Depending on the extent and location of the injury, impairments caused by a brain injury can vary widely. Among the most common impairments  are difficulties with memory, mood, and concentration. Others include significant deficits in organizational and reasoning skills, learning, cognitive, and executive functions. 

     Recovery from a brain injury can be inconsistent. In many cases gains may be closely followed by setbacks and plateaus. A "plateau" should not necessarily be viewed as evidence that improvement have ended. Typically, plateaus are followed by gains. This pattern of gains and setbacks can continue  indefinately.

   Changes in memory and organizational skills after a brain injury makes it difficult to function in complex environments. The tutorials in this section are designed to help you understand how daily routines and life in general may be affected by brain injury. 

     Links on this page help you create a compensatory system, teach you how to use it, and monitor how well it is working. A number of those pages  provide practical suggestions for gathering information and developing effective action plans for coping with brain injury in daily living. 

  About the brain. The brain has been described as a three pound universe.  It has come to be thought of in those terms because quite literally; we live in our brains. The brain is our personal, private universe.  It is through our brains that we experience ourselves and the environment.  It is though our brains that we understand our relationship to others.  Scientists think of the brain as the organ of reason, language, complex social relations, and morality. It is, after all, what makes us distinctly human. 

     The brain can be thought of as a sensory processor. Our experience of ourselves, and our environment is dependent on the brain's ability to receive, process, store, retrieve and transmit sensory information.  The ability to think, see, smell, feel, remember, and behave appropriately  is dependent on an intact brain. Even minor brain damage can result in permanent impairments in these functions.  Such impairments can seriously disrupt normal everyday activities.

    Severe Brain Injury.  Severe brain injuries usually result from crushing blows or penetrating wounds to the head. Such injuries crush, rip and shear delicate brain tissue. This is the most life threatening, and the most intractable type of brain injury.  .

   Typically, heroic measures are required in treatment of such injuries. Frequently, severe head trauma results in an open head injury, one in which the skull has been crushed or seriously fractured. Treatment of open head injuries usually require prolonged hospitalization and extensive rehabilitation. Typically, rehabilitation is incomplete and for most part there is no return to pre-injury status. Closed head injuries can also result in severe brain injury. 

   Mechanism of Injury. The brain is somewhat mobile within the spiny interior of the skull. Under normal circumstances the delicate brain is protected from contact with the spiny contours of the skull. This protective barrier is known as cerebrospinal fluid. It surrounds the brain, and under normal circumstances, cushions the brain from contact with its hard, spiny shell. 

    However, when the head is subjected to violent forces, such as those exerted in: automobile accidents;  violent shaking or whiplash;  falls and blows; the brain may sustain permanent damage. Such damage results from the delicate brain being forcibly rotated and battered within the spiny skull, also known as, the brain vault. During such episodes brain tissue is ripped, torn, stretched, battered and bruised.  Such battering is followed by bleeding, swelling and bruising of brain tissue.  Sometimes the brain can recover from such insults without any apparent consequences.  In other cases the resultant difficulties can last a lifetime. 

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• For additional resources visit our companion site Brain Injury Resource Center