Category Archives: concussion

Article Summary: The brain damage sustained after a concussion is not always immediately apparent…and the effects can be long lasting A blow to the head that knocks a person unconscious can result in widespread loss of brain tissue …and this is why some people who suffer head injuries are never quite the same.

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“Compare it (your head) to a jelly in a bowl. The bowl is the skull – a strong, protective container – and the jelly (the brain) is nestled within. The skull is able to withstand many types of blows; but the brain is vulnerable to sudden swirling or rotating movements. Shake the bowl and see what happens to the jelly.”

– Don Mackie, Emergency Specialist, Hutt Hospital, Wellington, New Zealand

Different mental abilities are located in different parts of the brain, so a head injury can damage some, but not necessarily all, skills such as speed of thought, memory, understanding, concentration, solving problems and using language. The cognitive effects of a brain injury affect the way a person thinks, learns and remembers. Brain damage leads to difficulty in making decisions, processing information quickly, problem solving and especially coming up with different solutions in a pressured environment of stress. (So I most like writing and “dealing with people” in a relaxed environment!).

The more severe the injury, the more brain tissue is lost. “There is more damage and it is more widespread than we had expected,” said Dr Brian Levine of the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto, whose new study appears in the journal ‘Neurology’. Dr Levine studied brain scans taken from 69 traumatic brain injury patients whose head injuries ranged from mild to moderate or severe. Canadian researchers ran a computer analysis of these images and found that even patients with mild brain injuries with no apparent scarring had less brain volume. “When you have a blow to the head, it causes a neuro-chemical reaction in the brain cells that leads to cell death,” Dr Levine said. “The more cells that die, the less tissue you have. The amount of tissue loss seems to be related to the severity of the injury – how long the person was knocked out.”

Brain injury may prompt one area of the brain to be “reassigned” and take over the function of another. Professor Richard Faull from the University of Auckland (New Zealand ) explains simply: “Think of it as a sort of emergency breakdown service (‘We Fix Neurons — Fast!’). It is literally like a little highway; but instead of going directly from Auckland to Wellington, it goes to Whangarei, to Taranaki, then to Wellington! The route is highly distorted and there may be all sorts of reasons for that.”
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