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At the moment, Dr. Green and her team are trying to
replicate their preliminary findings. "We want
to make sure what we're seeing is authentic before taking
the findings to the clinical arena," she says.
Dr. Green is also studying deficits in emotional functioning
following traumatic brain injury. She is particularly
interested in patients' loss of ability to read emotions
in people's faces.
"We know that many of these patients have difficulty
interacting with other people socially. This might have
something to do with their inability to read emotions
on people's faces, which we are learning is a very common
problem. We now have some evidence about what is causing
these problems. This may pave the way for effective
therapy."
Dr. Green has always been interested in how the brain
works. After her clinical training in neuropsychology,
she became fascinated by the extent to which the brain
spontaneously recovers following an injury. " We
know the brain changes a lot after injury, and those
changes support recovery. I'm interested in how we can
augment those changes to improve recovery."
To Dr. Green, the way the brain recovers after injury,
when it does, is intriguing and awe-inspiring. "I
will sometimes see a patient one month after injury
who is completely debilitated. He can barely walk, talk
or remember anything from one minute to the next. A
year later he's walking, talking and back at work. How
did his brain repair itself? It's wonderful and fascinating."
Dr. Green serves on the Research Ethics Board at Toronto
Rehab and is co-founder and co-chair of Toronto Rehab's
Researchers' Network.
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