Brainstorming With Brooke

  Brooke Taylor   9:41 AM (3 minutes ago) to me I’m a little late on this post given the subject matter.  I’ve always been a person focused on the calendar or numbers of personal significance to me. There are obvious ones that you remember like birthdays of immediate family and social security numbers. For me, that also includes the date I started working at my law firm: August 19, 2002.  Other examples are my bar number and social security number.  Those dates and numbers were significant well before my accident. I recalled them easily both before and after my accident. Maybe that's because they were stored in long term memory.  Information in long term memory is more likely to be preserved. 4/24/2016 held no significance to me until it became the date of my accident. This year marks ten years of my recovery. This anniversary reminds me that I have made more progress than people thought possible in those earliest days. I firmly believe that I can continue ...

 March is Brain Injury Awareness Month. This is relevant to me as someone living with a brain injury. Every year an estimated 2.8 million Americans sustain a brain injury. That number is far higher than most people would expect. 5 million people are living with a permanent brain injury disability. That's one in 65 Americans!   Each brain injury manifests differently.  Some people have no physical challenges but cognitive ones. Some present cognitive challenges but no physical ones (sometimes referred to as invisible brain injuries). Both my cognitive and physical abilities were impacted by my brain injury. I could publish 100 posts about my TBI or brain injury more broadly, but this graphic really captures it for me.  There will always be a gulf between pre- brain injury me and post -brain injury me, but I work to close that gulf every single day. I Never Give Up! #braininjuryawarenessmonth

  Kicking off 2026!! Here we go.  Over the new year we traveled to Coronado, California .  It was a wonderful trip and time spent with my children.  It was also a reminder that traveling as a disabled person brings with it planning and oftentimes significant challenges. First, there is navigating the airport. This can be a hassle for everyone, especially during the holidays due to more people traveling.  Because I wear a metal brace on one leg and cannot raise both arms overhead, I must have an individual screening. In and of itself, this isn’t a terrible thing: I understand and appreciate the need for good security at airports.  I travel with some frequency, so I’m familiar with the TSA protocols.  First, I tell the TSA agents at the beginning of the line that I’ll need the screening. That person summons an agent designated to screen me. The screening agent does a full body sweep over my clothes and then swabs the bottom of my braces, sho...

  If it seems like AI is everywhere these days, that's because its use has become so widespread.  AI’s reach in the TBI realm is no less extensive: hence the length of this post. Assessment time immediately following the injury is critical. When a patient is admitted with a potential TBI, AI can automatically classify the injury severity and flag abnormalities on CT scans within seconds in the emergency room. This results in reducing the number of missed bleeds. AI has been shown to catch subtle findings radiologists may miss looking at CT or MRIs, especially under pressure. AI can analyze:           A.  Eye movement tracking, speech pattern changes, and identify whether a brain injury has                     occurred even when CT scans are normal (common in mild TBI).           B. AI can be used in predicting outcomes: ...

I love music, especially live music. Just in the last twelve months, I’ve seen nine concerts.   I love singing along to songs that I love alongside a crowd that loves them too.   One of the cognitive techniques I use to remember new things is association.   For example, if I’m looking at a picture of a bowl of ice cream with a cherry, it is easier to remember that than if it were an image of ice cream with peanut butter because no one associates ice cream with peanut butter, but many do associate an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top.   I associate music with certain periods of my life: high school; college; music I studied and listened to in law school, and even music I played for my kids at bedtime.   So it makes sense that I enjoy seeing music live that I associate with these happy memories. What is the relevance of music to brain injury? I engaged in music therapy after my brain injury. As it turns out, music has a strong an...

I celebrated my birthday on Thursday. Some people don’t like their birthdays because it is a reminder they are getting older. Kids always enjoy celebrating birthdays, but somewhere along the way, the switch seems to flip for many.  I’ve always loved celebrating my birthday and even more so now because it wasn’t clear that I would get to celebrate with my family and friends after I suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of an accident .So, having breakfast and dinner with my kids followed by cake and a movie made for a wonderful day. The celebration will spill over into the next two weeks with some friends and family. What do birthday celebrations have to do with a  brain injury ? Brain injuries don’t all present in the same way. I am fortunate that mine did not impact my long-term memory . Though my TBI left me with some occasional  short term memory deficits , my pre-accident memory is completely intact. I remember not only important dates (birthdays of family...