Brain Injury Awareness Month on March, 2025: Is March Brain Injury Awareness Month?

March, 2025 is Brain Injury Awareness Month 2025. Brain Injury Facts & Info Brain injury facts and information learn about the injury & get help.

Yes, March is brain injury awareness month!

For more than 20 years, the Brain Injury Association of Minnesota has been dedicated to enhancing the quality of life and bringing the promise of a better tomorrow for all people affect by brain injury. As part of that dedication, we invite you to learn more about brain injury and join us in sharing information about this silent health epidemic, both during March and throughout the year. By partnering with community members like you, it is our hope that increased awareness will lead to a more supportive environment for people affected by brain injury and aide in prevention.

Spread the word!!!!!!!

Good luck!

What role does the brain play in the sense of self?

For your first question: "What role does the brain play in the sense of self?" That's an amazing question.

I just read an amazing article on this and want to share it with you. You can find it below in source.

It talks about the "Layers of Self-Awareness", saying...

We begin to establish a sense of self shortly after birth. From three to five months old, babies start to gain control over their movements; they recognize themselves in the mirror at about 18 months; they grasp concepts such as “I” and “mine” at about age two; and they readily describe their own feelings at about three years old. Once children reach elementary school, they make friends and begin to draw comparisons, which further inform their self-image. Teens and young adults continue to expand their personal identities as they practice progressively nuanced social skills.

Neural connections form in step with these developmental stages. A newborn’s brain exhibits relatively few of the trillions of synaptic linkages it will ultimately possess. By a child’s sixth year, however, his or her brain has experienced an explosive growth in its connections. Over time, experience consolidates and prunes these associations: unused links disappear, while significant or frequent experiences reinforce other channels. As this fine-tuning takes place, we become increasingly well acquainted with ourselves—from our basic biological urges to deep-seated desires and dreams.

The sense of self has multiple components. To begin with, there is the ability to recognize one’s own face and body and to know what those body parts are doing at any given moment. There is also the sense of ownership—you perceive your body as belonging to you—and the sense of agency: you feel responsible for your own movements and actions. And at the highest level, there is the awareness of one’s own emotions and the ability to link disparate life experiences to a stable self-image.

Brain malfunctions can disrupt any of these processes. We have seen how depression and mania can derail a stable self-image, but other aspects of self are equally vulnerable. There are people, for example, who function pretty much normally except that they do not recognize themselves in a mirror. Others have trouble tracking the movements of their bodies. Some may even disown one of their limbs [see “Amputee Envy,” by Sabine Mueller; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008].

In the mid-1990s neurologist Antonio R. Damasio, then at the University of Iowa, distilled the self’s multiple layers into a three-part hierarchy. The lowest level, which Damasio calls the proto-self, corresponds to a simple, neural representation of the body. This proto-self oversees basic physical functions such as metabolism, body temperature and circadian rhythms. We are not conscious of the proto-self unless problems arise, eliciting attention from the core self (the intermediate level), which generates our immediate cognizance of the here and now. At this level of awareness, signals from the body give rise to nonverbal impulses—feelings of hunger, sadness or cold. The autobiographical self, Damasio’s top layer, enables us to evaluate our impulses rationally—referencing earlier experiences and current goals—and to guide our behavior in a targeted way.

These three layers of self emanate from increasingly sophisticated processing centers in the brain. The proto-self is associated with the brain stem and the hypothalamus, structures found at the base of the brain near the spinal cord. The core self enlists areas in the interbrain, or diencephalon, which serve as a relay for visceral activities, and the amygdala, which is primarily involved in processing emotions. It also activates the cingulate cortex and the insula, which are connected to emotions, and the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which act as an internal governor, forming plans of action and issuing commands. The autobiographical self, meanwhile, relies on linguistic abilities that only humans possess. Accordingly, it employs speech and memory centers in the hippocampus and Broca’s area, as well as parts of the prefrontal cortex. Many of the areas related to the self are found along the brain’s midline, where its two hemispheres meet.

