Wounded troops often spend months in physical therapy to regain strength in their damaged bodies. Now, the military is trying something similar for military personnel with injured brains.
The Department of Defense is using computerized brain training programs to help personnel with traumatic brain injuries.
The approach is intended for people like 1st Lt. Frederick Simpson.
About a year ago, Simpson was knocked unconscious by the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan. He was also struck by a bullet that shattered his left shinbone.
Over the next few months, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington rebuilt his leg. But Simpson says there wasn't any operation to fix what the explosion had done to his brain.
"I would get confused," he says. "I had real poor short-term memory — real poor long-term memory, for that matter. I had trouble staying focused. I would be talking to somebody and then I would just kind of drift off."
Simpson would also forget where he was going or whether he'd turned off a burner on the stove. So he started visiting the Brain Fitness Center at Walter Reed. It's one of several centers set up by the Defense Department in the past few years to help people with brain injuries recover.
by JON HAMILTON
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