> What is Brain Injury? > Consequence

Brain injury can affect a person cognitively, physically and emotionally.

Cognitive consequences can include:

• Short term memory loss; long term memory loss
• Slowed ability to process information
• trouble concentrating or paying attention for periods of time
• difficulty keeping up with a conversation; other communication difficulties such as word finding problems
• spatial disorientation
• organizational problems and impaired judgment
• unable to do more than one thing at a time

Physical consequences can include:

• Seizures of all types
• muscle spasticity
• double vision or low vision, even blindness
• Loss of smell or taste
• speech impairments such as slow or slurred speech;
• headaches or migraines
• fatigue, increased need for sleep; balance problems
• pain

Emotional consequences can include:

• a lack of initiating activities, or once started, difficulty in completing tasks without reminders
• increased anxiety
• depression and mood swings
• denial of deficits
• impulsive behavior
• more easily agitated
• egocentric behaviors; difficulty seeing how behaviors can affect others

References
1- Centers for Disease Control, Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: A Report to Congress.
2- Lewin –ICF. The Cost of Disorders of the Brain Washington, DC: The National Foundation for the Brain, 1992.