Groundhog Day - The Memory Problem.

Today is Groundhog Day over in the US, and so the film is likely to be on many TV screens today.

For some survivors, the memory problems caused by a Brain Injury can leave you feeling stuck in Groundhog Day, living the same day over and over again.

Memory is easily affected by brain injury because there are several structures within the brain that are involved in memory, and injury to any of these parts can impair memory performance.

 

People often think of memory as a single skill. However, it is not one skill on its own but can instead be thought of as a number of skills working together. We can therefore classify memory in several ways, namely:

• the length of time information is stored
• the type of information to be remembered
• the stages involved in remembering
• the kind of remembering required
• whether the memories date from before or after the brain injury.

 

Here at Headway Kent, we work with our members to best use their memory, finding strategies and tricks that can help break that cycle.

These strategies can be recall tricks, using certain words or phrases to aid in the recall function.

They could be focused on improving the intake of information, creating a strong basis for the memory to form.

Or implementing a system of external memory aids, such as notepads and sticky notes. Something that sounds obvious but that takes time to implement and use well.