The Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) up to $2.5 million to develop an implantable neural device with the ability to record and stimulate neurons within the brain to help restore memory, DARPA officials announced this week. The research builds on the understanding that memory is a process in which neurons in certain regions of the brain encode information, store it and retrieve it. Certain types of illnesses and injuries, including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Alzheimer's disease, and epilepsy, disrupt this process and cause memory loss. TBI, in particular, has affected 270,000 military service members since 2000.
Read more... Device to restore memory
The purpose/mission of the National Brain Injury Foundation is to provide social support groups, advocacy, and information to people with brain injuries and their families.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Test your Brain with these Brain Teasers and Games
Below you can find the Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games that SharpBrains readers have enjoyed the most. It is always good to learn about our brains and to exercise them!
This is our selection of fun and enlightening brain teasers for adults of any age.
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Fun experiments on how our brains work
1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
2. Can you really count? Check out this attention experiment(Interactive)
3. Take the Senses Challenge (Interactive)
Attention and memory
5. How are your divided attention skills? check out “Inside and Outside” (Interactive)
6. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try“Two in One” (Interactive)
7. Count the Fs in this sentence
9. Proud of your visual memory? Give a try at “Picasso” (Interactive)
Visual workouts
11. Test the limits of your peripheral vision with thischallenge (Interactive)
12. How many… Train your Frontal and Parietal lobes
13. Is a circle a circle?: Visual brain teaser
14. Mental Imagery and Spatial Rotation challenge
15. What piece fits here?
Visual illusions
17. The Muller-Lyer Illusion
18. Don’t try this with your partner
19. How many colors do you see in The Hermann Grid
20. This is less obvious than it may appear
21. Are these 2 rows parallel?
22. What do you see?
Language and logic
24. Words in your brain: do you know where words are “stored”?
25. Join this party For polyglots
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. Share what you are doing in your area to raise awareness. To download materials and find information on advocacy in your area, visit http://www.biausa.org/ TBIAwareness
Monday, December 9, 2013
neuro.RAPT presents an exclusive four part bi-weekly docu-byte series on Severe Traumatic Brain Injury for both our veteran and civilian population.
led by Dr. Theresa Pape, a clinical neuroscientist at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital and Research Associate Professor at Northwestern University.
Episode 1: A Journey into Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
This educational and thought provoking segment covers:
1) What is Severe Traumatic Brain Injury? ("Severe TBI")
2) What are the common causes of Severe TBI?
3) How many of our veterans have Severe TBI?
4) Are there secondary damages to these incidences?
5) How do you know if you have secondary brain damage?
6) Why is Severe TBI considered a hetergeneous condition?
7) Where do people with Severe TBI go for care?
8) How does the health insurance arena affect civilians with Severe TBI?
9) Is the U.S. medical care and caregiver system set up for Severe TBI?
10) What can we do as a society to help those who have Severe TBI?
1) What is Severe Traumatic Brain Injury? ("Severe TBI")
2) What are the common causes of Severe TBI?
3) How many of our veterans have Severe TBI?
4) Are there secondary damages to these incidences?
5) How do you know if you have secondary brain damage?
6) Why is Severe TBI considered a hetergeneous condition?
7) Where do people with Severe TBI go for care?
8) How does the health insurance arena affect civilians with Severe TBI?
9) Is the U.S. medical care and caregiver system set up for Severe TBI?
10) What can we do as a society to help those who have Severe TBI?
please visit www.neurorapt.com
neuro.RAPT is an independent film collaborative that spotlights stories centered on science, medicine, wellbeing and community.
neuro.RAPT is an independent film collaborative that spotlights stories centered on science, medicine, wellbeing and community.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
TBI defined by the people who are living with it ...
BrainLine asked our online community to share their personal definitions of traumatic brain injury, and the list below captures some of the many responses so generously provided by people with TBI.
Every individual’s experience with traumatic brain injury is unique, but there are many common symptoms and emotions. Anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety may be accompanied by difficulties with memory, pain, and the challenges of maintainingrelationships.
