After suffering a traumatic brain injury, victims sometimes find that the recovery process comes to a halt. Their injuries have not fully healed. They’re still dealing with significant symptoms, which could include mood swings, personality changes, cognitive difficulties, a lack of language or motor skills and much else. The specific symptoms depend on the part of the brain that was injured.
But why didn’t the healing continue? They got medical treatment and did see improvement at the beginning. Why would that healing and improvement process end before the brain is completely healed?
Creating new connections
To heal, the brain typically looks for new connections, known as neural pathways. These are how electrical impulses move within the brain. An injury can damage these pathways, leading to the loss of skills and abilities. But as the brain finds new connections, the skills and abilities return.
Unfortunately, there aren’t always new pathways that the brain can use. Additionally, the brain generally can’t create any new brain cells. There are some parts of the brain that have a very limited capacity to produce neurons after birth, but for the most part, this just isn’t part of the healing process.
Therefore, if there isn’t a new pathway and the brain can’t create cells to repair the damaged areas, healing can come to a plateau.
Seeking compensation
This may mean that you live with complications from a TBI for the rest of your life. If so, you need to know about your legal options to seek compensation to cover medical bills, lost wages, reduced earning capacity and more.