Cognitive-linguistic impairment subsequent to mild traumatic brain injury

Background: Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), associated
with an absence of frank neurologic disturbance, has been
linked to persistent physical, cognitive, and affective disturbance.
Although the cognitive sequelae of this syndrome have
been relatively well documented, the legacy of such injuries on
language abilities has until recently been largely unknown. The
findings of recent research suggest mTBI may impart significant
and long-standing effect on language skills, with evident implications
for vocational, social, and educational success. Methods:
This presentation will review the reported evidence for
long-term cognitive/linguistic impairments occurring subsequent
to mTBI and discuss possible neural mechanisms
whereby injury of this type may disrupt language processing. In
addition, the findings of a study aimed at profiling the nature of
linguistic abilities in persons subsequent to mTBI will be reported
and discussed. Specifically, the performance of a group
of persons with mTBI on a battery of tests capable of assessing
cognitive, general, and high-level language function, including
semantic processing tasks, will be reported and compared with
a group of non neurologically impaired controls matched for
age and gender. Results: Disruption to high-level linguistic processes
post-mTBI was evidenced in the literature by reports of
deficits on tasks of verbal fluency, story recall, verbal memory,
and anomaly detection. Analysis of the group data revealed the
presence of deficits in attention, lexical access, complex lexical-semantic
manipulation, response monitoring, and organization
in the mTBI group. Conclusion: The findings suggest that high level
language deficits may represent a long-term and debilitating
effect of mild brain trauma, necessitating a reevaluation of
contemporary clinical management strategies for this purpose.