California TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury Attorneys
Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

While the profile of motor problems varies from individual to individual, it is not uncommon to see problems in basic motor functions such as equilibrium, range of motion, abnormal or involuntary movements, primitive reflexes, and problems with sitting, kneeling, standing, walking or running. These problems may be more impaired during the early phase of the severe traumatic brain injury.

Of course, where the severity of brain injury or other insult has been significant enough to impose paraplegia and/or quadriplegia (with or without spasticity), entirely different motor function problems arise.

Individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury often experience decreased dexterity, decreased manual speed and increased reaction time, tremors, hemiparesis, decreased range of motion and contractures.

A wide variety of rehabilitative care is usually employed over the course of the patient´s life in order to attempt to improve motor function.

Without question, the most devastating permanent disorder associated with severe traumatic brain injury is that of executive dysfunction, which involves an individual´s capacity for self control, regulation, self-direction, planning, organization, and self determination.

Frontal lobe functions as "executive" abilities. These can be summarized as capabilities necessary for goal formation, planning and organization, decision-making, and monitoring and altering behavior on the basis of performance. Where dysfunction occurs in executive abilities, extreme problems result. Frontal lobe functions include drive, mood, emotion, and personality. The frontal lobes are crucial for monitoring behavior.

Deficits associated with frontal lobe injury are often the most severe as they interfere with the ability to fluently utilize knowledge, appropriately or adaptively. Many behavioral problems seen in patients sustaining executive dysfunction are apparent to all. Among them are signs of faulty capacity for self control or self-direction, including emotional lability or flattening, a quickness to anger, a tendency to irritability and excitability, impulsivity, erratic carelessness, rigidity, and difficulty in making shifts in attention and ongoing behavior. Deficits associated with frontal lobe injury prohibit a person from engaging in independent behavior. Such individuals must live in a structured environment, and often times need 24/7 attendant care.

Deficits in executive function, however, are often much more insidious, and less apparent to the untrained individual. In discussing these deficits, noted neuropsychologist, Muriel D. Lezak states as follows:

Other defects in executive functions, however, are not so obvious. The problems they occasion may be missed or not recognized as neuropsychological by examiners who see patients only in the well-structured in-patient and clinic settings in which psychiatry and neurology patients are ordinarily observed. Perhaps the most serious of these problems, from a psychosocial standpoint, are impaired capacity to initiate activity, decreased or absent motivation (anergia), and defects in planning and carrying out the activity sequences that make up goal directed behaviors. Patients without significant impairment of receptive or expressive functions who suffer primarily from these kinds of control defects are often mistakenly judged to be malingering, lazy or spoiled, psychiatrically disturbed, or--if this kind of defect appears following a legally compensable brain injury--exhibiting a "compensation neurosis" that some interested persons may believe will disappear when the patient´s legal claim has been settled.

Individuals sustaining executive dysfunction through severe traumatic brain injury are often inert. It is not that they are physically incapable of performing certain tasks; it is instead the nature of the brain injury that stops them from performing the task.

Perseveration is also a key and frequently exhibited trait of executive dysfunction. One needs only think of a horse with blinders on. The patient demonstrating perseveration will not change course once the course has been "started". Thus, executive dysfunction does include diminished cognitive abilities because even though the patient may possess information needed to resolve a problem, the patient´s perseveration will stop them from using such information unless prodded or queued.

Meta-cognition, or the awareness to be able to think about oneself is compromised through frontal lobe injury. Insight and empathy are naturally compromised when self-awareness dissipates. Think about it in its most simplistic sense, a patient will likely not accept the need for rehabilitation without maintaining a degree of self awareness.

Individuals sustaining executive dysfunction have processing speed problems and difficulty dealing with competing sources of information. They may be subject to "overload" in a stimuli bound environment. The greater these problems, the more socially dependent they become.

Deficits in attention and memory are virtually always seen in individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury. These problems generally consist of deficits in the retrieval and acquisition of information. Short-term memory is more likely to be affected than long-term memory. Name retrieval-both new names and old names-is a common complaint of individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury.

Deficits in the area of attention and memory are especially problematic when dealing with the skill sets necessary in both the social and vocational arenas. Simply put, where individuals are unable to remember events occurring only an hour before, all the compensatory tools in the world will not resolve the deficit. Work and social interaction become impossible.

Working memory deficits are also apparent when victims of severe traumatic brain injury attempt multitasking. While most survivors of severe traumatic brain injury will never be cleared to return to driving an automobile, working memory deficits would be the primary consideration weighing against such a return. Operation of an automobile requires clear processing of multiple stimuli under considerable time pressure.

