Brain Injuries
A brain injury can be caused by the rapid acceleration/deceleration of a motor vehicle. Essentially what hapens is when the head and neck are whipped back and forth at a rapid rate, the brain within the skull bounces from the front to back or side to side. This causes a brain deformation in terms of changes to the shape and volume of the brain.

In a traumatic brain injury, often referred to as TBI, structural damage involves physical destruction of the tissue or cell and functional damage involves the loss of certain functions that one would normally perform. In most cases when there is some structural damage, there is also some loss of ability to function. However, loss of ability to function may occur without the presence of any structural damage. Thus, you have injuries such as 'shear force injuries' where the axons shift or shear with respect to each other thereby causing some injury to the brain.

Psychologists and neuro-psychologists are often used to perform examinations to show the extent of the functional loss after a traumatic brain injury. These functional losses can include emotional swings, loss of memory, photosensitivity, noise sensitivity, vision problems, speech problems, and numerous other functional difficulties. Traumatic brain injuries are especially tragic for the individual as well as the individual's family. The cost of recovery from a traumatic brain injury can be great as well as frustrating to the afflicted person.

Methods of Detecting Brain Injury
There are several methods that doctors, psychiatrist and psychologists use to detect brain injuries. One such method is the EEG or the electroencephalographic. The EEG can be valuable in its ability to reflect immediately on the functional modifications of the brain as they occur making an EEG a valuable compliment to clinical and neuro imaging methods for head injuries.

Two other methods of defining or discovering concrete brain injuries are computed tomography or (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). With the use of a MRI or CT scan the physician may be able to discover abnormalities in the brain. However, this may not tell the physician what the actual symptoms or extent of the brain injury will be manifested. In the case of a MRI, the physician may study the MRI scan and be able to determine the degree of altered consciousness number and location of abnormalities. They also may be able to discover the distribution of the legions and its correlation with the symptoms of traumatic brain injury. Physicians often take MRI scans or CT scans throughout the different recovery stages of a head injury. A thorough discussion of the methods of some of these scientific methods of discovering a brain injury can only be had with a qualified expert physician. Although these are some of the scientific methods these are not all inclusive nor are they the only methods used in detecting pathology of a brain injury