Citation

Frye CA, Hardy A, Lifrak M (2018) Cognitive Rehabilitation Improves Performance of Individuals with Mild to Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury: A Review of Comprehensive Neuropsychological Services as a Model Approach. Int J Brain Disord Treat 4:025. doi.org/10.23937/2469-5866/1410025

Copyright

© 2018 Frye CA, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

REVIEW ARTICLE | OPEN ACCESS DOI: 10.23937/2469-5866/1410025

Cognitive Rehabilitation Improves Performance of Individuals with Mild to Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury: A Review of Comprehensive Neuropsychological Services as a Model Approach

Cheryl A Frye1,2,3,4,5*, Anton Hardy5,6, and Maria Lifrak5,7

1Department of Psychology, The University at Albany, USA

2Biological Sciences, The University at Albany, USA

3Centers for Neuroscience, The University at Albany, USA

4Life Sciences Research, The University at Albany, USA

5Comprehensive Neuropsychological Services, State University of New York, USA

6Veteran's Affairs Support Services, State University of New York, Saratoga, USA

7Department of Counseling Psychology, The University at Albany, USA

Abstract

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) can result in physical, cognitive and emotional symptoms and the constellation of sequelae that can linger for years and is termed post-concussion syndrome (PCS). For these ailments, therapy is available to help individuals recover; however, it is controversial whether cognitive rehabilitation can improve or forestall lost or damaged abilities. It is important to clarify this because insurances companies can be reluctant to pay for this treatment. To test the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation, 6 women with mild traumatic brain injury consented to participate in this experiment. Each person was administered attention processing training, number search, visual memory and find the shape tasks, over a period of 4.4-6.8 months and the latencies and accuracies for each participant on each trial was measured. There was a significant reduction in latencies and improvements in accuracy from before training to after training with an effect size of greater than 2.0. Together, these data show that 6 months of cognitive rehabilitation significantly and robustly improved performance in all patients.