Memory After TBI

                Problems with memory are a very common problem for people who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  A lot of people think of memory as being “good or bad”, but it is a lot more complicated then that.  There are a couple different types of memory I’m going to explain here.

                To start things off, I’d like to say that everybody has memory for taste and smell.  The majority of people know the taste of sugar and the smell of a rose.  More importantly there are visual memory and hearing memory.  Visual memory is what we see; it allows us to remember where we have been, where you’ve put something, or what you’re eating.  Visual memory is stored in the right hemisphere of the brain.  We have a special part in our brain for verbal or hearing memory.  This is stored in the left hemisphere of the brain. The hearing part helps a person remember what they have read because things we’ve read translate into language.

                Next, I’d like to talk about immediate memory and short-term memory.  Immediate memory doesn’t last to long. It might last just for a couple minutes.  You use immediate memory when a school teacher tells you a math problem and you have to remember it long enough to write it down immediately.  When a person has a head injury their immediate memory might not be affected, but most head injured people experience problems with short-term memory.   Immediate memory is something that is quickly “spit back”, but short-term memory is information remembered after 30 minutes. An example would be if the teacher said the math problem and it wasn’t written down, then the teacher asks if anybody remembered the math problem 30 minutes later. I would have difficulties remembering it, as would most people with brain injuries.  Short-term memory is what affects a lot of brain injured individuals.

                The last type of memory I’m going to talk about is long-term memory.  Long-term memory is information that is recalled after a day, a couple weeks, or even 15 years.  Long-term memory is the least effected by head injuries.  In fact, a lot of people with head injuries will say, I can tell you what important thing I did 15 years ago, but I have trouble remembering what I just did 15 minutes ago.

                Information flows in through the middle of our brain and branches out like branches on a tree.  Before the information heads off to the different areas of our brain, it is channeled and filtered by a system.  When the brain is injured, the middle areas that information passes through get pressed on because of swelling. The middle area of the brain is also resting on a bone in the skull.  Forward and backward movement of the brain in an accident can cause the middle areas to be ripped or scraped.

                What can we do to help us remember stuff?  It helps to get organized. For example, always put money in the same place.  This way the second you have to grab some extra cash, you know right where to look. Another way which will help, and I do it a lot, is to write things down.  I write down the groceries I need to buy throughout the week, this way when the day comes that I do my grocery shopping, I have my entire list right at hand. I do this because there is no way I could possibly remember it all.