We encourage you to add your own definitions, and to join the BrainLine community on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Click Here Brainline.org
A puzzle … all the pieces are there but in the wrong order. —Barbara
When the cursor disappears from your mental computer screen. —Dave
Brain fog, confusion, difficulty learning new things, being able to be “high-functioning” but being very slow at it. —Mary
An invisible thief. —Lisa
Devastating. Exhausting. Widely misunderstood. —Jules
Scary. I look the same but I feel like someone else. —Ann-Michel
MIA or AWOL … Missing in Action or Away Without Leaving! —Trish
An invisible memory-taker, mood-changer, life-changer! —Meg
Like being under a constant waterfall and I’m just trying to catch my breath and not drown! —Angie
Thinking with speed bumps. —John
Like an earthquake in my brain that knocked down bridges and damaged highways and knocked out some —but not all —lines of communication. Some of these things get rebuilt more quickly than others, and some are easily re-damaged. —Alison
Like having everything in your life suspended in Jell-O, and just when you reach out for something, the Jell-O gets blended. —Indy
A family affair … when a family member has one, it affects everyone. —Stephanie
A constant struggle for the rest of your life … you know how you used to be and you want your life back … but it won't happen … it's like living in thick fog. —Christy
Scrambled egg between my ears. —Graham
The absolute hardest thing that you can imagine going through!! Unbelievably frustrating and isolating. —Chelsea
Learning to live in a brain that sometimes feels like it belongs to a stranger. —Sharon
Forgetfulness and a total personality change. —Dana
Scary. Frustrating. Annoying. Funny at times … sometimes I feel rather than get frustrated about one of my deficits. It’s better just to laugh about it. —Sonia
Limiting, difficult, having to “relearn” things you thought you already knew. —Justin
Unpredictable and extremely misunderstood. —Ronda
Like having the flu all day, every day … for the rest of your life. —Nathalie
Trying to catch clouds in a windstorm. —Mary
Memory problems can be a major source of frustration after a brain injury. Different types of brain injuries or diseases can affect memory in different ways. For example, brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain (caused by near drowning or a heart attack) may cause the brain to have difficulty in storing new information. These people may quickly forget what they have done or are told (Hobler and Carey, 1973). People with damage to their frontal lobes because of a car accident may have difficulty retrieving previously stored information. Cueing can help these people access this information. Understanding the different types of memory can go a long way in creating a successful rehabilitation program and for choosing effective compensatory strategies.
The following are different types of memory that can be affected by brain injury:
Episodic memory: is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions and other contextual knowledge) (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, 2011). Examples of difficulty with episodic memory would include forgetting about a visit with a friend the previous day.
Semantic memory: refers to concept-based knowledge, meanings, understandings, factual and general knowledge (The Brain from Top to Bottom). These memories may include the knowledge of a phone number used on a daily basis or knowing the Provinces and Territories in Canada without knowing a specific reference as to where it was learnt.
Procedural memory: is the memory for specific types of actions. They are well established sequences that often involve motor skills (Squire, 2004). Procedural learning involves repeating an activity over and over again until it is automatically produced. This may include a child learning the route to school without specific directions.
Retrograde memory: This is the autobiographical memory acquired for the events that occurred in a person’s life before a brain injury. It is may include school, a wedding, or a family trip. Retrograde amnesia describes damage to this type of memory (Hunkin, 1995).
References: Hobler, K.E.; L.C. Carey (1973). "Effect of acute progressive hypoxemia on cardiac output and plasma excess lactate". Ann Surg 177 (2): 199–202. doi:10.1097/00000658-197302000-00013. PMC 1355564. PMID 4572785. Hunkin, N. M., Parkin, A. J., Bradley, V. A., Burrows, E. H., Aldrick, F. K., Jansari, A., & Burdon-Cooper, C. (1995). Focal retrograde amnesia following closed head injury: A case study and theoretical account, Neuropsychologia, 33(4), 509-523. Schacter, Daniel L., Gilbert, Daniel T., and Wegner, Daniel M. "Semantic and episodic memory". Psychology; Second Edition. New York: Worth, Incorporated, 2011. 240-241. Print. Squire, L.R. (2004). Memory systems of the brain: A brief history and current perspective. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 82; 171-177. https://www.facebook.com/TbiLifeC
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
The Role of Grief After Traumatic Brain Injury
Grief is most often associated with death, but there are other losses in life that we also need to grieve — such as a loved one who is irrevocably changed because of a traumatic brain injury. "The Role of Grief After Traumatic Brain Injury" is an article featured in the first edition of Lash & Associates new magazine, Brain Injury Journey – Help, Hope, Healing. Janelle Breese Biagioni, RPC, talks about the complexities of "extraordinary grief" in which people grieve who they were, and the family also grieves the person who is no longer there, albeit physically present.
Click to read more...
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
NeuroConnect - Excellent Site
NeuroConnect provides information, resources, and support to people living with acquired brain injury and their families as well as brings awareness of brain injury to the public.
Visit NeuroConnect
Be sure to check out their workbooks and E-Magazine.
* ABI Mental Health WorkBook (depression, anxiety, anger management)
* ABI NeuroCognitive Workbook (memory, perception, attention, problem solving...)
Monday, February 25, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Brain Games - Great Site!
Brain games are cognitive calisthenics, brain body-building, genius gymnastics…essentially fun workouts for your brain. The brain might not be a muscle but it does need mental fitness, in order to strengthen neurons and their neural connections. The brain-challenging exercises that ‘challenge’ the mind are those that cause it to step out of autopilot and begin to think originally again. These ‘challenges’ can be out-of-the-box-thinking games, brain teasers, non-traditional math, logic problems, and the like.
Click HERE to start playing.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Cognitive Rehab Workbook
NeuroConnect’s Acquired Brain Injury Neuro Cognitive Rehab Workbook is to be used as a
general therapeutic tool to challenge common cognitive issues such as memory, perception,
attention, reading comprehension, problem solving, opinion forming and other life skills.
Click here for workbook
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
Dance
Rhythms of Hope is led by Dr. Marianne Talbot and is based in the Washington DC area. Through the use of dance, Dr. Talbot works with survivors of traumatic brain injuries to make new connections in their brain and aid in the road to recovery.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
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