TY - JOUR
PY - 2019//
TI - Dynamic cognitive remediation for a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) significantly improves attention, working memory, processing speed, and reading fluency
JO - Restorative neurology and neuroscience
A1 - Lawton, Teri
A1 - Huang, Ming-Xiong
SP - 71
EP - 86
VL - 37
IS - 1
N2 - BACKGROUND: In the U.S. 3.8 million people have a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) each year. Rapid brain training exercises to improve cognitive function after a mild TBI are needed.
OBJECTIVE: This study determines whether cognitive remediation by discriminating the direction a test pattern moves relative to a stationary background (movement figure-ground discrimination) improves the vision and cognitive deficits that result from a TBI, providing a paradigm shift in treatment methods.
METHODS: Movement-discrimination neurotraining was used to remediate low-level visual timing deficits in the dorsal stream to determine whether it improved high-level cognitive functions, such as processing speed, reading fluency, and the executive control functions of attention and working memory in four men with a TBI between the ages of 15-68. Standardized tests, as well as Magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain imaging, were administered at the beginning and end of 8-16 weeks of intervention training to evaluate improvements in cognitive skills.
RESULTS: Movement-discrimination cognitive neurotraining remediated both low-level visual timing deficits and high-level cognitive functioning, including selective and sustained attention, reading fluency, processing speed, and working memory for all TBI patients we studied. MEG brain imaging, using the Fast-VESTAL procedure, showed that this movement-discrimination training improved time-locked activity in the dorsal stream, attention, and executive control networks.
CONCLUSIONS: Remediating visual timing deficits in the dorsal stream revealed the causal role of visual movement discrimination training in improving high-level cognitive functions such as focusing and switching attention, working memory, processing speed, and reading. This study found that movement-discrimination training was very rapid and effective in remediating cognitive deficits, providing a new approach that is very beneficial for treating a mild TBI.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0922-6028 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/RNN-180856 ID - ref1 ER -