After getting into a crash, you have a long road to recovery ahead of you. Many aspects of recovering from brain injury do not get enough attention, so they may come as an unpleasant surprise.
For example, did you know that brain damage can affect your memory? Memory loss and damage as a result of head injuries happens often and it can have great impact on your life.
Brain injury and memory loss
The Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center discusses how traumatic brain injury (TBI) causes memory damage and loss. This can manifest in different ways. For example, when the frontal lobe suffers damage, so does short term memory. This is the area where memories get stored from 15 to 30 seconds. After that, they go to the medial temporal lobe, which translates them into long term memory for permanent storage.
Most often, TBI victims suffer from damage to the short term memory. Long term memories that already exist do not suffer. You can also struggle to convert short term to long term memory. This can make several aspects of daily life hard to accomplish. Some struggles you may face include:
- Forgetting important appointment times or dates
- Misplacing important items
- Forgetting to accomplish daily tasks like chores
Manifestations of memory damage in daily life
This can affect your ability to live your daily life. You may forget crucial things like grocery shopping or doing your laundry. These can create petty grievances or big stumbling blocks in keeping your life orderly. It can even interfere with your ability to work. If you cannot recall important information like due dates or project details, it can interfere with productivity. These are important factors to keep in mind.