COGNITIVE REHABILITATION: OBJECTIVES, TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The cognitive rehabilitation is a type of intervention that helps people who have suffered some kind of brain problem regain a normal functioning of your mind. It can also refer to certain techniques used to compensate for cognitive deficits in people with all kinds of difficulties.

Cognitive rehabilitation uses both specific training techniques in mental skills, as well as metacognitive strategies. The latter serve to help the patient realize her difficulties, so that she can consciously self-correct whenever she needs to.

Source: pixabay.com

This type of rehabilitation can be used to treat a myriad of different problems. For example, its use is common in patients who have suffered a stroke or have undergone surgery for a tumor in this area; but also in people with diseases such as Alzheimer's or difficulties such as ADHD.

In this article we tell you everything you need to know about cognitive rehabilitation. Among other things, you will learn exactly what it is used for, and what are some of the most important techniques related to this discipline.

Goals of cognitive rehabilitation

The main objective of cognitive rehabilitation is the recovery of certain mental capacities and abilities necessary for the day-to-day life of patients who have been affected due to some type of brain or psychological problem. To do this, various techniques are used and increasingly challenging objectives are set.

In addition, this discipline also tries to provide patients with strategies that they can use to replace the skills they have lost in the event that it is not possible to recover them.

For example, if someone suffers from severe memory loss, they will be taught to function in their daily life despite this difficulty.

Next we will see what are the most common objectives that are worked in the cognitive rehabilitation sessions.

Memory recovery

One of the basic psychological processes that is most frequently affected by all kinds of brain and psychological problems is memory.

It doesn't matter if we are dealing with a stroke, Alzheimer's disease or a tumor: in most cases the ability to remember is one of the most fragile.

For this reason, in most cognitive rehabilitation processes, it is sought to help patients to strengthen their memory through various techniques and exercises.

On the other hand, they are taught strategies that they can use to function properly in their day-to-day lives even if they have difficulty remembering what they need.

Improved attention

Another of the most delicate basic psychological processes is attention. A large number of psychological disorders affect this area, and various problems at the brain level can also decrease our ability to focus on a single stimulus and ignore all the others. For this reason, cognitive rehabilitation often works in this regard as well.

Luckily, mindfulness is one of the areas that can be developed most easily, and there is more and more research on it.

This is because, due to the changes that have occurred in our lifestyle in recent years, many people without any particular problem have great difficulty in maintaining attention.

On the other hand, when it is not possible to improve attention span for some reason, the cognitive rehabilitation process will focus on teaching patients strategies that they can use to fill this gap.

Language recovery

Language is another of the areas that can be more easily affected when certain types of problems occur, such as a stroke or the removal of a tumor.

When this ability is lost, a patient is said to suffer from "aphasia"; and cognitive rehabilitation will try to help you improve in this regard as much as possible.

Even in cases where speech ability is severely impaired, it is possible to make a patient experience great improvements.

This is due to a phenomenon known as "brain plasticity," whereby healthy areas of the brain can take over a function previously served by another that is now impaired.

On the other hand, cognitive rehabilitation will also try to equip the person with strategies that they can use to alleviate the effects of their language problems, so that they can function adequately in their daily life.

Improved executive functions

When a person has a brain tumor or has a stroke, for example, abilities such as logic, concentration, or reasoning may be impaired.

The set of these mental abilities is known as "executive functions"; and its improvement is another of the main objectives of cognitive rehabilitation.

Thus, during the sessions the person is taught various strategies to solve problems, reason correctly or concentrate on a specific task; At the same time, it helps you discover how you can alleviate the deterioration in these functions.

Acquisition of everyday skills

In some especially severe cases, people who attend cognitive rehabilitation sessions may have lost basic skills such as dressing, getting around public transportation, cooking, or taking care of their personal hygiene. When this happens, the therapist will be in charge of helping them to develop them again.

Techniques and exercises

When it comes to recovering skills lost due to problems such as brain trauma, stroke, or a similar situation, there are basically three strategies that can be followed to improve the patient's life: create environmental modifications, make compensatory approaches, or carry out direct intervention.

Environmental modifications

Environmental modifications are changes that are carried out in the patient's environment in such a way that he can function more effectively without the need to carry out an improvement of any kind in his cognitive abilities or his daily abilities.

Thus, the objective of environmental modifications is to simplify as much as possible the tasks that the person must carry out in their day-to-day lives, eliminate those that are not necessary, or give them more time to complete them.

In this way, even when there is serious damage to cognitive skills, the person can function adequately.

On the other hand, environmental modifications can also take the form of cipher systems (whether written or oral) that help the person remember what to do and avoid distractions.

Compensatory approximations

The second group of techniques that can be used in an objective rehabilitation process are compensatory approaches.

These have the objective of developing certain behaviors that serve as a substitute for those skills that have been impaired as a result of the problem suffered by the patient.

When using a strategy of compensatory approaches, one of the main objectives of the therapist should be to help the patient manage their own expectations and develop behaviors that help them to function adequately in their daily life.

For example, a person may not be able to regain lost memory capacity; But you can develop the habit of writing down important things on your mobile phone or in a notebook so that you don't forget them.

On the other hand, when compensatory approaches are being developed, it is necessary to take into account the impact that this will have on the individual and the way in which they will develop in their day-to-day life.

If one of these strategies is too complex, the person is more likely not to use it often and the intervention is useless.

Direct intervention

The third group of strategies differs from the other two in the sense that its focus is not on finding tools to replace lost or impaired capabilities. Rather, when deciding to use this approach the goal is to work directly on improving skills that have been impaired.

Direct intervention is often more complicated than compensatory approaches or environmental modifications, and requires more time.

However, when done correctly, it can greatly improve a patient's quality of life. Thanks to brain plasticity, it is possible to achieve very good results with this approach.

The specific techniques used to perform a direct intervention will depend above all on the damaged capacity, in addition to the characteristics of each patient. The specialist has to make a personalized evaluation of each case before deciding what will be the best approach for the person.

conclusion

The field of cognitive rehabilitation is very complex, and includes a large number of techniques and approaches aimed at making life easier for patients who have lost certain abilities due to some type of brain or psychological problem.

However, it is still a developing field. It is to be expected that in the coming decades we will see great advances in this regard, thanks to new discoveries in neuroscience and other related disciplines, which will make it possible to improve the interventions carried out in these cases.

References

1. "What About Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy?" in: Brain Line. Retrieved on: January 06, 2019 from Brain Line: brainline.org.
2. "Cognitive rehabilitation" in: My Child Without Limits. Retrieved on: January 06, 2019 from My Child Without Limits: mychildwithoutlimits.org.
3. "The rehabilitation of cognitive disorders" in: Uruguay Medical Journal. Retrieved on: January 06, 2019 from Uruguay Medical Magazine: rmu.org.uy.
4. "Cognitive rehabilitation" at: ISEP Clinic. Retrieved on: January 06, 2019 from ISEP Clinic: isepclinic.es.
5. "Cognitive rehabilitation therapy" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved: January 06, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.