ABSTRACT

Many rehabilitation practitioners are now discovering that learning and behavioral principles may be applied to the challenge presented by Cognitive rehabilitation. In Functional Activities training, little emphasis is placed on classroom therapies. The executive functions of the human brain are mostly, although not exclusively, associated with the frontal lobes, areas which are easily damaged in traumatic brain injury. Teaching daily living skills, educational information and other such skills is much needed with many patients, but the activities are not Cognitive Rehabilitation. Functional analyses of behavioral deficits were performed by an evaluation team; training strategies were applied, and behavioral interventions validated. A canvassing of rehabilitation professionals at a major head-injury conference suggested that a significant number of rehabilitation therapists continue to view memory deficits as the most crippling of the cognitive dysfunctions. The barriers to rehabilitation have often been identified which, in reality, are not the most formidable obstacles encountered.