- abstract reasoning: involves analysis of information and solving problems on a complex level
- abulic: lack of drive/ motivation
- acalculia: difficulty with performing simple mathematical tasks
- agnosia: loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells. However, the specific sense is not defect
- agraphia: loss in the ability to write
- akinetic: absence, loss, or impairment of the power of voluntary movement
- anomia: loss of words; difficulty with word finding
- anosodiaphonia: absence of emotional distress in relation to brain injury/ emotional indifference
- anosognosia: refers to individuals with brain injury who may not recognize the existence of their deficit
- anterograde amnesia: difficulty learning/ remembering new information post-injury
- apathy: lack of interest or concern
- aphasia: An acquired language disorder, which results in naming difficulties, and language comprehension and/or production impairments. The disrupted language cannot be explained by dementia, sensory loss or motor dysfunction
- ataxic dysarthria: refers to speech, which may sound imprecise, distorted, with equal and excess stress. Individuals may also experience difficulty with producing multisyllabic words.
- ataxic gate: an unsteady, uncoordinated walk, with a wide base and the feet thrown out
- axon: the projections of the brains nerve cells that attach to other nerve cells
- blind spots: a part of the field of vision is not perceived
- cerebrovascular accident: another term for stroke, which refers to an interruption of blood flow to an area of the brain
- coma: unawareness of the self and the environment and inability to sense or respond to bodily or environmental needs
- concrete reasoning: the ability to analyze information and solve problems on a literal level
- congenital: present from birth
- contralateral neglect: it is defined by the inability of a person to process and perceive stimuli on one side of the body or environment that is not due to a lack of sensation, but related to neurological damage
- contrecoup lesion: trauma at sites opposite the point of impact
- convergent reasoning: involves the analysis of various factors and then, arriving at a solution
- corpus callosum: a flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex at the longitudinal fissure and connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres
- coup lesion: trauma occurring at the site of impact
- declarative memory: involves the factual information about the world that you learned in class, from media, etc. (e.g., recalling dates from history class)
- deductive reasoning: involves the usage of top down logic and is a logical process in which a
conclusion drawn from a set of premises (ex: all swans are black. Peter is a swan-> he must be black)
- degenerative disease: a gradually deteriorating disease
- divergent reasoning: the ability to generate multiple solutions to problems
- dorsolateral syndrome: slowness, perseveration, a lack of initiation and a lack of sustained attention along with coma
- dysmetria: lack of coordination of movement with either undershoot or overshoot of intended position with the hand, arm, or leg
- episodic memory: memory for events, autobiographical memory
- explicit memory: it is a conscious recollection of performing a task
- expressive language: refers to the production of language
- global amnesia: the ability to remember/ learn new information is impaired across all types of material (verbal and non-verbal)
- material-specific global amnesia: ability to remember/ learn new information is limited to specific types of information (e.g. nonverbal such as faces)
- hematoma: a localized collection of blood outside the blood vessels
- homonymous hemianopsia: visual field loss on the same side of
both eyes. It occurs because the right half of the brain
has visual pathways for the left hemifield of both eyes, and the left half of
the brain has visual pathways for the right hemifield of both eyes
- hypotonia: normal muscle tension is decreased and the muscles become flaccid and weak
- immediate memory: it refers to memorizing information for a few seconds
- implicit memory: related to amnesia and refers to retention of means of performing a task in the absence of conscious recollection; this system seems to be preserved in amnesia (compared to explicit) and is used for rehabilitation
- incoordination: people walk as if they are drunk, and the body wavers toward the side of the lesion
- inductive reasoning: details leading to the gestalt (e.g., city planning)
- insight: the capacity to gain an accurate and deep
intuitive understanding of a person or thing
- insult: an event or occurrence that causes damage to a tissue or organ
- intention tremor: tremor with intended movement, worsens as get closer to target
- intonation: the rise and fall of a voice while speaking
- coup injury: In head injury, a coup injury occurs at the site of impact with an object
- judgment: a decision that is based on careful thought
- lability: a condition characterized by frequent mood changes and emotional reactions
- lethargy: lack of energy and enthusiasm
- limb ataxia: poor coordination and unsteadiness due to the brain's failure to regulate the body's posture and regulate the strength and direction of limb movements
- long-term memory: refers to information that is remembered after about 20 minutes or more following the presention; it refers to the ability to memorize, store and remember over longer periods of time
- loss of consciousness: loss of the ability to perceive and respond
- minimally conscious state (MCS): unlike a persistent vegetative state, patients with MCS have partial preservation of conscious awareness
- nystagmus: rapid, involuntary movement of the eyes
- orbitofrontal syndrome:
- pathophysiological: the functional changes associated with a disease
- perseveration: uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury
- persistent vegetative state: a clinical condition of complete unawareness of the self and the environment, accompanied by sleep-wake cycles, with either complete or partial preservation of hypothalamic and brain-stem autonomic functions
- post-traumatic amnesia (PTA)- period of time from point of injury until continuous memory (orientation questions can be answered) is restored; it is a confusional state; prognostically one hour or less = good recovery; 24 hours or more = probable moderate disability
- procedural memory: refers to memory for motor sequences, habits and reflexes (e.g., riding a bicycle)
- prospective memory: “remembering to remember”; it involves the ability to remember to do something at some future time (e.g., showing up for a doctor’s appointment)
- reasoning: drawing inferences or conclusions from known or assumed facts
- receptive language: comprehension of language (the meaning of the spoken/ written words)
- remote memory: involves your own biographical history or things that you have experienced prior to the injury, in the distant past
- retrograde amnesia: forgetting from the point of injury backwards in time. Thus, new memories can still be created, but individuals may have difficulty remembering events/ facts that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia. It is possible that retrograde amnesia does not occur without some degree of anterograde amnes
- semantic memory: refers to conceptual memory, in particular word meanings such as identifying words within a category
- short-term memory: a limited-capacity system that holds up to seven chunks of information and last for up to approximately 20 minutes
- speech: refers to the articulation of words (preciseness of spoken words)
- tangential: train of thought of speaker wanders and shows lack of focus
- vegetative state: lasting longer than one month
- ventricles: The ventricles of the brain are a communicating network of cavities filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
- verbose: wordy
- working memory: it provides temporary storage and manipulation of information in order to perform complex cognitive tasks such as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning (e.g., listening to a sequence of numbers and then, repeating it backwards)