(Photo credit: clsawyer/SXC)
When you go grocery shopping with a budget, you pick up the items you need, do a quick mental calculation to ensure you haven’t gone over your budget and then proceed to the checkout. Being able to do mental arithmetic is one example of your working memory being put to work. Your working memory allows you to hold onto some information in your mind for some time, which you then use in your thinking.
But everyone has limits to their working memory. For example, if you are distracted you can lose the information within your working memory, there’s a limit to how much information you can hold and if you are handling something that requires a great deal of mental capacity, then you’re unable to store much more information in your working memory. Also, once you’ve lost the information in your working memory, there’s no retrieving it and if you’re doing mental calculations, all you can do is start over.
Unfortunately, if you have an acquired brain injury, which could be the result of a motor vehicle collision or a skiing accident, many individuals’ working memory is affected. This results in forgetting easily, being unable to multitask and becoming easily distracted.
Through rehabilitation, acquired brain injury survivors can slowly improve their condition, but it’s a long journey to recovery.
To improve their working memory, it’s important to be repetitive when it comes to relearning, an example would be to use flash cards if you’re relearning to speak, which can also serve as memory aids and decreases the working memory’s load. It’s important to break down the English into chunks, this way the information is retained. And it’s also important to continuously review the material over and over again to ensure that it sticks. Brain training is also shown to help improve working memory, according to research published in the Psychogical Science journal.
But the rehabilitation program you go through has an effect on your outcome, according to recent research by the Baylor Research Institute. Discharge outcomes varied by 25 to 45 per cent between the best and worst-performing, says one of the investigators.
After the media reported that F1 champion Michael Schumacher was in critical condition after a skiing accident from a head injury, former downhill skiing Olympian Dave Irwin shared details with CTV about recovering from an acquired brain injury after a ski accident in 2001. Prior to that, he’d suffered multiple concussions as well. His injuries include severe memory loss, relearning English and coordination. A decade later, Irwin can now talk and hold conversations with one or two people, but more than that becomes difficult and he continues to experience short-term memory loss. A year after his incident, he was able to ski the run that nearly killed him. And in March 2002, he created the Dave Irwin Foundation for brain injury to help fund research, assist in the recovery for brain injury survivors and to raise public awareness about acquired brain injury.
If you have suffered a brain or spinal injury, your life might have significantly changed. Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers are here for you and have been handling all types of injuries for over 40 years. We understand the impacts they can have on you and we can help fight your case. Call us at 416-920-4242. Set up a free consultation and come chat with us.
Greg Neinstein
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