Neuropsychology
Recovery and Plasticity Simulator
Four different things all look like getting better. Watch five simulated trajectories fan out, then take one trained score apart.
Simulated - an invented model with a visible seed, not data, not a prognosis and not a prediction about anybody
Learning objective
By the end you should be able to name the processes that all raise a score after injury, and say why a trained score cannot separate them.
About 30 minutes, in two experiments. Nothing you do here is saved or sent anywhere.
Numbers from a model, not from people
Every curve here is produced by an invented equation from a visible seed. None of it is data, none of it is a norm, and none of it forecasts what would happen to any real person. The model exists to make a logical point about what a score can and cannot distinguish.
Recovery is not guaranteed, is not proportional to effort, and does not continue indefinitely. Some of the simulated trajectories plateau and some drift downwards, because real ones do. Nothing here is a promise about outcome or a prognosis for anybody.
- Experiment 1. Set an injury severity and a rehabilitation intensity, and look at five people rather than one curve.
- Turn the measurement noise up and see how much of a "change" is not one.
- Experiment 2. Take one person's trained score apart, and compare it with a task they have never practised.
First, a judgement
A fictional person's score on a training task rises from 40 to 68 over nine months of rehabilitation, measured on the same task every month.
The simulator
- 1 Five people, not one curve
- 2 What is doing the work
Need a hand?
Nothing here changes the controls for you, and none of it says what you are going to find.
Key terms
- Spontaneous recovery
- Improvement in the period after an injury that happens without treatment, as acute effects subside.
- Diaschisis
- Reduced functioning in undamaged tissue connected to the injury. Its resolution is one of the things that lifts a score.
- Restitution and compensation
- Getting the original way of doing the task back, and reaching the same outcome by a different route. Both raise a trained score.
- Measurement noise
- Variation in a score between occasions that is not a change in the person.
- Transfer
- Whether an improvement also shows up on a task that was never practised.
Experiment 1 - five people, not one curve
Five simulated people on the trained task
What the trained score is made of
Reading this
The trained task and a task never practised
The numbers
The four processes, and what tells them apart
| Process | What changes | Time course | What would identify it |
|---|
Challenge - what would settle it
What this demonstrates
Restitution, substitution, compensation and environmental support produce curves a trained score cannot tell apart: the same number at twelve months can be reached four different ways. An untrained task is the cheapest thing that discriminates between them, which is why a recovery claim needs more than the measure the therapy trained.
For teaching elsewhere: take this activity as one self-contained block of HTML, on the clipboard or as a file. Either way it is styled so that it will not disturb the page you put it into.