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Do you know what they do?

Did you know? –  They are located at the back of the top of your head. If you were to casually lean back in your chair with your hands clasped behind your head they would almost certainly be covering the parietal lobes.

Did you know? – They are involved a number of different functions but a key role is in the integration of information from visual or sensory sources to make sense of the world.

What might you see in someone with a parietal lobe injury?

A little clumsy – Damage to the parietal lobes can cause a number of problem all of which could be seen as clumsiness, for example it can affect hand-eye co-ordination.  It can also cause a lack of awareness of certain body parts and their surrounding space.  Together these can give a general impression of behaving like “a bull in a china shop”.

Difficulty with words and numbers – Damage to the Parietal lobes interfere with visual perception and the ability to integrate information.  This can result in difficulties in reading, writing, mathematics and sometimes knowing left from right.  It can also give the individual problems visually focusing on more than one thing at a time.

Frustration and anger – Difficulties integrating information, focusing on more than one thing at a time and distorted understanding of visual and tactile information can result in a feelings of confusion and overload.  The individual may interpret this as always being told off or called stupid as they don’t know how to handle more than one instruction at a time.

A bit dishevelled – The combination of lack of hand eye co-ordination and body awareness can also result in poor self-care.  The individual may be unaware that their hair needs washing or they need a shave.  Dressing can also be a physical problem as they may have difficulty manipulating clothing or doing up buttons.

How can Reach help your client?

Assessment and education – Reach’s experienced rehabilitation programme managers will carry out detailed tests and exercises to establish where the problems lie.  It can be difficult for friends and family to understand the changes they now see in the individual.  As a result Reach may recommend that as well as providing a rehabilitation programme for the individual a programme of education about brain injury is provided for the family.

Provide Rehabilitation – Each programme is individually designed to address the problems identified and also the personal targets of the individual.  The programme will be delivered by a professionally qualified, experienced Reach Programme Manager who will work with the individual to overcome the challenges.  Reach may recommend that other specialist, such as educational consultants, are utilised to work on some specific issues.

Target focused, time limited – Rehabilitation is an active process of addressing problems.  At the beginning of the programme targets will be identified and achieving these will indicate that the rehabilitation programme is complete. An exception to this are children who will benefit from rehabilitation input at each of the major developmental stages in their development.  Typically these developmental stages roughly equate to starting and moving between schools.

To find out more about our rehabilitation programmes to help those with a traumatic brain injury to the frontal lobes, or with any other acquired brain injury, please contact us via our form, or call a member of our team on 01423 326000.