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Attention and Concentration - Fact Sheet
 Damage to the brain may reduce an individual’s ability to pay attention or to concentrate,
which may impact upon their ability to work, study or even maintain their life
at home. However, the injured person may not immediately recognise that their
ability to concentrate is any different to what it was prior to the injury.
In addition, there may not be any
visible signs to alert other people that a problem exists. This often leads to
misunderstanding by members of the community who may think a person who has
difficulty maintaining attention is lacking intelligence or motivation. This
problem is of particular concern with children who return to the classroom
after acquiring a brain injury and may be seen as disinterested or lazy students.
People who have sustained a brain injury may:
- Become easily distracted
- Have trouble keeping track
of what is being said or done
- Have difficulty doing more
than one task at a time
- Experience information
overload
- Be slower at taking in and
making sense of information.
The effects of these difficulties
on people’s everyday lives may:
 Affect their ability to learn and remember information - Cause them to feel
frustrated with themselves and other people (have a ‘short fuse’)
- Make them feel overwhelmed
and easily confused
- Lead to fatigue, headaches
and dizziness
- Encourage them to withdraw
from other people and avoid socialising
- Result in low levels of
achievement.
Causes of lack of
concentration
A lack of concentration can be caused by
many factors, including:
- Fatigue and tiredness,
particularly from sleep disorders or viral infections
- Pain and other physical
sensations, particularly headaches but including joint, muscle or organ pain.
-
Illness, including short-term
infections or long-term disease
- Hunger
-
Dietary inadequacy,
particularly B-group vitamins and iron.
-
Legal or recreational drugs or
environmental toxins such as carbon monoxide
- Mental health conditions,
particularly depression and mania.
- Extremes of mood, including
fear.
- Injury to relevant areas of the
brain
Somebody with an acquired brain injury is
at an increased risk of Cognitive or physical fatigue and headaches, as well as
pain arising from injury to the head or body from the incident that caused the
injury, or referred neurological pain, particularly in the case of whiplash.
Acquired brain injury is also associated with an increased incidence of
depression and other mental health disorders.
A region of the brain called the lateral
intraparietal cortex, within the parietal lobe, controls attention by filtering
out what is and is not important at any given time. This region then stimulates
the medial temporal area which influences the processing of visual information,
determining what visual information is attended to. If the lateral intraparietal
cortex is damaged and is unable to play this prioritisation role, then the
ability to maintain visual attention will be impaired, severely impairing the
ability to concentrate.
There is also evidence that the Cerebellum,
at the back at the brain, has an influence upon attention and concentration as
well as its core role of coordinating muscle activity. Damage to the cerebellum
will therefore result in concentration difficulties.
Approaches for enhancing
attention / concentration
Realise that what is happening is
influenced by the brain injury. If you are supporting someone with a brain
injury, provide reassurance when necessary. Generate strategies from past
experience, with an awareness for what is currently working or what has worked
in the past, but be aware that what has worked may no longer work due to the
effects of the brain injury. Identify specific situations where particular
strategies may be effective.
The following strategies may be
helpful:
- ‘Put blinkers on’ by
reducing all possible distractions in the environment
- Take regular rest breaks,
have a nap or a walk
- Meditation, deep breathing
and other strategies for physical and mental relaxation, such as having a
coffee break or talking to friends
- Plan how to approach a task
with a simple step-by-step approach, and;
- Break significant tasks down
into small and achievable steps
- Write information down using
notes and keep them in specific places
- Use a dictaphone to tape
messages that can be regularly played back
- Use a white board to help
organise, plan and store information
- Use ‘association’ techniques
e.g. putting medication on the table with every meal
- Get into a regular daily
routine which has a structure
- Aim for variety within an
everyday routine
- Schedule demanding tasks
when levels of energy and alertness are greatest, commonly early morning
- Eat a healthy diet and sleep
well
- Use self-talk to monitor
thoughts and actions
- Use a timer or electronic
organiser and set yourself goals to steadily improve duration of
concentration in small steps.
Monitoring Success
Practise different strategies to work out
which are the most effective in different situations using the following
self-guided steps (WSTC):
W
What is the problem?
Ask: ‘Where is my attention letting me down?’
S
Select a strategy
Ask: ‘What are all the possible strategies I could use? ‘Which is the best
strategy?’
T
Try out the strategy
Ask: ‘What do I need to do to use this strategy?’ Do it!
C
Check out how the strategy worked
Ask: ‘How successful was the strategy?’ ‘Would I do it differently next time?’
Further Information
BIAQ Fact Sheets:
Concentration
difficulties and Inattention at wrongdiagnosis.com
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Attention and Concentration 
