Dr. Maria in the House! Social Perception & TBI

Dr. Maria Romanas is a fellow survivor of a borderline severe brain injury due to a rollover car accident at age 18. Despite being discharged with no inpatient or outpatient cognitive therapy, she was able to go to college then medical/graduate school (MD/PhD). Like many survivors she was not aware of her own cognitive impairment. In 2013 (29 years after the injury), she finally went through an 8-week cognitive rehabilitation program that taught her how to observe that dysfunctions that resulted from her trying to use her brain the normal way. She learned to implement compensation strategies to prevent disabled functioning and optimize her own recovery. She became her own self-therapist. Although she works full-time as a hospital pathologist, her life’s goal is to advocate for other survivors to receive the cognitive rehabilitation therapy and to teach principles of self-therapy so that hey can maximize their own recoveries. Tonight’s discussion will focus on Social Perception and Brain Injury.