Written by Heather McCurdy, M.S., CCC-SLP, CBIS
Heather provides in home speech therapy services in Northwest IN, and virtual services for the IN residents.
If you’ve had a traumatic brain injury (TBI, mTBI) or acquired brain injury (ABI) (stroke, infection disease, seizures, tumors, neurotoxic poisoning), your brain was altered. You may be wondering if your brain has the ability to change. I am here to tell you– your brain was uniquely created to adapt and change EVEN in the face of horrible accidents; it’s neuroplastic. This means your brain can change structure and function; it can reorganize.
Here are some principles of neuroplasticity:
Use it or lose it. When you don’t use neural pathways or connections in your brain, those neural pathways can be “lost.”
Example: if you learned a foreign language in high school and forgot the majority of the content, it’s probably because you aren’t using that foreign language!
Use it and improve it. Practice often.
Example: continuing on with the foreign language example, the more often I use my foreign language, the stronger those neural pathways become.
Specificity. Therapy activities need to target your brain in a specific way– the activities that are completed in therapy matter!
Salience matters. Therapeutic activities must be meaningful to you; this is individual.
Example: using family photos to work on a task instead of stock photos or non-meaningful photos. Or applying a specific memory strategy to help you avoid repeating yourself in conversation (again) instead of completing workbook pages.
Transference. When you target one skill, it can improve another skill.
Example: when we work on attention, it can also help improve short-term memory.
Interference. Sometimes targeting one area can prevent skills from improving in another area. Don’t worry, we will work around this!
Time matters. The brain can take varying amounts of time to change, however, the earlier treatment is obtained, the better! Research proves that the earlier treatment is initiated, the better the prognosis.
Age matters – Younger brains are more plastic, however, older individuals brains can continue to change and adapt after TBI or ABI.
Repetition matters. Consistency of stimulus is important! This may mean more frequent therapy sessions to make therapy more effective or it may mean the same or similar tasks.
Intensity matters. This may mean an activity is completed numerous times or therapy is recommended frequently throughout the week to challenge your brain to change.
Now that you’re aware your brain CAN change, it’s time to schedule an appointment to best stimulate your brain to do just that!
Heather McCurdy is the owner and speech-language pathologist (SLP) at Mindful Speech Therapy. She is particularly passionate about those who sustain traumatic brain injuries and strives to provide functional, meaningful and relevant treatment.
Comments