What is Cognitive Rehabilitation?

Find out what Cognitive Rehabilitation is, for whom it is intended, and which professionals and types of therapy exist.

Hello friends!

Recently, we’ve received several requests to talk about cognitive rehabilitation. And, in today’s text, we’ll talk about what it is and how it works. It is an introductory text, but it seeks to explain, in general, everything about this way of working by psychologists and other specialists, such as neurologists, occupational therapists, neuroscientists, among others.

What is cognitive rehabilitation?

To begin with, we can take the two words to understand what cognitive rehabilitation is all about. Rehabilitate means to enable again. Cognitive or cognitive refers to the psychological functions that involve cognition. Literally, cognition means to know – from the Latin withtogether) + noscere“to know, to know”.

So, we can understand cognitive rehabilitation as practices that aim to rehabilitate an individual to know, that is, to use the basic psychological functions that are designated as cognitive: attention, memory, social skills, in addition to the ability to judge, evaluate and imagine future situations, as well as using language and communication in general.

For example, a person who has been in a car accident and has suffered a strong impact on their skull, may have sequelae due to injuries that have reached parts of the brain, or a patient who has had a cardiovascular disease, such as a stroke (CVA). or an aneurysm, you may also have had anatomical changes in the brain that impair psychic functions, from the most basic to the most complex.

With the discoveries of neuroscience, however, we have some important news:

– First, we now know that the brain is plastic, that is, there is a great capacity for neurons and synapses to rearrange themselves to replace problems in other parts. Thus, if a function has been impaired by trauma in a given area, adjacent areas can – over time – do the work of the impaired area.

– Second, also due to brain plasticity, it is possible for anyone to learn new behaviors and, if they have had an accident or health problem, they can also learn or relearn what they may have lost (temporarily).

What is Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy?

Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy, in English – Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy (CRT) – is a generic term used to describe cognitive rehabilitation therapy (or therapies). As there is a very wide range of brain injuries, we are not talking about a single type of treatment.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the United States presents the following definition: “Cognitive rehabilitation aims to improve functioning and independence in patients with cognitive problems resulting from brain damage or disease, most commonly followed by brain trauma or stroke”.

And, of course, we have to distinguish Cognitive Rehabilitation from Cognitive Therapy, which is a therapy aspect of psychology that could even work with patients with brain damage, however, it has a much more generic definition. In other words, cognitive therapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses its attention on a larger group of patients, with emotional and mental problems and not only on patients who had physical-cerebral problems, as cognitive rehabilitation does.

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), there are two basic ways in which Cognitive Rehabilitation works:

– Restorative treatment, whose aim is to improve the cognitive system to function in dozens of activities;

– Compensatory treatment, which trains the patient to find and use solutions to problem areas, such as making use of notebooks or notes to remember activities or learning strategies that seek to compensate for the loss of one or more skills.

Types of treatments and types of professionals

From the definition of what cognitive rehabilitation is, and considering a patient who has recently suffered brain damage, we note that many professionals will be able to help him, not just psychology professionals. It is clear that doctors from different specialties help in the diagnosis and in the proposition of therapies, but psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, neuropsychologists, physical educators, nurses, (among others) can also come to compose the team so that the treatment is effective. and lasting.

And, just as there are different types of professionals to carry out cognitive rehabilitation, there are also different types of treatments, not only in terms of what will be done in a session, but also in terms of modality. Many treatments are individual, but many are also done in groups; while some will be once a week, others will be more intensive and constant care.

Conclusion

In theory, cognitive rehabilitation will not be much different from a treatment for a complex condition, such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. A team of professionals, often called multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary, will help the patient to improve or, at least, maintain some stability and not worsen the symptomatology.

So that in cognitive rehabilitation, after brain damage, the patient will benefit from the care of professionals to be able to reverse his condition, restoring temporarily lost cognitive skills, or to develop ways of dealing with losses that may be irreversible.

Therefore, the patient will be careful, with the evaluation and care, for physical, psychological and social readaptation. Throughout the text, we mention some conditions such as accidents and injuries and strokes, but there are other diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, whose patients may also benefit from cognitive rehabilitation.

For those who are interested in the area and are taking a related degree, there are specific postgraduate courses in cognitive rehabilitation. In graduate programs researched by us, we noticed the opening of classes for the following professionals: “Psychologists, Doctors, Occupational Therapists, Pedagogues, Speech Therapists, Physiotherapists and Nurses”.

To conclude, it is also relevant that the cognitive rehabilitation patient usually needs a lot of help from the family and, therefore, the family can also learn about the subject.

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