Acquired Brain Injury (ABI): An acquired brain injury is damage to the brain that occurs after birth and is not related to a congenital or degenerative disorder, such as Alzheimer’s disease. The damage may be caused by a traumatic (physical) injury to the head or it may be due to strokes, tumors, infections, allergic reactions, anoxia or hypoxia (no or reduced oxygen), or metabolic disorders.

Activities of Daily Living (ADL): Routine activities carried out for personal hygiene and health (including bathing, dressing, feeding) and for operating a household.

Ambulation: Ability to walk.

Apathy: A lack of interest or concern. Also known as adynamia.

Aphasia: Loss of the ability to express oneself and/or to understand language caused by damage to the brain. 

Apraxia: Inability to carry out a complex or skilled movement not due to paralysis, sensory changes or deficiencies in understanding.

Arousal: Being awake.

Ataxia: A problem of muscle coordination caused by a brain lesion. Can interfere with a person’s ability to walk, talk, eat and to perform other self care tasks.

Atrophy: A wasting away or decrease in size of a cell, tissue, organ or part of the body due to lack of nourishment or loss of nerve supply.

Attention: The ability to focus on a given task or set of stimuli for an appropriate period of time. 

Behaviour: The total repetoire of actions and reactions exhibited by a person.

Case Management (CM): Facilitating the access of a patient to appropriate rehabilitation and support programs, and coordination of the delivery of services.

Cerebellum: The portion of the brain (located at the back) which helps coordinate movement.

Closed Head Injury: Trauma to the head which doesn’t penetrate or fracture the skull but which damages the brain.

Cognition: The conscious process of knowing, becoming or being aware of thoughts or perceptions, including understanding and reasoning.

Coma: A state of unconsciousness from which the patient cannot be aroused, even by powerful stimulation.

Confabulation: Verbalizations about people, places, events with no basis in reality. The patient appears to fill in memory gaps with plausible facts.

CT Scan: A series of x-rays taken at different levels of the brain that allows the direct visualization of intracranial structures.

Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI): A shearing of large nerve fibres in many areas of the brain rather than one specific location. 

Disinhibition: Inability to suppress (inhibit) impulsive behaviour and emotions.

Disorientation: Not knowing where you are, who you are or the current date.

Electroencephalogram (EEG): A procedure that uses electrodes on the scalp to record electrical activity of the brain.

Executive Functions: Planning, prioritzing, sequencing, self-monitoring, self-correcting, inhibiting, initiating, controlling or altering behaviour.

Frontal Lobe: Front part of the brain; involved in planning, organizing, problem solving, selective attention, personality, and a variety of higher cognitve functions. 

Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS): A standardized system used to assess the degree of brain impairment and to identify the seriousness of an injury in relation to outcome.

Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS): A system for classifying the outcome of head injury survivors. Relates to functional independence and not residual deficits.

Hemiparesis: Weakness on one side of the body.

Impulse Control: Refers to the patient’s ability to withhold inappropriate verbal or motor responses.

Independent Living Program: Primary emphasis is on community-based services to maximize a person’s ability to be empowered and self-directed.

Insight: The extent to which an individual accurately judges one’s own strengths and weaknesses.

Intensive Rehabilitation: An active, multidisciplinary rehabilitation program provided for several hours daily, using a team approach. Focus is often on skill development, rather than on treatment of specific deficits.

Judgement: Process of forming an opinion, based on an evaluation of the situation at hand in comparison with personal values, preferences and insights.

Memory: The process of perceiving events, organizing and storing representations of the events and recalling these representations to consciousness at a later time.

Motivation: Requires initiative and refers to the extent to which an individual desires to reach a goal and demonstrates actual follow through.

Motor: Pertaining to movement.

Occipital Lobe: Area in the back of the brain whose primary function is processing visual information. Damage to this area can cause visual deficits.

Occupational Therapist (OT): A registered healthcare professional that works to retrain those with brain injuries to resume the selfcare activities important to daily living as well as evaluation, training and adaptations to increase function in vocational role.

Organization: Using selective attention skills, the patient correctly perceives stimulus attributes, selects a strategy, monitors use of the strategy and reaches a correct solution.

Parietal Lobe: Damage to right lobe can cause visual-spatial deficits. Damage to the left lobe may disrupt a patient’s ability to understand spoken and/or written language.

Perception: The ability to make sense of what one sees, hears, feels, tastes or smells.

Perseveration: Refers to the inappropriate persistance of a response in a current task that may have been appropriate for a former task. Can be verbal or motor. Repetitive.

Physiotherapist (PT): A registered healthcare professional who works to maintain and improve the movement and function of joints and limbs.

Post-Traumatic Amnesia (PTA): a period of hours, days, weeks or months after the injury when the patient exhibits a loss of day-to-day memory. The patient is unable to store new information and has a decreased ability to learn.

Proprioception: The sensory awareness of the position of the body parts with or without movement.

Psychiatrist: A physician who specializes in the prevention and management of emotional and behavioural problems with various means including the prescription of psychotrophic medication.

Psychologist: An expert in the diagnosis, management and prevention of emotional and behavioural problems who has a doctural level education.

Range of Motion (ROM): Refers to movement of a joint and is important to prevent contractures.

Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to recall events prior to the accident. May be a specific span of time or type of information.

Sensation: Feeling stimuli which activate sensory organs of the body, such as touch, temperature, pressure and pain. Also includes hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting. 

Social Worker (SW): Expert in the social, emotional, and financial needs of families and patients. They often help locate services that are needed.

Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP): A regulated healthcare professional responsible for the evaluation and treatment of problems with speech and language, auditory, cognitive (comprehension), attention, writing, reading and expression skills.

Temporal Lobes: Right temporal lobe is mainly involved in visual memory. Left temporal lobe is mainly involved in verbal memory.

Transitional Living Program: Primary emphasis is to provide training for living in a setting with less dependence on others.