Brain injuries can be caused by accidents, negligence, toxins, and other factors. Common consequences of brain injury include impairments in attention, executive functioning, memory, language, intelligence, emotional stability, learning, motor skills, social skills, and relationships. A neuropsychological evaluation identifies the presence, cause, severity, and functional impact of brain injuries by assessing tasks involving questions, memory, attention, puzzles, coordination, and other areas to quantify a person's cognitive skills.

1. Brain Injury:
Causes, Consequences, and Diagnosis
Drs. Goldberg and Petrosky
Forensic Neuropsychology Practice for Adults and Children
(646) 315 – 2621
www.braininjuryexam.com

2. What Causes Brain Injury
• As you would expect, brain injury is often caused by
severe blows to the head as well as other factors, such as
ingesting harmful substances. The most common causes of
brain injury include:
– Slips and falls
– Acts of negligence or wrong-doing
– Motor vehicle accidents
– Accidents at home or work
– Defective products
– Toxins (e.g. lead paint, carbon monoxide or other noxious gases,
contaminated soil)
– Sports accidents
– Boating accidents

3. Consequences of Brain Injury
Brain injury can cause pain and suffering, loss of
ability to work, loss of companionship, loss of
enjoyment of life, and emotional
instability. Specifically, a brain injury can impair the
following.

4. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Attention
– When a person has trouble focusing for more than brief
moments at a time, it can interfere with such basic skills
as listening, having a conversation, reading, or
completing work in a timely manner.
• Executive Functioning
– This is a collection of skills that help people plan,
organize, control themselves, as well as set and reach
goals. Executive functioning deficits can cause problems
such as: impaired social skills, a lack of motivation,
difficulty thinking, difficulty catching on to new tasks, poor
decisions, impulsivity, rigidity (which may look like
“stubbornness”), and poor planning and time
management.

5. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Memory
– There are many varieties of memory problems, including
difficulty learning new things (anterograde amnesia)
and/or forgetting what one learned in the past
(retrograde amnesia).

6. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Language
– Clinically known as "aphasias," people with brain injury
can lose their ability to speak and listen. Sometimes
language impairments are dramatic, such as when the
person cannot speak and does not comprehend what is
said to him or her at all. However, many times the
impairment can be more subtle. The person may
struggle to find the words he or she is looking for or may
use incorrect words. This can make communication slow,
laborious, and imprecise as well as cause
embarrassment.

7. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Intelligence
– The person may experience a steep drop in verbal,
nonverbal, and overall intellectual skills.
• Emotional stability
– People with brain injury can have difficulty controlling
their emotions. They may experience uncontrollable
anger or sadness.

8. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Learning
– Certain types of brain injury can impair the person's
ability to read, write, and do math. Brain injury in
children can dramatically interfere with their school
performance.
• Motor Skills
– Brain injury can impair a person's gross and fine motor
skills, such as walking, running, playing sports, using
eating utensils or tools, or even putting on clothes.

9. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Social Skills and Relationships
– All of the problems mentioned above can greatly
affect a person's ability to establish and preserve
friendships and romantic relationships.

10. Consequences of Brain Injury
• Above are just some of the consequences of brain
injury. The brain obviously controls a multitude of
functions. Therefore, brain injury, depending on its location
in the brain and other factors, can impair a wide range of
other skills as well, some of which include the ability to
recognize familiar people, enjoy music, taste, and
smell. Brain injury can also cause a person to not even
recognize that he or she has impairments in the first place,
a condition called Anosognosia.

11. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
• Whatever caused the brain injury, such as a
frightening accident, can also cause severe
emotional distress, including Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is a
condition in which a person experiences a
traumatic event that causes symptoms such as
anxiety, tension, nightmares, and on-going fear and
avoidance.

12. Diagnosis:
The Neuropsychological Evaluation

13. What is a neuropsychological evaluation?
• A neuropsychological evaluation identifies the
presence, probable cause, severity, and functional
consequences of brain injury.

14. What is a neuropsychological evaluation?
• The examinee completes various tasks that allow
the neuropsychologist to measure brain
functioning. The tasks include answering
questions, memorizing information, paying
attention to certain cues, solving puzzles, hands on
tasks that involve coordination, and many others.

15. What is a neuropsychological evaluation?
• The results provide factual data that allow the
neuropsychologist to quantify a person's skills in
areas such as attention, executive functioning,
memory, language, intelligence, reading, writing,
math, emotional control, motor functioning, and
many other areas.

16. For More Information
Please contact
the Forensic Neuropsychology Practice
of Drs. Goldberg and Petrosky
(646) 315 - 2621