Boosting Brainpower: The Role of Cognitive Therapy

When you hear the phrase ‘boost your brainpower,’ you might think of puzzles or memory games. But for people recovering from a brain injury or stroke, boosting brainpower often comes through something called cognitive therapy. Your cognition is an essential function to your day to day life. In this post, we are going to define cognition and how cognitive therapy plays a pivotal role in speech recovery, as well as your quality of life. Learn more about boosting brainpower: the role of cognitive therapy.

To start, cognition is made up of several components that include the following:

As you can see, there are several components that you would use every minute of every day. Simply planning your morning routine when you open your eyes every morning aids in a part of your cognitive functioning. There are also several components that can impact these abilities and make your day to day much more challenging than usual. Traumatic brain injuries (TBI), strokes, and illnesses are only some of the many other components that can impact your cognitive functioning. Not many people realize it, but cognitive therapy is a great tool to use to enhance these skills when something like a TBI or a stroke makes it more challenging.

A question that is commonly asked is “what is cognitive therapy?”. Cognitive therapy is a type of rehabilitation that helps patients strengthen skills like memory, attention, and problem-solving through targeted exercises, activities, and strategies tailored to their needs. Because the brain is so complex, an injury or illness can affect many areas of cognition at once—or sometimes just one. It all depends on your individual experience.

How does cognitive functioning play a role in communication? When we are communicating, we are problem-solving what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. We are also remembering specific facts previously spoken to us, whether that be 2 weeks ago or 1 minute ago. You are also working on understanding what is being spoken to you and sustaining your attention during the conversation to practice conversational skills. Those are just a few examples of the several things our brains are doing during a conversation.

During cognitive therapy, it may seem “silly,” but there are several games and activities that we can play to work on these skills. Repetition is important, so the more you work on these skills in different ways, the more your brain will build up neural pathways to increase your abilities with that targeted skill. For example, playing a simple game of solitaire, you would strategize where to play each card (problem solving), remembering what you have flipped over in your excess pile so you can play it later (memory), sitting down and playing one game at a time (attention).

As you can see, there are numerous ways to target these skills in a fun manner so you can improve your cognitive communication skills. Cognitive therapy is more than just exercises—it’s a way to rebuild essential skills for independence and communication. If you or a loved one is navigating recovery after a brain injury, working with a speech-language pathologist can help strengthen both cognitive and communication skills.

Schedule your appointment today with our Speech Language Therapist today!