View clinical trials related to Brain Injuries.
Filter by:This study aims to explore autonomic cardiovascular regulation, through measures of heart rate variability (HRV), during different passive and active activities in patients with severe acquired brain injury and a low conscious state. Data from active rehabilitation will be compared with passive periods of rest as well as nightly variance during a continuous 5-day period.
Difficulty to sustain attention over a prolonged period of time is one of the core difficulties experienced by people who have undergone traumatic brain injury. Rehabilitation of attention is often based on compensatory strategies, because of the limited impact of cognitive training on improving attentional capacity after brain injury. New therapeutic approaches to explore the plastic recovery of the brain after injury, and consequent performance improvement, are warranted. Neurofeedback (NFB) allows the self-regulation of brain activity using visual feedback. Very recently, it has been demonstrated that NFB training targeted at reducing alpha power (alpha desynchronization NFB), can induce initial plastic changes in brain networks associated with attention. It has been proposed that NFB can improve cognitive performance by tuning oscillatory activity of the brain towards a more healthy balance between neural network flexibility and stability. It is speculated that the use of alpha desynchronization NFB training, with people who present with brain injury, can enhance sustained attention in as much as the training promotes neural variability during resting state (i.e. more flexible network configuration) and neural stability during a sustained attention task (i.e. more stable network configuration). However, before assessing the effectiveness of the intervention, it is necessary to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability thereof. This study will recruit 14 participants and randomly assign them to two groups: a NFB group and a video games control group. Long-term changes will be evaluated at two time points for both groups: baseline and post-intervention. The NFB group will have a follow-up session one week after the intervention, to evaluate whether there are long lasting changes after NFB training. In addition, short-term changes of NFB will be evaluated for the experimental group, contrasting EEG activity immediately before and after the last NFB session.
People with acquired brain injury (ABI) often experience persistent language challenges that are subtle in nature and not readily observable to others. These challenges can have substantial negative effects on vocational and social endeavors despite their subtlety. Even though these challenges are prevalent in the ABI population, limited methods exist for quantifying and remediating them. The two purposes of Phase I of this research are to (a) explore methods of using event related potential (ERP) recordings to quantify language processing differences between people with and without ABI and (b) correlate behavioral observations from language tests with ERP findings. The purpose of Phase II is to explore the use of game-based, group activities as an intervention for people with ABI who experience word-retrieval challenges. The purpose of Phase III is to collect post-intervention data for comparison with Phase I data and provide evidence about the effectiveness of the intervention program.
The purpose of this single center, longitudinal, pilot study is to provide evidence for the use of an eye tracking system as an objective tool to identify mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) related oculomotor dysfunction (OMD) and predict the effectiveness of neurovision rehabilitation (NVR) of OMD. Eye tracking visual stimulus measurements will be compared to objective developmental optometrist (OD) diagnosis and assessments. It will be determined whether an eye tracking system can predict the presence or absence of mTBI related OMD and whether mTBI patients who have OMD based on the eye tracking system will respond positively to NVR.
The purpose of the study is to assess the usability and tolerability of this jugular vein compression device in a population of helmeted and non-helmeted competitive high school, collegiate and professional athletes in the sports of football and rugby. This study differs from previous work in that it is designed to capture additional data related to the athlete experience wearing the jugular vein compression device in older and more elite playing levels.
1. Validation of translated Motor Imagery ability questionnaire MIQ-RS 2. Investigating the Motor Imagery ability in patients with traumatic brain injury
Persistent headache is one of the most common debilitating symptoms in military personnel suffering from mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). This study aims to assess the long-term effect of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in managing MTBI related headaches for up to 2-3 months by comparing the treatment effect of active-rTMS to sham-rTMS.
