Measuring The Unmeasurable - Decision-Making and Brain Injuries

Every year, approximately 1.5 million Americans suffer from a traumatic brain injury ranging from mild to severe. Today, there are between 3 and 5 million Americans living with a traumatic brain injury related disability that has significant implications for their quality of life.

In the late 1990s, Meseekna’s simulation technology was used to assess and retrain individuals who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. In particular, the simulation was deployed to bridge the gap for patients who appeared to perform well on clinical neurological and neuropsychological tests, but reported struggling with their real world functioning. In these kinds of patients, cognitive impairments are often unacknowledged and rehabilitation efforts stall.

Meseekna’s simulation technology was shown to be able to assess these cognitive deficits. For example, patients with head injury performed well on contextual activities in which they responded to specific information, but struggled to utilize information for planning or non-contextual situations. Patients were able to respond to the task at hand, but had a difficult time applying the information to other areas. It explains why patients, after initial recovery, perform well on traditional tests, but less so in less-structured day-to-day life of life, such as personal, social-community, and vocational spheres.

In addition, Meseekna training methodology was also used as a rehabilitation tool to improve functioning in patients with mild traumatic brain injury. The training resulted in significant improvement in the data to day functioning of these patients. This was achieved by focused training on specific metacognitive areas of thinking that were found to be sub-optimal in these patients. Improvement in these foundational elements of critical thinking helped the patients use this learning in their daily life to improve their overall productivity.

Meseekna’s work with patients suffering from traumatic brain injury is foundational in the story of our company, our values and our goals. First, and most importantly, it helped a population in need with a critical, previously unmeasurable, disability. Second, it furthered our approach that any robust assessment and training program must include metacognition and decision making. What we think, the contextual response tasks, often leave large areas of who we are out of the picture. Through assessing and training metacognition, through enabling individuals to make better decisions, we believe we can make a fundamental difference in our world.