Brain Recovery After Brain Injury or Trauma

Introduction

This essay discusses processes involved in brain recovery after brain injury or trauma. This will be accomplished through discussing neural networks and the phenomenon they use to launch action potentials. The main focus in this writing explains the process of neuroplasticity in brain recovery and the use of Music therapy as a psychotherapy treatment used in brain rehabilitation. The essay will go further to describe the importance of learning experience in brain remission.

Brain recovery involves actions that follow brain injury or trauma. Injury to the brain may be caused by external forces such as blows to the head that may cause the brain to move inside the skull (Johnson, 2013) or tumours that exert pressure onto the brain or may results from genetic disorders (Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, Jackson, & Urry, 2008). Examples of brain injuries include stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease to name a few.

The human brain and that of any species contains nerve cells that link to each other connecting the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body (Johnson, 2013). These nerve cells are neurons that connected through synapses in a web-like fashion forming neural networks (Coon & Mitterer, 2001). Neural networks make generation and transmission of action potentials (known as electrical impulses) possible along neurons. An action potential is generated across an axon hillock of a nerve cell and is propagated along the axon by the opening of voltage-gated ion channels one after the other causing positive ions to flow in and out the axon (Johnson, 2013).

Transmission of action potentials from one neuron to the next involves the release of neurotransmitters from a presynaptic neuron to postsynaptic neurons across a synaptic g...

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...owledgement within the community of health practitioners and urging co-operation in teaching initiatives, and the common requirements of training.

References

Aldridge, D. (1994). An overview of Music Therapy Research. Complementary therapies in Medicine, 209-210.

American Music therapy Association. (2013). Music Therapy journals and Publications. Retrieved from American Music therapy Association: http://www.musictherapy.org/research/pubs/

Barker, F., & Roth, E. A. (2004). Neuroplasticity and Functional Recovery: Training Models and Compensatory Strategies in Music Therapy. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 21-25.

Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V., Jackson, R. B., & Urry, L. A. (2008). Campbell Reece (8 ed.).

Coon, D., & Mitterer, J. O. (2001). Introduction to Psychology (12 ed.). Wadsworth.

Johnson, M. D. (2013). Concepts and Current Issues (7 ed.).