Brain injury is a frequent purpose for consultation in emergency services. Management of brain injury is time and resource consuming, combining clinical monitoring and imaging. The stage prior to the management of the victims of brain injury is stratification of the severity, potential or proven. Severe brain injury requires emergent brain CT-scan, ideally within one hour of the first medical contact. Patients requiring this strategy present with focused neurological deficit, Glasgow score <15 to 2 hours after the trauma, suspicion of open fracture of the skull or dish pan fracture, any signs of fracture of the skull base (hemotympanum, bilateral peri-orbital ecchymosis), otorrhea or rhinorrhea of cerebrospinal fluid, more than one episode of vomiting in adults, and posttraumatic convulsion. Patients benefiting from anticoagulant therapy are included in this category. Victims of brain injury that do not fall into this category are considered less critical. By definition, mild traumatic brain injury : - a trauma of the cephalic extremity : - whose Glasgow score (30 min after the trauma or during the consultation) is 13-15, - associated with one or more of the following: confusion; disorientation; loss of consciousness of 30 min or less; post-traumatic amnesia of less than 24 hours; other transient neurological abnormalities (focal signs, epileptic seizures, non-surgical intracranial lesion). Among these patients, some are considered at risk of developing intracerebral lesions. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the prevalence of hemorrhagic complications is radically different between patients with a Glasgow score of 13 and those with a score of 15. Thus, the recommendations suggest a brain scan without injection of contrast media within 4 to 8 hours for patients with the following characteristics : - a retrograde amnesia of more than 30 minutes, - a loss of consciousness or amnesia associated with: - either a risk mechanism (pedestrian overturned by a motor vehicle, ejection of a vehicle, falling by more than one meter), - or an age> 65 years, - or coagulation disorders, including the use of platelet aggregation therapy. Patients who fall outside this definition are considered low risk of complication and should not benefit of imaging. Data from the scientific literature show that an early brain CT-scan allows identification of post-traumatic lesions in this population. Nevertheless, organizational problems, including the availability of the imaging, radiation, and disruption of surveillance related to patient displacement, are limitations to this strategy. In contrast, the low cost-effectiveness of CT scan is often advocated in patients with mild traumatic brain injury. For example, in the Octopus study, 52 of 1316 patients who received CT scan after mild head trauma had an intracerebral lesion. Among these patients, 39 (3%) had intracerebral lesion related to trauma; for 13 (1%) patients, the link with the trauma was uncertain. In fact, the search of alternatives for a safer, more conservative, more efficient practice, one of the objectives of which is to limit the undue use of cerebral scanning. Thus, many teams have been interested in the use of biological variables to guide the decision to use imagery. Among candidate biomarkers, the S100B protein has been the subject of many evaluations which allow it to be used in current practice. Indeed, the increase of the S100B protein carried out within 3 hours following a mild head trauma makes it possible to identify the patients at risk of intracerebral lesion and to target the indications of imaging. The purpose of the registry is to describe the use, interpretation and performance of the S100B protein in its use at bedside in emergency medicine.
This randomized clinical trial will test a behavioral caregiving intervention that has been used successfully for dementia and spinal cord injury caregivers to provide services to stressed and burdened parent caregivers of post 9/11 service members/veterans. This intervention is six intensive individual sessions that will teach problem solving, cognitive restructuring and stress reduction targeted to an individual assessment of the care dyad's needs. It will be compared to another method of delivering content, education webinar sessions, which are analogous to the usual standard of care and will function as an attention control arm. The objective of the study is to determine which of these delivery mechanisms is more effective at helping parent caregivers of injured post 9/11 returning troops to improve their depression, anxiety, and burden, and to determine the feasibility of using individual sessions with this population of caregivers.
Cognitive behavioral therapy for major depressive disorder (MDD) was adapted for individuals with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) (CBT-TBI). A structured, treatment manual was developed. The primary aim is to evaluate the acceptability and tolerability of, and adherence to, CBT-TBI in a randomized waitlist-controlled, 12-week pilot trial (N=40). The exploratory aim is to evaluate the potential efficacy of CBT-TBI for MDD in the randomized pilot trial (N=40) and possible moderators and mediators of outcome.