Personal Injury Lawyers in New York

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) are often hard to diagnose and harder to treat. There is a great deal of imaging that can be done, such as CTs and MRIs, but the brain has many areas and each area, if injured, will cause different disabilities and symptoms.

Researchers have worked for decades on mapping the brain and this is an overview of the cerebral cortex areas and what they enable us to do.

• Frontal Lobe (under forehead)Provides consciousness, so that we know where we are and why. It controls our movements in our environment, emotional responses, language, and memory of habits.
• If it is injured, we may experience paralysis of some body areas, trouble with planning our actions, with speaking, and with thinking flexibly. We may become stuck on one thought and have wide mood swings.
• Parietal Lobe (at back and top of head)Visual attention, touch perception, manipulation of objects, integration of our five senses.
• Injury can reduce ability to focus on one thing at a time, ability to name things, to find words for writing, to read, to distinguish left from right.
• Occipital Lobe (back of head)Provides vision.
• Injury causes hallucinations, inability to recognize words, read or write, color confusion.
• Temporal Lobes (sides of head)Hearing, memory, some visual aspects
• Trouble with recognizing faces and understanding spoken words; memory loss, increased aggression.

The cerebral cortex is not the entire brain. There are also the brain stem, deep inside the brain, which controls heart rate, blood pressure, and other life-sustaining functions; and the cerebellum at the base of the skull, which coordinates balance and fine movements.

If you have sustained a head injury, but didn’t feel hurt or sick, and therefore didn’t go for any medical treatment, you might want to reconsider that. Brain injuries can give delayed symptoms. They can also give mild, vague symptoms at first which then worsen.

One thing to remember if you’re in an auto accident is to always have medical treatment as soon as possible. If you pass on it at the time of the accident and later on develop symptoms, your initial refusal will be used to your disadvantage in any possible lawsuit.

Please contact us if you have had a head injury and would like to know more about your legal options and rights.