Rehab Terms
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ADL: Activities of Daily Living: i.e., self-care, travel, functional tasks, money management, home management, time management, and health and medical management.

Affect: The emotional reaction to any given situation. The four most common types of reactions are: lability, euphoria, depression, and flattening.

AFO: Ankle-foot orthosis; short leg brace.

Aggression: A form of behavior which leads to self-assertion; it may arise from innate drives and/or response to frustration; it may be manifested by destructive and attacking behavior, by covert attitudes of hostility and obstructionism, or by a healthy self expressive drive to mastery.

Agitation: A state of anxiety accompanied by motor restlessness.

Agnosia: Inability to recognize a sensory stimulus. May occur in any sensory modality.

Ambulate: To walk.

Anoxia: Lack of oxygen. Cells of the brain need oxygen to stay alive. When blood flow to the brain is reduced or when oxygen in the blood is too low, brain cells are damaged.

Apathy: The lack of involvement in task presented--no behaviors of interest are initiated.

Aphasia: Loss of the ability to express oneself and/or to understand language. RECEPTIVE APHASIA refers to the inability to understand what someone else is saying. EXPRESSIVE APHASIA refers to an inability to express oneself.

Apraxia: Inability to perform purposeful, skilled motor acts either spontaneously or upon request, despite adequate strength, coordination, sensation, and comprehension. There are several form of apraxia: limb-kinetic, oral, ideational, or motor.

Apraxia of Speech: A disorder of speech articulation characterized by impaired ability to program the position and sequences of the speech muscles for the voluntary production of speech sounds. This disorder involves difficulty forming a “blueprint” of instructions for the speech muscles, rather than weakness of the muscles themselves.

Aspiration: Impairment in the swallowing process wherein food, liquid, or secretions have entered the lungs.

Assistive Device: Special or modified equipment which assists a disabled person.

Ataxia: Inability to coordinate muscle movements or having irregular muscle movements.

Attention: The ability to concentrate on one task without being distracted.

Attention span: The length of time one is able focus on events in the environment.

Behavior: Conduct and response to the environment. Very often following brain injury, an aspect of the person’s personality may become exaggerated.

Body Image: One’s mental image of his/her body that expresses one’s feels or thoughts about one’s body rather than representing an exact picture of the physical structure, possible exaggerating desirable or undesirable characteristics.

Brain Stem: The lower portion of the brain connecting it to the spinal column. It controls consciousness, drowsiness and attention.

Combativeness: Easily elicited physical resistance to any activities suggested (usually reactive.)

Cerebellum: The portion of the brain that is located below the cortex. The cerebellum is concerned with coordinating movements.

Cognition: That operation of the mind process by which we become aware of objects of thought and perception, including all aspects of perceiving, thinking and remembering.

Cognitive flexibility: The ability to shift one’s cognitive or perceptual set; to shift from one activity to another without becoming confused or “stuck” in the previous way of doing a task.

Clonus: Alternate involuntary muscular contraction and relaxation in rapid succession, most commonly seen in the foot and ankle, or at the hand and wrist. Appears to be trembling or shaking of the foot or hand.

Cognition: The learned set of rules on which all thinking is based.

Cognitive Flexibility: The ability to shift one’s cognitive or perceptual set; to shift from one activity to another without becoming confused or “stuck” in the previous way of doing a task.

Cognitive Functioning: Refers to those brain functions which allow us to think about and perceive objects/situations in the world around us. It includes all aspects of perceiving, thinking, and remembering.

Community Re-Entry: The process of equipping the person with physical and/or cognitive challenges with community skills appropriate to his/her lifestyle. Community re-entry includes the goal of being able to function independently outside of the rehabilitation setting. Skills learned through the rehabilitation process are integrated into his/her lifestyle.

Comprehension: The ability to understand or draw meaning from what is seen, heard, or touched.

Concrete Thinking: Difficulty in forming abstract concepts, in speculation about what might be, in grouping things into categories. A person will have difficulty reasoning and solving problems.

Confabulation: Adding imaginary information to fill gaps in memory.

Contracture: Loss of joint motion; stiffness.

Cortex: The largest portion of the brain consisting of two cerebral hemispheres. This is the area where most "thinking" and cognitive functioning takes place. It is sometimes referred to as the "cerebrum."

CT-Scan: A series of x-rays taken at different levels of the brain.

Deficit awareness: The brain injured individual often underestimates his/her own level of dysfunction, believing nothing is wrong and attempting tasks impossible to do — alternatively, there can be an over-awareness of deficit and no awareness of capability.

Depression: A state characterized by withdrawal, helplessness, crying and low energy levels.

