How Concussion Rehabilitation Can Treat Cognitive Abilities

The effects of concussion can have long-lasting impacts, especially on your cognition. 

Physical symptoms like headaches, balance problems, dizziness, and nausea are the most common symptoms of this brain trauma injury. 

Your cognitive abilities may also be impacted after a concussion. For example, you may notice changes in your attention span, memory, and thinking speed. 

The Sports Medicine team at Princeton Sports and Family Medicine in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, can help. This month, we’ll focus on how we treat changes to cognitive abilities. 

When thinking becomes an effort

Recognizing the cognitive effects of concussion can be challenging, since observation and reasoning skills may be impaired, it makes it difficult to trust your perceptions of yourself and the world. 

Concentrating on a single task becomes difficult, and multitasking may feel impossible. Even chores and jobs you’ve handled with ease may become arduous and taxing. You may feel fatigued in general or after social interactions.

You may not be able to recall familiar terms, memories may become lost or vague, and retaining new information could become difficult. You may struggle to follow and understand conversations. 

Concussion rehabilitation for cognition

Every traumatic brain injury has unique elements, so any rehabilitation program requires an evaluation of the patterns and symptoms created by your concussion. This allows for the development of a treatment strategy and goal setting. 

Depending on your personal cognitive challenges, rehab may focus on types of training, including: 

• Functional activities: everyday life skills
• Process training: for recovery of problem-solving abilities
• Strategy training: to develop compensatory skills

Your rehabilitative training goals may be compensatory or restorative in nature, depending on your needs and concussion symptoms. 

Compensatory goals focus on workarounds for lost capabilities, while restorative goals target the recovery of some level of past abilities. Each strategy provides results and each concussion may present differently and require individualized care. 

Generally, compensatory goals tend to solve specific problems or tasks. It’s typical for concussion rehab to use both strategies.

Lost cognitive skills can be difficult to handle, but the daily problems raised by these deficits are real. Here at PSFM, we will develop a personalized treatment plan that supports your unique needs after a concussion injury. 

Contact Princeton Sports and Family Medicine after a concussion. Book an appointment with our Lawrenceville office by phone or online today.