Neuroplasticity And Rehabilitation

Brain plasticity is the focus of a growing body of research with significant implications for neurorehabilitation. This state-of-the-art volume explores ways in which brain-injured individuals may be helped not only to compensate for their loss of cognitive abilities, but also possibly to restore those abilities. Expert contributors examine the extent to which damaged cortical regions can actually recover and resume previous functions, as well as how intact regions are recruited to take on tasks once mediated by the damaged region. Evidence-based rehabilitation approaches are reviewed for a range of impairments and clinical populations, including both children and adults.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) remains a significant source of death and permanent disability, contributing to nearly one-third of all injury related deaths in the United States and exacting a profound personal and economic toll. Despite the increased resources that have recently been brought to bear to improve our understanding of TBI, the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches has been disappointingly slow. Translational Research in Traumatic Brain Injury attempts to integrate expertise from across specialties to address knowledge gaps in the field of TBI. Its chapters cover a wide scope of TBI research in five broad areas: Epidemiology Pathophysiology Diagnosis Current treatment strategies and sequelae Future therapies Specific topics discussed include the societal impact of TBI in both the civilian and military populations, neurobiology and molecular mechanisms of axonal and neuronal injury, biomarkers of traumatic brain injury and their relationship to pathology, neuroplasticity after TBI, neuroprotective and neurorestorative therapy, advanced neuroimaging of mild TBI, neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms following mild TBI, sports-related TBI, epilepsy and PTSD following TBI, and more. The book integrates the perspectives of experts across disciplines to assist in the translation of new ideas to clinical practice and ultimately to improve the care of the brain injured patient.

We possess as a cognitively aware species a high degree of function localization, but we still subscribe to the notion consistent with the model that dysfunction or damage to specific regions of the brain and nervous system may result in specific damage and deficits in behavior and function of individuals. Unfortunately, that is not enough to explain the capacity for plasticity, regeneration, spontaneous recovery, and optimization in neurological terms, and certainly not in its translation in clinical rehabilitation. Among the difficulties we face in the application of rehabilitation science in practice, the need to understand how the nervous system functions is less than understanding how it recovers from dysfunction, how we can effectively evaluate function, dysfunction and recovery, and how to provide a rational basis for making economic decisions about which method or methodology to invest. A neuroanatomical conceptualization is a not an option for rehabilitation practice. It is important to understand that what we are really attempting to achieve both in rehabilitation as well as in understanding the neurological basis of cognitive and motor improvement after trauma or stroke is not which brain area controls a given cognitive function, but how efficiently brain regions cooperate with each other and how novel connectivities may develop.

Stroke Rehabilitation: Insights from Neuroscience and Imaging informs and challenges neurologists, rehabilitation therapists, imagers, and stroke specialists to adopt more restorative and scientific approaches to stroke rehabilitation based on new evidence from neuroscience and neuroimaging literatures. The fields of cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging are advancing rapidly and providing new insights into human behavior and learning. Similarly, improved knowledge of how the brain processes information after injury and recovers over time is providing new perspectives on what can be achieved through rehabilitation. Stroke Rehabilitation explores the potential to shape and maximize neural plastic changes in the brain after stroke from a multimodal perspective. Active skill based learning is identified as a central element of a restorative approach to rehabilitation. The evidence behind core learning principles as well as specific learning strategies that have been applied to retrain lost functions of movement, sensation, cognition and language are also discussed. Current interventions are evaluated relative to this knowledge base and examples are given of how active learning principles have been successfully applied in specific interventions. The benefits and evidence behind enriched environments is reviewed with examples of potential application in stroke rehabilitation. The capacity of adjunctive therapies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, to modulate receptivity of the damaged brain to benefit from behavioral interventions is also discussed in the context of this multimodal approach. Focusing on new insights from neuroscience and imaging, the book explores the potential to tailor interventions to the individual based on viable brain networks.

A full-color neuroscience text that skillfully integrates neuromuscular skeletal content Covers both pediatric and adult issues Beautiful full-color presentation with numerous images Neurorehabilitation in Physical Therapy delivers comprehensive coverage of the structure and function of the human nervous system. It also discusses normal motor development and motor control, as well as common treatment techniques in physical therapy. In order to be engaging to students, cases open each chapter, with questions about those cases appearing throughout the chapter. The text includes numerous tables, flow charts, illustrations, and multiple-choice board-style review questions and is enhanced by a roster of world-renowned clinical contributors.

Every year, an estimated 1.7 million Americans sustain brain injury. Long-term disabilities impact nearly half of moderate brain injury survivors and nearly 50,000 of these cases result in death. Brain Neurotrauma: Molecular, Neuropsychological, and Rehabilitation Aspects provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account on the latest developments in the area of neurotrauma, including brain injury pathophysiology, biomarker research, experimental models of CNS injury, diagnostic methods, and neurotherapeutic interventions as well as neurorehabilitation strategies in the field of neurotraum research. The book includes several sections on neurotrauma mechanisms, biomarker discovery, neurocognitive/neurobehavioral deficits, and neurorehabilitation and treatment approaches. It also contains a section devoted to models of mild CNS injury, including blast and sport-related injuries. Over the last decade, the field of neurotrauma has witnessed significant advances, especially at the molecular, cellular, and behavioral levels. This progress is largely due to the introduction of novel techniques, as well as the development of new animal models of central nervous system (CNS) injury. This book, with its diverse coherent content, gives you insight into the diverse and heterogeneous aspects of CNS pathology and/or rehabilitation needs.

Volume 1 of the Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation covers the basic sciences relevant to recovery of function following injury to the nervous system.