Acquired brain injury (ABI): ABI is an impairment of brain function. Common causes are brain lesions caused by such traumas as car accidents, falls, assaults or sports injuries. Brain lesions that cause ABI can also be due to tumours, bleeding and infections of the brain or to poisoning from alcohol, drugs or through exposure to toxic chemicals.

Aids and adaptations: Equipment/assistive technology and alterations to the home to help people with disabilities to retain their independence within the community.

Care plan: A written statement specifying objectives for the future, and how the objectives will be met, which is agreed between practitioners, individuals and their carers or families.

Cognition: (Cognitive ability), the ability to think, remember and understand.

Community rehabilitation: Rehabilitation in the person’s own home or local community.

Complication: Problem resulting from an illness or injury.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS): Surgical procedure used to treat patients with a variety of disabling neurological symptoms that cannot be adequately controlled with medications.

Disinhibition: A loss of inhibition that some people experience due to damage to the brain.

Electronic assistive technology: Covers electronic products designed to increase the independence of people with disabilities and older people. Examples include telecare alarms, communication aids and environmental controls.

Environmental interventions: Changes to living, work and leisure environments to reduce possible disabling effects of these environments. These can range from structural alterations to buildings to providing aids that control devices (e.g. doors, TVs) remotely.

Epilepsy: Epilepsy is a physical symptom that results from a neurological disturance in the brain.

Functional restrictions: Limitations on an individual’s ability to carry out everyday activities.

Holistic: Holistic medicine is a system of health care, which fosters a co-operative relationship among all those involved and emphasises the need to look at the person as a whole.

Inter-agency: Involving more than one agency.

Low-awareness state: A person who has very limited thinking abilities and little awareness of their surroundings.

Motor functions: The operation of a muscle, nerve or nerve centre that affects or produces movement.

Multidisciplinary/Interdisciplinary teams:
Multidisciplinary teams are made up of a group of professionals who work alongside one another to meet the needs of the patient. Their interventions are parallel but not necessarily made in close collaboration. Generic therapy teams within a district general hospital typically adopt this approach.
Interdisciplinary teams take a more integrated approach. They work together towards a single set of agreed goals and often undertake joint sessions, (for example, a specialist team working on a neuro-rehabilitation unit or a community neuro-rehabilitation team would typically adopt this approach).

Neurologist: A doctor who specialises in diagnosing and treating conditions involving the nervous system.

Neurology: The study and treatment of diseases of the nervous system.

Neurorehabilitation teams: Multi-professional teams responsible for the rehabilitation of people with neurological conditions.

Neuroscience: A term covering all scientific disciplines concerned with the nervous system.

Neurosurgeon: A surgeon who operates on the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system).

Neurosurgery: The practice of operating on the central nervous system.

Parkinson’s disease (PD): A progressive neurological condition affecting movements such as walking, talking and writing. It has three main symptoms: tremor, muscular rigidity or stiffness, and bradykinesia (slowness of movement).

Persistent vegetative state: This sometimes foIlows a coma. Individuals in such a state have lost their thinking abilities and awareness of their surroundings, but retain their non-cognitive functions (e.g. primitive reflexes) and normal sleep patterns but this may fluctuate.

Post-acute rehabilitation: intensive inpatient rehabilitation to assist recovery of neurological function, such as learning to walk again, following an acute injury (such as brain or spinal cord injury).

Rehabilitation: A multidisciplinary process which supports the individual to achieve their maximum potential to function physically, socially and psychologically through support and intervention.

Relapse: The return of symptoms and signs of a disease after a period of improvement.

Remission: A disappearance of or reduction in symptoms.

Sensory impairment: Impairment of hearing, sight, speech, touch or cognition.

Spasticity: Continued muscle contraction or overactivity, similar to severe and sustained ‘cramp’.

Transitional accommodation: For people who have been discharged from an inpatient facility and for whom the long-term plan is independent living in the community, but who need rehabilitation and short-term support with some aspects of everyday living.

Vocational needs: The support needs a person has in relation to their work, education or training.

Vocational rehabilitation: Rehabilitation designed specifically to help the individual to remain in, or return to work, or to find an alternative occupation.