Brain Injury Hope Foundation

HappyNeuron Pro Case Study: Brain Injury Hope Foundation

Type: Post-Concussion Care, TBI, Cognitive Rehabilitation, Language Rehabilitation

Location: Denver, Colorado, USA

Size: 2+ Clinicians (Speech and Language Pathologists, Certified Brain Injury Specialists)

HappyNeuron Pro user since: 2021

Clinic's challenge:

Clinician needed a digital tool to keep clients engaged and to provide an option for clients to complete therapy exercises independently.

About Dr. Mary Ann Keatley

Mary Ann Keatley, Ph.D., CCC, Speech-Language Pathologist, and Neurotherapist

Co-founder and Board Member

Dr. Mary Ann Keatley Ph.D., CCC, is a speech-language pathologist and neurotherapist specializing in traumatic brain injury rehabilitation. She has had her own private practice for over 30 years and had worked in an inpatient brain injury unit for 13 years prior to transitioning to private practice. In her practice, she primarily does evaluation and treatment of clients who have experienced a traumatic brain injury. Most of the clients Dr. Mary Ann Keatley sees have mild to moderate brain injury.

“HappyNeuron Pro is very elegant because it actually pinpoints cognitive areas and it gives really strong stimulus items and that’s how you actually build cognitive functions.” – Dr. Mary Ann Keatley

Dr. Mary Ann Keatley spends most of her time rehabilitating her client’s cognitive skills, including multi-track thinking, language and word retrieval, and processing speed. She also does functional symptom questionnaires to understand better where her clients are experiencing functional impairments so that she can address those concerns during therapy by helping her clients find effective strategies to help them compensate.

Language is a complex cognitive skill that involves the entire brain. Primarily, people are familiar with Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area in the left hemisphere due to the extensive research in stroke rehabilitation medicine. However, the right hemisphere has been found to be involved in the comprehension of idiomatic speech. Clients with an injury in one or more areas of their brain may present with different speech and language difficulties.

Dr. Mary Ann Keatley sees clients that have a variety of language problems which include neurogenic stuttering and pragmatic language problems. To address these language difficulties her clients have, she uses HappyNeuron Pro’s digital exercises in addition to the downloadable worksheets that HappyNeuron Pro releases on their website and social media. Using computerized rehabilitation tools like HappyNeuron Pro, clients with brain injury are able to access rehabilitative content pertaining to the areas of difficulty they experience wherever they are.

“Language is really complex in terms of traumatic brain injury. A lot of times, people will have an injury, such as a frontal lobe injury, that will affect the left hemisphere. Sometimes, clients with brain injury will have specific language difficulties, such as problems with nouns.” – Dr. Mary Ann Keatley

How HappyNeuron Helps

“I started using computerized cognitive training for several reasons. Number one, it is sometimes the only thing that people will do. It allows you to watch what your patients are doing and how they are doing it online. It is good if you are doing litigation because you have all the information there. Clients are able to work independently. I find that computerized cognitive training programs are one of the most effective ways to improve the speed of processing and flexibility of thinking. On HappyNeuron Pro, you have the exercise Two Timing which involves auditory memory. Many computerized cognitive training programs do not have auditory memory exercises but the ones that do are excellent. ” – Mary Ann Keatley

In her therapy sessions, Dr. Mary Ann Keatley reviews her client’s HappyNeuron Pro homework to see what areas of cognition they are struggling with and where they are improving. Based on their performance of their home exercises, she can target and fine tune her client’s rehabilitation plan according to their current performance and their goals. Dr. Mary Ann Keatley sees her clients for about 60 minutes per session. Using HappyNeuron Pro, Dr. Mary Ann Keatley has been able to see functional improvements in her clients.

“I see a lot of improvements in my client’s speed of processing, multi-track thinking, flexibility of thinking… and I see that my client’s perform more functionally.”

In addition to her private practice, Dr. Mary Ann Keatley serves on the board of the Brain Injury Hope Foundation as a Co-founder. There, she works to develop resources for people living with brain injury in the state of Colorado. She has also published a book with Laura L. Whittemore titled Understanding Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI).

Grab a copy of her book on Amazon

Solution:

Utilizing HappyNeuron Pro’s exercises to provide options for clients to work independently and keep them engaged.

Outcomes:

When incorporating HappyNeuron Pro into her program, Mary Anne has seen improvements in her client’s processing speed, cognitive flexibility, and more.

See the video case study here:

For more information...

Learn more about the Brain Injury Hope Foundation here.

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