Higher Mental Functions
Cognitive or mental symptoms can include confusion or impaired cognition, problems with attention, impaired judgment, and amnesia or other problems with memory, especially short-term memory. Problems with memory and attention are the longest-lasting cognitive symptoms; one in four people with PCS still suffer from memory problems a year after the injury. PCS may cause slowed information processing and reactions to stimuli or difficulty with abstract thinking or problem solving. People may also experience a decrease in abilities related to work performance or social interaction. While cognitive symptoms usually resolve within a few months of injury, physical and emotional symptoms can last longer. Most cognitive symptoms clear within half a year of the injury, and the longest-lasting ones, such as memory, attention and language problems, usually resolve within a year.
Read more about this topic: Post-concussion Syndrome, Signs and Symptoms
Famous quotes containing the words higher, mental and/or functions:
“We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gifts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate.”
—Elizabeth Gould Davis (b. 1910)
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)