Diplopia: Seeing two images of a single object ("double vision").

Dysarthria: Difficulty forming or articulating words. Damage to the cortex or damage to the brain stem may cause this.

Emotional Lability: The loss of control over one’s emotions. Lability is characterized by sudden outbursts of laughter or crying, swings of mood.

Emotional Behavioral Functioning: Refers to emotional reactions and/or personal conduct related to one’s interaction with people, places, or things. Reactions can be, and often are, related to internal conflicts the person experiences.

Executive Functions: Cognitive skills, such as: planning, prioritizing, sequencing, self-monitoring, self-correcting, inhibiting, initiating, controlling or altering behavior.

Extremity: Refers to arm and/or leg.

Flattening: A blunting of emotions where the person does not demonstrate the normal variations of emotions, but rather appears apathetic and disinterested.

Frontal Lobe: The area of the brain located at the front on both the left and right sides. This area plays a role in controlling emotions, motivation, social skills, expressive language and inhibition of impulses.

Frustration: An emotional/behavioral reaction to failure at attempted tasks and acted-out in a variety of ways.

Functional: Routine day-to-day activities. This ability to incorporate developing skills into meaningful activity in a reasonable amount of time.

Gait Training: Instruction in walking; may be with or without equipment.

Handsplint: Metal, plaster, or plastic support for hand, wrist, or fingers; used to position or to increase function.

Hemiparesis: Weakness on one side of the body resulting from injury to the brain.

Higher Cognitive Functions: Usually refers to judgement; abstraction, problem solving, planning, reasoning, etc.

Impulsive: A poor ability to reflect on consequences of action, thus immediate action takes place inappropriately.

Initiation: The ability to begin an activity spontaneously. A person may remain inactive unless constantly prompted to eat, dress, or perform other activities.

Irritability: Easily aroused negative emotions.

Judgement: The ability to make appropriate decisions based upon available information and expected consequences.

Lethargy/Fatigue: Able to awaken with stimulation; drowsy but awake.

Limbic System: A set of structures that plays an important role in memory, attention, emotions and behavior.

Motor Planning: The ability to plan and copy demonstrated acts or carry out movements commonly associated with tools and implements or action words.

Occipital Lobe: The posterior (back) part of each side of the brain involved in perceiving and understanding visual information.

Orientation: The knowledge of who you are, where you are, and what time it is. Patients are often confused as to their whereabouts.

Paralysis: Inability to move a muscle or group of muscles.

Paresis: Weakness of a muscle or a group of muscles.

Parietal Lobe: The upper middle lobe of each side of the brain involved in perceiving and understanding sensations and closely linked to speech fluency and writing.

Perception: Recognition and proper interpretation of stimuli received in the brain, especially from the other organs of special sense; i.e. vision, learning, tactile.

Perplexity: Lack of apparent understanding of stimulus input--behavior, connections.

Perseveration: Meaningless repetition of verbal or physical response, or repetition of answers which aren’t related to the series of questions asked.

Physical Functioning: Refers to functions of our body such as vision, swallowing or walking; and the use of supportive devices and exercises to improve our abilities.

Pressure Area: A sore of discolored area or skin caused by sustained pressure.

Quadriparesis: Weakness of both sides of the body resulting from injury to the brain.

Range of motion: The arc of motion through which a joint passes.

Reflex: An automatic response to a given stimulus, depending only on the anatomic relations of the nervous system. A reflex is built into the nervous system and does not need the intervention of conscious thought to take effect.

Selective Attention: Ability to focus attention upon a specific thing or task for a given amount of time with other distractions present; ability to ignore other stimuli.

Self-monitoring: The awareness of one’s behavior and the accuracy or appropriateness of one’s performance. Usually automatic and ongoing.

Sequencing: The ability to order parts of a task correctly. May be physical (sequencing body movements smoothly) or language based (sequencing words appropriately into sentences) as well as keeping track to the correct order of things presented to them.

Socially inappropriate: A display of poor awareness, or occurrence of poor judgement of one’s own behavior in relation to others.

Spatial Relations: The ability to recognize the relationship between one form and another in spatial areas.

Spasm: A sudden, abnormal, involuntary muscular contraction.

Temporal Lobe: The lower middle part of each side of the brain involved in receiving information from the auditory system and involved in memory.

Topographical Orientation: Difficulty in understanding and remembering relationships of places to one another so that one may have difficulty finding his/her way in space.

Word retrieval: The ability to retrieve the appropriate word to name an item or formulate an idea. A problem with word retrieval involves difficulty gaining access to desired words stored in the brain rather than a memory problem per se.

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