I’ve been doing some research on this. So there's just a lot we don't know about neuroplasticity, but there's a lot of things that we do know. So the brain is really fascinating where it can regenerate and reorganize itself to make new connections in order to compensate for the injury and kind of adapt. It can make new nerves and can change structure and reorganize what we call cortical maps. That's been really studied with stroke patients, but not so much with tbi patients. I think it really depends, plasticity can really vary depending on where the traumatic brain injury happened and the severity of it. I think with that being said it's just so important for people to participate in rehab and do your therapy, especially in the first three to six months. So really focusing on therapy, and then also because even if you're in therapy that's only three hours a day for the most part, so making sure that you're following up and doing therapy outside of the sessions. I think that patients that do that are you know the most successful in recovery.

When cells have died

Our brain is compensating after a brain injury, so when we have damage, unfortunately we do not regenerate cells once there's damage.  If there is a bleed in a certain area of the brain, that area does not regenerate like everything else in our body.  So what we need to do is establish neural pathways and rewire and compensate for what's not there anymore.  That's why we train a different hemisphere that can potentially take over what the damaged area did before, but that requires a lot more effort.