Conscious or Unconscious? Can someone be medically conscious but considered legally unconscious? What an interesting conundrum! According to the Oxford Dictionary, “unconsciousness is the state of being unconscious or the state of being uninformed or…
How can brain damage be used to create reasonable doubt? In 1990, a 40-year-old schoolteacher suddenly began using prostitutes and making inappropriate advances to his stepdaughter. The courts ordered him to go to Sexaholics Anonymous…
Traumatic Brain Injury in Criminal Cases After Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), people can experience personality changes, social anxiety, irritability, anger, depression, general anxiety, mood swings, emotional lability, and feelings of being overwhelmed. The bottom line…
TBI and Mental Illness What if a defendant commits a crime because of being affected by either an acute brain injury or an acquired or inherited brain disease? This is called the “brain defense.” In…
Alcohol, trauma, or underlying medical condition? The legal limit of blood alcohol content is set by the US Department of Motor Vehicles at 0.08%. However, not everyone presents the same way clinically, as different individuals…
The Frontal Cortex Connection: TBI and Drug Abuse The long-term effects of traumatic brain injury are at long last being acknowledged and researched in our society, partly due to the media’s attention to the severity…
This is the 4th out of 6 in this series of “5 things criminal attorneys should know about…” which I first posted a few years ago. Each month I highlight some areas of medicine that…
Many times, a police officer will interview a defendant after a fight or a car wreck where the person being interviewed has suffered head trauma. What the police officer may not understand is that even…
Conservative management of concussions is standard practice. Physical and cognitive rest is recommended for at least 24 hours pending cessation of symptoms. Gradual return to work, school, and physical activity is also endorsed. For a…
One common consequence of concussion is the post-concussion syndrome (PCS), which is a group of symptoms that includes headache, dizziness, decreased concentration, memory problems, irritability, fatigue, visual disturbances, sensitivity to noise, judgment problems, depression, and…
The initial diagnosis of concussion is based on evaluation of the symptoms a person reports, or someone else observes, after sustaining the injury. Concussion is commonly divided into three different types: Grade 1, Grade 2,…
When a bump, jolt, or blow to the head causes a change in the way the brain works, it is called a concussion. A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury (TBI) that causes…
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