury at the time it occurred and can affect a specific area of ​​the brain or the entire brain. Another injury is known as a secondary injury which is usually more harmful than the primary injury. There are different treatments for different brain injuries, for example for mild concussions, people rest and take medications while those with severe permanent brain damage may require intensive care and surgery. There are some people who have died and may die from this brain injury. However, there are some people who have survived and can survive this brain injury. When people survive this brain injury, they will experience some long-term effects that may affect them physically and mentally. When people survive a severe brain injury, they undergo a rehabilitation process to recover and relearn skills, because when their brain changes, it would affect their normal daily activities, personality, and behavior. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThese traumatic brain injuries will affect neuroplasticity because the injuries will cause the brain to move forward causing bruising, bleeding, and destruction of nerve fibers. Immediately after the impact, people feel confused, cannot remember what just happened, feel dizzy and blurred vision, or lose consciousness. Then their brain will swell, pushing against the skull and decreasing the flow of oxygen-rich blood. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to develop new neural synapses and neural pathways from new experiences such as new interactions with the environment, and these changes occur in behavior, environmental and neural processes. Neuroplasticity allows us to understand changes in the brain, especially after brain injury. When the brain recovers, it develops new neurons and cells. Symptoms of traumatic brain injury are lack of consciousness, memory, change in mood, difficulty paying attention, and many other neurological or neuropsychological abnormalities. It is important to rehabilitate and treat those who have suffered traumatic brain injury because it is one of the leading causes of disability in the world. Traumatic brain injuries have the ability to change people's behavior, mood, thinking and understanding, memory, attention, communication, and many other functions. Each year, the price of caring for those who have survived traumatic brain injuries and become disabled will continue to increase. Not only does the price increase, but the number of victims of this injury also increases. Therefore, it is important to treat these people who havedisability due to this injury and prevent further injuries in the future. The goal of this essay is to research how these traumatic brain injuries affect neuroplasticity because it focuses on learning and memory processes and this can change as new neurons develop. Cognitive When people experience a traumatic brain injury, there would be cognitive effects because it would affect the way people think and learn. People would have difficulty concentrating, speaking, learning, remembering, reasoning, and solving problems. They would not be able to concentrate on one thing at a time. They are easily distracted when trying to complete a task. They cannot work on multiple tasks at the same time because it is difficult for them to finish a project at the same time. Furthermore, they cannot participate in a conversation for so long and remain still for long periods of time. Attention skills help people's memory and reasoning, however, if they cannot concentrate, they will also have more cognitive problems. Not only can people not concentrate or pay attention to an important matter, but they also have difficulty remembering information, especially short information. -term memory and “working memory”. For example, they would have difficulty trying to understand people's names or what others said to them. It is possible that their knowledge before the injury was still intact, however people would have difficulty trying to learn new information. Although people can remember information by rehearsing it over and over again, this cannot however help people remember information after suffering a traumatic brain injury. Even if they have difficulty remembering information that happened recently, they can clearly remember their childhood. They may not be able to remember certain information such as events and conversations. The brain is trying to “fill in the gaps” of missing information and remember things that didn't actually happen. This leads to the development of false memories. People would also have difficulty processing and understanding information, especially what is said and read to them. Furthermore, they would have difficulty finding the right words to say and write. Therefore they have difficulty expressing themselves and it would be difficult for them to try to communicate with others. It would take longer to understand what others are trying to say and slower to react. People would have difficulty making sense of viewing and drawing images and finding their way to their destination. Another example is when people suffer from agnosia because they cannot recognize certain objects. Another problem is when people have difficulty recognizing that a problem exists because they have difficulty trying to analyze information. When trying to solve the problem, they either have only one solution to think of and ignore the rest of the possibilities, or they have difficulty deciding what the best decision to solve the problem is. There are case studies that propose that traumatic brain injury leads to the possibility of precipitating two contradictory processes: excessive glutamate accumulation that has the potential to lead to NMDA-mediated excitotoxicity and excess GABA-mediated inhibition that could lead to to long-lasting cognitive deficits. A case study of this 44 year old male suffered a concussion while playing football. He collided with another player. After making contact, he lost consciousness for approximately 90 seconds. Then he was confused and had about 2 minutes of retrograde amnesia and 4 minutes of anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia occurs when a person losesmemory before head trauma. Anterograde amnesia occurs when a person loses their memory after a head injury. Approximately 20 minutes after the event ended, his physical and neurological exams were normal. For 10 days it was normal. Two weeks after the accident he was extremely tired and could not concentrate. He also couldn't remember anything and suffered from mild headaches and difficulty sleeping. Due to these symptoms, the total symptom score was 13 according to the Immediate Post-Concussion Cognitive and Assessment Test (ImPACT). 