Resilience after a neurological pathology: What impact on the cognitive abilities of patients with brain damage?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to examine resilience in patients with traumatic brain injury and patients who suffered from stroke. As traumatic brain injury and stroke both have a recovery potential, we investigate cognitive recovery in this context. Given the involvement of resilience in physiological recovery and positive emotions in enhancing cognitive capacities, we hypothesised that resilience could be related to cognitive abilities and recovery following traumatic brain injury and stroke. Our results show the same degree of resilience and cognitive capacities in our participants in two separate assessments. An improvement in cognitive abilities was observed, as was a correlation between these abilities and resilience. In other words, the greater the resilience, the higher the patient’s cognitive performances. Resilience appears to influence cognitive abilities in participants with brain damage and also be involved in recovery.

KEYWORDS:

• Traumatic brain injury
• stroke
• resilience
• cognitive abilities
• recovery

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Victoria Grace who edited this paper and Farid El Massioui for his comments on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.