Can the brain recover function many years after a neurological injury? Whether the injury is from a stroke, neurodegeneration, or traumatic (TBI), the short answer is YES!
Research Roundup
Here is some research to show neuroplasticity years following neurological conditions:
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Clark Elliott (2017) Oxford, England. Functional Neurology, Rehabilitation, and Ergonomics, Vol. 7, The Brain Is Primarily A Visual-Spatial Processing Device: Altering Visual-Spatial Cognitive Processing Via Retinal Stimulation Can Treat Movement Disorders
- “This paper presents portions of a ten-year self-reporting case study relative to movement, based on my book, “The Ghost In My Brain.” As an artificial intelligence and cognitive science professor I took 1200 pages of detailed notes over the course of eight years, of the effects of mTBI, with no expectation of recovery. Symptoms included many deficits in movement: significant and varied balance difficulties; loss of where the body ends yielding, e.g., difficulty passing through doorways; loss of spatial relationships; catatonia, including progressive inability to initiate motion under brain stress; ability to dance but not walk; visually guiding the hands toward objects; seizures; loss of concepts such as “center” making it hard, e.g., to put keys in locks; inability to turn right; the “dolly zoom effect” when walking toward a distant goal; and so on. A clear pattern arises: when the mind cannot conceive spatial relationships, the body will not move. During eight years that included MRI, CT scan, neurocognitive testing, etc., medical science was consistent in the opinion that I would never improve and should learn to live with my symptoms. After neurodevelopmental optometric treatment via retinal stimulation and cognitive restructuring using visual puzzles, all cognitive and movement abnormalities were resolved within two years.
… The case was not of much academic interest until my surprising full recovery eight years after the original incident.”
- “This paper presents portions of a ten-year self-reporting case study relative to movement, based on my book, “The Ghost In My Brain.” As an artificial intelligence and cognitive science professor I took 1200 pages of detailed notes over the course of eight years, of the effects of mTBI, with no expectation of recovery. Symptoms included many deficits in movement: significant and varied balance difficulties; loss of where the body ends yielding, e.g., difficulty passing through doorways; loss of spatial relationships; catatonia, including progressive inability to initiate motion under brain stress; ability to dance but not walk; visually guiding the hands toward objects; seizures; loss of concepts such as “center” making it hard, e.g., to put keys in locks; inability to turn right; the “dolly zoom effect” when walking toward a distant goal; and so on. A clear pattern arises: when the mind cannot conceive spatial relationships, the body will not move. During eight years that included MRI, CT scan, neurocognitive testing, etc., medical science was consistent in the opinion that I would never improve and should learn to live with my symptoms. After neurodevelopmental optometric treatment via retinal stimulation and cognitive restructuring using visual puzzles, all cognitive and movement abnormalities were resolved within two years.
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Chen, H., Epstein, J. and Stern, E. (2010), Neural Plasticity After Acquired Brain Injury: Evidence from Functional Neuroimaging. PM&R, 2: S306-S312.
- Functional imaging studies on the effects of constraint‐induced movement therapy show treatment‐associated activation increases in the ipsilesional primary motor cortex, dorsal premotor cortex, and SMA during affected hand movement months to years after stroke. A comparable study on subjects with TBI produced similar results.”
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, , , , . Long‐term cognitive outcome in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury: A meta‐analysis examining timed and untimed tests at 1 and 4.5 or more years after injury. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2001; 89: S69–S76.
- “Improved motor behavior, accompanied by reorganization of cortical function, occurs even months or years after a patient has reached the plateau that defined spontaneous recovery after stroke.”
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Kihwan Han, Sandra B. Chapman, Daniel C. Krawczyk, Neuroplasticity of cognitive control networks following cognitive training for chronic traumatic brain injury, NeuroImage: Clinical, Volume 18, 2018, Pages 262-278,
- “Fifty-six individuals with chronic mild TBI (9 years post-injury on average) were randomized into either a strategy-based cognitive training group (N = 26) or a knowledge-based training group (active control condition; N = 30) for 8 weeks. We acquired a total of 109 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from 45 individuals before training, immediately post-training, and 3 months post-training. Relative to the controls, the strategy-based cognitive training group showed monotonic increases in connectivity in two cognitive control networks (i.e., cingulo-opercular and fronto-parietal networks) across time points in multiple brain regions (pvoxel < 0.001, pcluster < 0.05). ”
- This means that connective plasticity was observed with cognitive training even at 9 years post TBI.
- “Fifty-six individuals with chronic mild TBI (9 years post-injury on average) were randomized into either a strategy-based cognitive training group (N = 26) or a knowledge-based training group (active control condition; N = 30) for 8 weeks. We acquired a total of 109 resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from 45 individuals before training, immediately post-training, and 3 months post-training. Relative to the controls, the strategy-based cognitive training group showed monotonic increases in connectivity in two cognitive control networks (i.e., cingulo-opercular and fronto-parietal networks) across time points in multiple brain regions (pvoxel < 0.001, pcluster < 0.05). ”
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Ciuffreda, KJ, Rutner, D, Kapoor, N, Suchoff, IB, Craig, S, Han, ME. Vision therapy for oculomotor dysfunctions in acquired brain injury: a retrospective analysis. Optometry. 2008;79(1):18-22.
- “CONCLUSION: Nearly all patients in the current clinic sample exhibited either complete or marked reduction in their oculomotor-based symptoms and improvement in related clinical signs, with maintenance of the symptom reduction and sign improvements at the 2- to 3-month follow-up. These findings show the efficacy of optometric vision therapy for a range of oculomotor abnormalities in the primarily adult, mild brain-injured population. Furthermore, it shows considerable residual neural plasticity despite the presence of documented brain injury.”
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