Well, hope this helps. I thought the entire article was really interesting so you may wanna check out other sections.

For your SECOND question, that's a much easier one. The Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis regulates your stress hormones that are secreted from your adrenal glands (the glands on top of your kidneys).

Well, hope this helped some and wish you a lot of luck!

Traumatic brain injury!?

Because of the time lapse from the time of your concussion till now, you are dealing with what they call post concussive syndrome. They can only treat the symptoms on this.

You need to be treated by a neurologist.

And as my family says to me - quit doing that!!!

You didn't tell us why, and it certainly doesn't sound like a normal thing to do - but do me a favor and don't do it anymore.

I know how it feels when you think you should be better and you aren't, you tend to get panicky and over analyze things.

I responded on your other post. The diagnosis was correct. You are just dealing with ongoing symptoms.

Please be careful with your head. I suffer symptoms 5 years after the fact. In the beginning I had to relearn how to get dressed. Mine too was diagnosed as a mild traumatic brain injury.

Take care of yourself - no more self induced shaken baby syndrome - you are too old for that:)

Good luck to you.

Friend,

To reply to your question... everybody's brain is different, therefore everyone who gets a brain injury's symptoms will be different. There is no way that any two person's will experience exactly the same thing. That being said there are many similarities in the population that doctor's can say yep people who suffer brain injuries to this section of the brain will do XYZ. I do not live in the UK. I live in the good old USA. So with the socialized medicine in the UK I have no idea what type of treatment you would receive there or how quickly you would receive treatment. I do know that Chinese medicine is different in a lot of ways. Since I have been known to use a lot of homeopathic remedies etc. I am not a person who says it has to be a normal Western drug or procedure to help. So, I don't know that I could judge that part. I know that acupuncture helps some and not others.

However, the issues you are dealing with are stemming from your brain not your spine. So it would seem that the healing of the problem would need to start there too. That does not mean you could not get symptom relief from acupuncture, nor does it mean that their theories about it are incorrect. It just means that I have no experience with it and I am looking it at it from a Western perspective.

In the first month or so I was traumatized that there was no way I could be in a crowd. So I don't know how I would have dealt with trying to learn. To this day I can try to look at a page that has legalese (which previously wouldn't have been a problem) and I can not read or comprehend it. I spent the first 3 months in a dark room with round the clock headaches and migraines. I forgot all habitual things like hygiene routines and dressing routines. For days I could not remember that 8 + 5 = 13. I redid that problem so many times it wasn't funny.

But my experience is really irrelevant to your recovery. What is important to you is what areas of the brain where damaged. There are several good books by Dr. Daniel Amen that I would recommend for you or for someone who can help you. One is called Making a Good Brain Great: The Amen Clinic Program for Achieving and Sustaining Optimal Mental Performance and the other is called Magnificent Mind at Any Age: Natural Ways to Unleash Your Brain's Maximum Potential. These books are not written in medical terms but in layman's terms and they are easy to read.

One of them has a section in it where you can take a self-evaluation. It will help you understand what areas of your brain were effected and what types of things you can do to make it better. I took the evaluation and it helped me understand why I was having certain symptoms. My daughter read it and in areas of the brain where I was effected, she said "Hey, That's you Mom!!!"

What I learned was that I had indeed suffered a whiplash effect in my brain even though I just fell and hit my head on concrete stairs(with steel coping on them.) Not only did I suffer symptoms in the executive functioning section of the brain, the part that makes decisions, does math etc., but also the limbic section (controls emotions), and the section at the back base of your brain that controls sensitivity to light sound and other things. These books might be something for a little later on.

You will or if you are incapable of making a decision (I had that problem after the accident as well. I had to hire some one to teach me how to make a decision!!!) someone else will need to decide whether or not it makes sense for you to continue your education at the moment, or whether you need to take a break and work on recovery. At the beginning I couldn't even think for 30 minutes while talking without needing to go to sleep.

So perhaps you need to talk to someone (a close friend who knows you and your capabilities from before your injury - or a wise respected family member) to help you make some decisions about your treatment.