Brain injury symptoms
 Brain injury symptoms can be caused by head injury, toxicity, or
emotional trauma.
The brain is delicate and can be injured more easily than most people realize. It does not take much to cause
subtle and not-so-subtle brain injury symptoms.
Cerebral Cortex
Frontal Lobe: most anterior, right under the forehead
Functions of the cerebral cortex:
- How we know what we are doing within our environment (consciousness)
- How we initiate activity in response to our environment
- Judgments we make about what occurs in our daily activities
- Controls emotional response
- Controls expressive language
- Assigns meaning to the words we use
- Involves word associations
- Memory for habits and motor activities
Brain injury symptoms of the cerebral cortex can include:
- Loss of simple movement of various body parts (paralysis)
- Inability to plan a sequence of complex movements needed to complete multi-step tasks, such as making
coffee (sequencing)
- Loss of spontaneity in interacting with others
- Loss of flexibility in thinking
- Persistence of a single thought (preservation)
- Inability to focus on task (attending)
- Mood changes (emotionally labile)
- Changes in social behavior
- Changes in personality
- Difficulty with problem solving
- Inability to express language (Broca's Aphasia)
Parietal Lobe: near the back and top of the head
Functions of the parietal lobe
- Location for visual attention and touch perception
- Goal-directed, voluntary movements
- Manipulation of objects
- Integration of different senses that allows for understanding a single concept
Brain injury symptoms of the parietal lobe can include:
- Inability to attend to more than one object at a time
- Inability to name an object (anomia)
- Inability to locate the words for writing (agraphia)
- Problems with reading (alexia)
- Difficulty with drawing objects
- Difficulty in distinguishing left from right
- Difficulty with doing mathematics (dyscalculia)
- Lack of awareness of certain body parts and/or surrounding space (apraxia) that leads to difficulties in self-care
- Inability to focus visual attention
- Difficulties with eye and hand coordination
Occipital Lobes: most posterior, at the back of the head
Function of occipital lobes: Vision
Brain injury symptoms of the occipital lobes can include:
- Defects in vision (visual field cuts)
- Difficulty with locating objects in environment
- Difficulty with identifying colors (color agnosia)
- Production of hallucinations
- Visual illusions - inaccurately seeing objects
- Word blindness - inability to recognize words
- Difficulty in recognizing drawn objects
- Inability to recognize the movement of an object (movement agnosia)
- Difficulties with reading and writing
Temporal Lobes: side of head above ears
Functions of the temporal lobes:
- Hearing ability
- Memory acquisition
- Some visual perceptions
- Categorization of objects
Brain injury symptoms of the temporal lobes can include:
- Difficulty in recognizing faces (prosopagnosia)
- Difficulty in understanding spoken words (wernicke's aphasia)
- Disturbance with selective attention to what we see and hear
- Difficulty with identification of, and verbalization about objects
- Short-term memory loss
- Interference with long-term memory
- Increased or decreased interest in sexual behavior
- Inability to categorize objects (categorization)
- Right lobe damage can cause persistent talking
- Increased aggressive behavior
Brain Stem: deep in the brain - leads to the spinal cord
Functions of the brain stem:
Brain injury symptoms of the brain stem can include:
- Decreased vital capacity in breathing, important for speech
- Swallowing food and water (dysphagia)
- Difficulty with organization/perception of the environment
- Problems with balance and movement
- Dizziness and nausea (vertigo)
- Sleeping difficulties (insomnia, sleep apnea)
Cerebellum: located at the base of the skull
Functions of the cerebellum:
- Coordination of voluntary movement
- Balance and equilibrium
- Some memory for reflex motor acts
Brain injury symptoms of the cerebellum can include:
- Loss of ability to coordinate fine movements
- Inability to reach out and grab objects
- Tremors
- Dizziness (vertigo)
- Slurred Speech (scanning speech)
- Inability to make rapid movements
Brain injury symptoms can be characterized as brain balance
problems.
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