6 weeks after the accident, he began to slowly improve. He still suffered from mild headaches, some tiredness, and had difficulty remembering information. As he began to improve, his total symptoms were 8. 10 weeks after the accident, he was completely asymptomatic and continuing his normal daily activities. He did not take any drugs capable of changing the plasticity of the brain. The only exception was paracetamol for headaches. This shows that a brain injury can have a serious impact on people's cognitive behavior as this man lost his memory before and after the head injury, could not concentrate and other symptoms. This only happened after the brain injury, so this shows the long term effects of the brain injury. Perceptual One of the effects after people suffer a traumatic injury is how people perceive, act and feel differently in a matter of seconds. Even though they were recovering from treatments and rehabilitation, they would still feel the side effects of the brain injury. Due to these side effects, this might also affect their normal daily activities as they cannot function properly. People who have suffered traumatic brain injuries not only suffer physically but also emotionally. They perceive things differently than others. Perception plays a significant role on behavior and attitude. There are several areas of the brain that process information from senses such as touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. For example, when you consume an apple, your brain will report information such as feeling how round and smooth the apple is, the color of red could be red or green, the crunchy sound when you bite into it, and smelling how fresh the apple is. , and how sweet and mature it is. If there was damage to the right side of the brain or the parietal and occipital lobes of the brain due to brain disorders such as traumatic brain injury, then the senses might change and people would perceive things differently, for example auditory, visual, tactile , olfactory. and gustatory. Although difficulties in the sensory system occur, visuospatial problems are often more evident. For example, people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury may have difficulty drawing objects, recognizing objects (agnosia), analyzing and remembering visual information, manipulating or building objects, following directions, and much more. A very obvious problem is neglect when the brain neglects one side of everything it perceives which is usually the left side. For example, people fail to analyze the entire image because they don't notice the left side of an image. There is a case study of Elsie, a 52 year old woman, who had a stroke 3 years ago. Since that accident, Elsie would have difficulty driving next to parked vehicles because she would scrape into cars. Furthermore, he allegedly hit the road signs on the left side of his car. Because this was causing a lot of problems, Elsie went to a doctor to have her vision checked. Her doctor referred Elsie to a neuropsychologist who identified theproblem such as left side neglect. The neuropsychologist asked how Elsie had managed to drive all this time while neglecting her left side. He responded as he knew when to swerve to the right because he would feel his tires go off the road. One of the least common examples of neglect is prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognize faces. There are rare cases where people cannot distinguish the differences between one face and another or read facial expressions. They must rely on other factors to recognize other people, such as their voice and personality. There is a case study where Lincoln couldn't recognize himself when looking at a photo of himself after the car accident. Lincoln would have difficulty searching for his family in large crowds when they are separated from each other. Although Lincoln had difficulty recognizing people's faces, others could not understand his ability to see and recognize objects. Another case study was conducted on a woman who fell down several flights of stairs in March 2012. She was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. Since that accident, he has never been able to smell or taste anything and is said to be 25% after a traumatic brain injury. It is not difficult for them to notice how they have lost their sense of smell and taste. The loss of smell is also called anosmia, while the loss of taste is called ageusia. The loss of smell influences the loss of taste. There are many reasons that cause loss of smell such as damage to the nose, nasal passages, sinuses, olfactory nerve and brain. The olfactory nerve helps transfer smell from the nose to the brain to process inputs. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why people lose their sense of smell, but the reason may be damage to the nasal passages, olfactory nerve, and frontotemporal regions of the brain. It is important that not only the nasal passages or nerves play a significant role but also the brain because they help in processing the sensation coming from the nasal passages. If that area of ​​the brain is damaged, it is difficult for the individual to have the ability to smell. If the individual cannot smell anything, then it will be difficult for him to have an appetite and this will slow down the production of saliva because the smell of food makes the individual feel hungry. The brain is responsible for processing all the senses such as sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Since the brain plays a significant role, if it is damaged it could affect these senses to the point of losing their sense. This depends on the location of the brain and the severity of the injury. Behavioral/Emotional Traumatic brain injuries have been found to cause long-term disability, especially in people under the age of 40. There are many areas of the brain that focus on certain functions such as behavior and emotions. If injury to the brain occurred, significant changes in behavior and emotions would occur. For example, the function of the frontal cortex is personality expression and behavior. Therefore the individual will have difficulty trying to control their anger. Or they do not seem able to express any emotion and this is known as “flat affect”. The most common behaviors and problems mentioned include verbal and physical outbursts, poor judgment, negativity, intolerance, lack of empathy, lack of motivation, depression or anxiety. After they are checked by the doctor, they will experience some mood swings because they cannot control their mood. One day they may be very excited and happy, and the next second they become sad and depressed. The victim of a traumatic brain injury may not even know about..