Cognitive Problems
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I often tell clients that brain injuries are easy to miss after a car wreck or accident. Doctors usually don’t know you well enough to notice changes in how you think, feel, or act. That means it’s up to you or your family to watch for symptoms and let your doctor know — and that’s exactly what this series is here to help with.
The first set of symptoms that many people notice is the cognitive symptoms. The major cognitive issues that are associated with brain injuries are as follows:
This is difficult to quantify without proper testing, but many people suffering from brain injuries feel that they have lost intelligence compared to their pre-injury intelligence.
The memory issues associated with brain injuries take many different forms. The most common memory issues are post-traumatic amnesia, short-term memory problems (not remembering what you’re doing, not remembering your typical tasks, etc.), and long-term memory problems.
Many victims of brain injuries also have more difficulty paying attention to things, especially for longer periods of time, and they have difficulty with working memory — the short-term memory needed to process tasks. These deficits can be tested through tests that show the person shapes or various patterns and then ask the person to recall those same shapes and patterns a few moments later.
Numerous studies have found that persons with brain injuries have a slower reaction time to different events. The reaction time becomes worse when the task is more difficult, the person has more information, leading to information overload, or the person is fatigued. Again, this is a symptom that is difficult to quantify without proper testing.
Brain-injured persons might recognize spatial cognition issues in terms of getting lost, not remembering where objects were placed or put, and not understanding directions.
There are other cognitive issues that can arise, but these are the most popular that we see. Unfortunately, one problem of brain injuries is that there is a well-known phenomenon that injured persons are often unaware of these deficits. Therefore, it’s critically important that friends or family members pay attention to these symptoms.