Normal movement is your ability to:

• Visualize or otherwise sense and process information from the environment
• Remember prior movements and appropriate responses to information
• Select appropriate movement response
• Begin a movement pattern for each arm and leg, which involves the action of muscles on bones and joints and nerve pathways that produce voluntary and involuntary motions
• Coordinate the movement patterns among arms and legs
• Adapt the strength and speed of the movement pattern as needed and/or desired
• Maintain body balance during movement of arms and legs
• Receive and process results of the movement initiated and adapted
• Remember the results

     After brain injury, the areas of the brain that control the cognitive, visual, and motor functions involved in movement may be injured, resulting in a weakening or absence of the many functions required for purposeful movement and/or the development of abnormal patterns of posture and movement that are incompatible with the performance of normal activities. To recover movement, i.e. to attain the movement possible before the brain injury, involves changes in ways of processing information, changes in structure, and the takeover of function by tissue that was not injured.

     Following are the mobility problems that can occur after brain injury:

• Loss of motor control and coordination (ataxia)
• Inability to carry out a request that involves complex or skilled movements (apraxia)
• Full or partial paralysis or weakness
• Abnormally increased or decreased muscle tone