How do brain injuries impact your body?
When you originally suffered your head injury, you expected to recover quickly. You thought you’d get headaches and feel sore, but you didn’t realize how many of your body’s functions rely on your brain directly.
The brain is responsible for controlling the body. Any kind of damage to the brain has the potential to affect you in multiple ways. Here are a few things that could happen if you suffer an injury to the brain stem, parietal lobe or occipital lobe.
1. The brain stem
The brain stem is one of the most important parts of the brain. It controls many of the functions that help you live. For example, the brain stem controls your heart rate, swallowing, sweating and blood pressure, sense of balance and the ability to sleep. It impacts your digestion and the reflexes for seeing and hearing.
2. The parietal lobe
The parietal lobe is responsible for your senses of vision and touch. Visual attention and touch perception are controlled here. Integrating your senses to make sense of what’s going on around you is the job of this part of the brain.
3. The occipital lobe
Only one job falls to the occipital lobe, which is to help you see. Even if your eyes aren’t injured in any way, damage to the occipital lobe could blind you permanently.
These are just some of the things we take for granted that could be impacted by a brain injury. No how your brain has been impacted, it’s important for you to be compensated for your injury. The compensation you receive can give you peace of mind while you focus on your recovery.
Source: Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center, “Understanding TBI: Part 2 – Brain injury impact on individuals functioning,” accessed March 12, 2018