Abstract for presentation at 6th World Congress on Brain Injury

Attention and memory problems are among the deficits most likely to appear after a severe traumatic brain injury. Various approaches to neuropsychological rehabilitation are described in the literature. The rehabilitation program proposed in the present paper is based primarily on a hierarchal organization model of cerebral functioning, specifically the model developed by Luria (1973). According to Luria’s model, it is vital that the basic cognitive processes function properly before higher processes can be rehabilitated. Selective attention, alternate attention and working memory are the main functions targeted by the program, using both auditory and visual material based on, respectively, the three-dimensional model developed by Coren et al. (1994) and the model designed by Baddeley (1986). The rehabilitation program was developed for a 19-year-old male who had been involved in a motorcycle accident and had sustained severe traumatic brain injury. The program used an AAA-B-AAA. experimental scheme, the letter A representing pre- and post-tests and the letter B corresponding to application of the rehabilitation program. The total duration of the program was 12 hours, i.e. two hours a week over a six-week period. The patient was then re-evaluated using the same tests in order to measure the efficacy of the program. The rehabilitation task carried out led to numerous highly conclusive results. Improvements deemed to be satisfactory were observed for the following tests: complex auditory attention, complex visual attention, selective auditory attention, visual cancellation and mental control.