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Click here to download the full flyer for this training (PDF)As service providers you are in an important position to assist brain injury survivors throughout the many stages of recovery. Each person is diverse and each injury is unique; how do we deal with challenging situations and behaviors and still positively assist individuals in recovery? To learn the answers to this question please attend Brain Injury and Beyond: Effective Strategies for Challenging Situations, presented by the Brain Injury Association of Montana. This training will enhance your skills and provide strategies and tools that develop your work as a service provider working with people with brain injuries and co-occurring diagnosis. Please see the attached brochure for more information about the training and the presenter Ben Woodworth, MSW. Register here for Brain Injury and Beyond: Effective Strategies for Challenging Situations on August 10th (Billings, MT) and August 12th (Missoula, MT)

What: The 4th annual National Brain Injury Employment Conference, Building Bridges, will bring together all the stakeholders in the brain injury and employment fields—survivors, veterans, family members and professionals—for an interactive and inspirational two days of learning and networking. “One of the biggest adjustments brain injury survivors make is often around employment. With support and retraining, survivors can open new doors to success,” said Conference Chair and Certified Brain Injury Specialist Trainer Nancy Freeman. Job hunters and professionals will discover useful tips on getting through school, accessing effective tools for employment and learning strategies for job seeking from nationally recognized experts. This conference will focus on finding purpose after brain injury and attendees will leave with insight into innovative employment strategies and have the opportunity to network with national professionals.

When: February 8, 2011 12:00 - 1:00pm Where: Mansfield Health Education Center Room 7 Billings, MT Target Audience: Primary Care Providers to include but not limited to Family Practice, Pediatrics, Emergency Department physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, advanced practice nurses, registered nurses, and all other healthcare providers of pediatric/adolescent patients Lecture Specific Objectives: At the end of this educational activity, participants should be able to: Discuss the pathophysiologic changes associated with brain trauma in children. Identify emotional and cognitive short and long term sequelae of brain trauma in children. List effective therapies for emotional and cognitive sequelae of mild brain injury in children. Series Objectives: At the end of this educational activity, participants should be able to: Apply current medical guidelines in the treatment of pediatric/adolescent patients.  Utilize multidisciplinary approach to the management of complex pediatric patients. Recognize the need for consultation and/or referral to pediatric specialists/subspecialists in a timely manner. Discuss the diagnostic approach and treatment of variety of pediatric diseases. If you would like to attend via videoconference contact: St. Vincent Healthcare University at 406.237.3348 or email svhu@svh-mt.org.  Reservations for videoconferencing must be made at least 24 hours prior to live activity.

The Brain Balance Achievement Center, a franchise that opened in Mequon last summer, offers a program that it contends can help children overcome attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, Asperger's syndrome, Tourette syndrome, autism and other disorders. The 12-week program - costing $6,000, plus roughly $125 to $500 in nutritional supplements - purportedly does this by addressing an imbalance between the right and left sides of the brain that it calls "functional disconnection syndrome." The program is based on the contention that ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other disorders all result from this syndrome. "That functional disconnection syndrome basically states in the literature that the two sides of the brain are not communicating effectively together due to the fact that one side of the brain is actually maturing at a faster rate than the other side," said Jeremy Fritz, a chiropractor and co-owner of the franchise. The "literature" consists of one study of children with ADHD, co-authored by the program's founder, published in an obscure journal based in Tel Aviv, Israel. There are no studies in respected, peer-reviewed journals that contend ADHD, dyslexia, autism and other disorders stem from the development of one side of the brain faster than the other. "None of the neuro research would even come close to suggesting that," said Mina Dulcan, a professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and the head of the child and adolescent psychiatry program at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Scientists studying the anatomy of children's brains during reading discovered something rather unexpected: Remedial training for poor readers results in a growth of white matter tracts in the brain, and the increase correlates with the level of improvement in sounding out words.

What happens when neuroscience meets Dr. Seuss? Hosted by Henry Winkler, who has had his own struggles with reading, Reading and the Brain explores how brain scientists are working to solve the puzzle of why some children struggle to read and others don't. Startling new research shows the answer may lie in how a child's brain is wired from birth. This program is the eighth episode of Launching Young Readers, WETA's award–winning series of innovative half-hour programs about how children learn to read, why so many struggle, and what we can do to help.

It is estimated that as many as 1/3 of individuals with autism spectrum disorder also have epilepsy. Epilepsy is a brain disorder marked by recurring seizures, or convulsions. Experts propose that some of the brain abnormalities that are associated with autism may contribute to seizures. These abnormalities can cause changes in brain activity by disrupting neurons in the brain. Neurons are cells that process and transmit information and send signals to the rest of the body. So overloads or disturbances in the activity of these neurons can result in imbalances that cause seizures. 

Bullying is a major issue. This is especially true among the disabled. A recent study focused on bullying within the school aged autistic population, and I discussed that at the Autism Science Foundation blog. Another study has just come out recently in School Psychology Quarterly, National prevalence rates of bully victimization among students with disabilities in the United States.