A brain injury is any injury occurring in the brain of a living organism. Brain injuries can be classified along several dimensions. Primary and secondary brain injury are ways to classify the injury processes that occur in brain injury, while focal and diffuse brain injury are ways to classify the extent or location of injury in the brain. Specific forms of brain injury include:
- Brain damage, the destruction or degeneration of brain cells.
- Traumatic brain injury, damage that occurs when an outside force traumatically injures the brain.
- Stroke, a vascular event causing damage in the brain.
- Acquired brain injury, damage to the brain that occurs after birth, regardless of whether it is traumatic or nontraumatic, or whether due to an outside or internal cause.
Famous quotes containing the words brain and/or injury:
“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery—always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)