Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) or stroke, long-term mental fatigue may occur with significant impact on work and social interactions. With the intention to measure mental fatigue irrespective of neurological illness, we developed the Mental Fatigue Scale (MFS). The scale incorporates affective, cognitive and sensory symptoms, duration of sleep and daytime variation in symptom severity. In this study, we evaluated the MFS and its relationship to cognitive and emotional functions. Azouvi and co-authorsproposed that mentally-tiring activities after brain injury are related toreduced resources and that patients with brain injury also describemental activity as more energy-demanding than healthy subjects [43]. TBI subjects also performed slower on a complex attention test, mademore errors and reported a higher level of subjective fatigue.Information processing speed, attention and working memory weresignificantly reduced for the brain injured groups compared to controls. The more demanding TMT C and D also resulted in moreerrors being made by brain injured subjects compared to controls.Processing speed was also found to be a significant predictor for the rating on MFS. Impaired processing speed and attention in subjectssuffering from long-term cognitive deficits after brain injury may result in an overload of the present brain capacity, with subsequent mental fatigue. Birgitta Johansson, Evaluation of the Mental Fatigue Scale and its relation to Cognitive and Emotional Functioning after Traumatic Brain Injury or Stroke

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Last date updated on September, 2024