"Aphasia", or the lack of ability to understand speech, is present in a small percentage of individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury. These individuals have been estimated as being approximately 2% of the severe traumatic brain injury population, and generally consist of individuals having sustained focal lesions.

As indicated above, word finding problems are much more common in patients having sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. Communication is often slowed as the patient searches for an appropriate word. A lack of logical content resulting from cognitive deficits and executive dysfunction is likewise often seen.

Another problem commonly encountered in individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury results where executive dysfunction renders the individual "concrete". The patient, in essence, is incapable of abstract thought, and can only think in extremely concrete terms. Verbal fluency is best limited by capability of thought. Obviously, where confusion, disorientation and distractibility exist, verbal retrieval and communication will be limited.

"Anosmia", or a decrease in the sense of smell and taste may also result from frontal lobe damage. Due to the fact that the olfactory nerves are located on the bottom of the frontal lobes, such nerves are susceptible to trauma even in mild cases of command brain injury. Cranial nerve number one should be tested in individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury.

In virtually every case of severe traumatic brain injury, there is a risk of the patient developing post-traumatic epilepsy. In fact, the risk of developing epilepsy following a penetrating head wound has been reported in excess of 58%. Statistics are expected to become even more refined as troops are examined returning from the Gulf, the Iraqi, and the Afghanistan conflicts. Post-traumatic epilepsy include seizures developing after TBI that cannot be attributed to anything other than the traumatic brain injury. In general, where there is a focal lesion, there is an increased risk of post-traumatic epilepsy. Where severe traumatic brain injury occurs, the risk of seizure will remain for decades. Where a seizure occurs within days of insult, the risk of development of seizure disorder is greater. However, seizure may not occur following severe traumatic brain injury for 10 years or more.

Depending on the focal nature of the injury, temporal lobe epilepsy may likewise develop. These are seen as unusual electrical bursts emanating from the temporal lobes themselves. Depression is reported frequently in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. In fact, personality disorders are much more common among seizure patients and those specifically sustaining temporal lobe epilepsy have been found to display excessive verbal output, circumstantial thinking, and altered sexuality.

Some of the necessary life-saving surgery, including craniectomy, involving decompression and evacuation, carry risks of seizure. Clearly, however, the risk of seizure following such life-saving procedure is outweighed by the benefit of the procedure itself.

An ongoing controversy in epilepsy is whether a progressive cognitive decline occurs as a result of the seizures themselves. Suffice it to say, there are studies indicating that seizures themselves cause such a decline.

Lastly, pseudo-seizures can, and often do, result in individuals sustaining severe traumatic brain injury. Although not true "seizures" (wherein abnormal electrical activity can be seen on EEG), they are paroxysmal events which resemble seizures. Most occur with depression, anxiety disorder, conversion disorder, or schizophrenia. However, the literature would indicate that seizures and pseudo-seizures can coexist in up to 20% of the cases. Pseudo-seizures are extremely revealed to the individual experiencing same, and are not capable of intentional invocation. Neuropsychological testing may be helpful in differentiating pseudo-seizure patients from patients with epilepsy.

Though the civil defense bar would like to clearly differentiate between organic brain injury and emotional or psychiatric disorders, the fact remains that often times they can coexist. It makes sense. Where an individual has sustained an organic brain injury, and has enough self-awareness to recognize deficits, why wouldn´t that individual become depressed?

Conversely, we must remember that traumatic brain injury injures the brain they that an individual already had. If that individual was depressed prior to the resulting traumatic brain injury, why wouldn´t that depression become exacerbated by the recognition of organic brain injury and its resulting limitations?

The simple fact remains that many different kinds of emotional alterations take place as a result of traumatic brain injury. Depression, anxiety, quickness to anger, as well as apathetic behavior, and non-initiating patterns of conduct are often seen. In severe brain injury, more often than not there is an organic based etiology. Increased rates of personality disorder involving sensitive-compulsive individuals are often times seen. Social isolation is common. Many patients want nothing more than to sit in a dark room staring at a TV for hours on end.

Where trauma is significant enough to result in a severe traumatic brain injury, most patients will have sustained injury (secondarily to other areas of their body) resulting either from the traumatic brain injury or the trauma itself. These injuries can be as broad and varied as the human body itself. Common injuries include vestibular problems as well as ophthalmic injuries.