Success Stories:
Brain Injury & Stroke

children with brain injuries

Program Integration

Our team of professionals is dedicated to setting our clients and their families up for success. We integrate program elements across all aspects of a client's life for consistency and maximum progress, from school to home.

Brain Injury & Stroke

Student Name: Michael
Age: 11
Diagnosis: Suffered a stroke while playing a sport at age 10

Functional Challenges: Michael entered Jacob's Ladder with a complete loss of vocal language and language comprehension. Although he had previously been an advanced placement student, he lost all academic ability. He experienced mobility and gait challenges and had limited use of his right hand.

Our comprehensive evaluations, including a qEEG brain map, identified and measured where communication flow was lacking in Michael's brain (hypo-coherence) or was locked and overly used (hyper-coherence).

Focusing on the top 10 overactive and top 10 underactive regions of his brain, Michael's team worked with him on his individualized model of care. This included specific activities to normalize these connections. His plan was developed to achieve the following goals:

Goal #1: Focus on personal strengths, practice self-affirmation and mindfulness.

Goal #2: Concentrate on the present to maintain a healthy state.

Goal #3: Assess situations and express appropriate emotions/body language/dialogue rather than enter a perseverative cycle.

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"It was so integrated – every need he had they could address but they weren’t addressing it in a silo. It was an integrated plan where he would be going through his day learning and playing while all these things are happening and he isn’t even aware of it.”

​- Michael's Parents

Michael's Program and Functional Gains

Michael's individualized plan included activities to help him overcome anxiety and patterns of negative self-perception and self-talk as he rebuilt his physical and mental abilities. With his provider implementing his care plan with Hope, Truth, and Love, Michael began seeing the positive results of his efforts and gradually turned his self-criticism into self-confidence. Daily behavioral measurements noted reduced perseveration, negative comparisons, and rote dialogue. He experienced large academic and physical gains over eight months.

Starting at Jacob's Ladder

  1. Loss of all vocal language output

  2. Loss of language comprehension

  3. Mobility and gait challenges with limited use of his right hand

  4. Loss of all academic ability after having been an advanced placement student

September 2019

  1. Employed self-referencing and perspective-taking to advocate for his needs appropriately 

  2. Frequently participated in social gatherings and built a large social network

  3. Increased complexity of his thoughts, allowing for higher academic output and more complex language ability

Michael's Brain Improvement

Our Interpersonal Whole-Brain Model of Care achieves transformational outcomes that clients and families experience daily. Michael made huge strides in communication, emotional regulation, and academics. Below are examples of the neural connection improvements as shown through qEEG measurements.

The communication flow within Broca's Area in the Inferior Frontal/Prefrontal Cortex was lacking by -7.64 standard deviations from a normalized connection.

Through Michael's individualized model of care, activities were implemented that improved the communication flow to -1.89 standard deviations from a normalized connection.

Emily-Hypo-Coherence

The communication flow between the Temporal Lobe and Anterior Cingulate Gyrus was locked and overly used by +7.38 standard deviations from a normalized connection.

Through Michael's individualized model of care, activities were implemented that improved the communication flow to +0.44 standard deviations from a normalized connection.

Emily-Hyper-Coherence

Areas of Focus

Inferior Frontal/Prefrontal – Part of Broca’s Area (Left)
  • Verbal language functions – Broca’s Area
  • Inhibition of actions
  • Mirror neurons and imitation of social interactions
Prefrontal-Cortex-Left
Temporal Lobe (Left)
  • Generation of words and sentences
  • Comparing present with past experiences
  • Episodic memory (remembering events) and declarative memory (remembering facts)
Temporal-Lobe-BA-22-Left
Anterior Cingulate Gyrus​ (Left)
  • Decision making
  • Motivation and learning
Anterior-Cingulate-Gyrus-BA-33-Left

Find out how Jacob's Ladder helps clients with brain injuries maximize their potential.

Listen to how Jacob's Ladder helped Kelly Dalby's son, Connor.

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Jacob's Ladder School & Therapy Centers
Roswell (Main Campus) & Atlanta (Buckhead)
407 Hardscrabble Road
Roswell, Georgia 30075

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