What Causes Brain Injury?
Before listing the causes of brain injury, it’s important to mention that brain injuries may be considered mild, moderate or severe. However, even a so-called mild injury can cause ongoing, even unrecognized, problems for the victim. In some cases, he or she may not be able to live alone following a brain injury, though behavior seems quite normal in most respects. Brain injuries are generally classified as congenital (happening during fetal development or resulting from birth trauma), traumatic, or acquired in nature. (Traumatic brain injury, considered a subset of acquired brain injury, is covered in its own section, as is anoxic brain injury, another subset.) Acquired brain injury is not hereditary or congenital and didn’t happen during delivery of a newborn. Nor is it considered a degenerative condition in the United States. However, in a number of other countries, degenerative neurological disease is included as an acquired brain injury. In the U.S., acquired brain injury is defin
