Chad Francour

Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery, Health & Healing

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Ask Chad

Join Chad Francour as he answers questions about living with a traumatic brain injury.  

The purpose of this page is to help any brain injury individuals live a better life.   I also want to create a dialogue with my audience.  If there are ANY questions about my continuous recovery and what helps and what did not I will be happy to answer.

Here is an example:


Andrea: Do you have any notice any kind cognitive effects after your Traumatic Brain Injury?

Chad: Yes Andrea, I do notice some cognitive impairments.

Andrea: What are those cognitive impairments? What have you used to aid that problem?

Chad: The three main aftereffects of a brain injury, one being memory, the other being speed of processing, and lastly my short-term memory.  For the memory I use a calendar either in my phone or in my monthly planner to organize appointment times, work schedule, and most importantly to organize my day.  I use my phone because it is much more manageable than my big bulky calendar, plus I like technology and I feel that it is more with the times.

 The other disadvantage that I have noticed after my TBI is speed of processing. Speed of processing is a person’s way of processing cognitive information.  Considering the complexity of the brain, now, there are certain tasks that require more time than others. When it comes to unfamiliar work I may need more time to process the information, but when it comes to automatic information I can tell you everything that I know.  For example, when it came to strange concepts or theories in my psychology degree I needed to give time to process said material.  When it comes to information that I have more feeling (e.g., family or pets) I can talk your ear off with information  about them.

Lastly the final thing that I have noticed is my short term memory. We should define some terms first that are associated with short-term memory. I have an excellent working memory. A working memory is a system that is responsible for holding temporary information and processing of new and already stored information.  In other words, it is a very short-lived memory process that needs constant attention or that information may be lost.  If I define short-term memory as having a limited capacity (e.g., 6-8 items), limited duration (E.g., amount of time in memory), and encoding were information is recalled at a later time.   In other words, this double number is the capacity of holding a small amount of information for more than  1-3 minutes. Where a person could become distracted and lose the train of thought.

Take this example for working memory, if we were talking about some occasion where you or I experienced some event. I could carry on the conversation with you.   Now look at this example for short-term memory, if we were talking about some event and then changed the topic to music and then to what you had been doing yesterday, I might not recall some or all details from the event when we first started talking.

Andrea: Wow Chad that is pretty intense!  Thank you for a much for explaining that to me!

 Chad:  It was my pleasure.


Do you have a question for Chad? Your question could be posted to this website in future editions of Ask Chad.

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