The Perfetti neurocognitive rehabilitation method is a movement learning process for many types of neurological and orthopaedic injuries such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, and neuropathic pain where, as a result of the injury, all or parts of the patient’s body no longer work as a mind-body unit.
ADRIÁN PÉREZ
Physiotherapist
According to the neurocognitive rehabilitation method developed by Professor Carlo Perfetti: for the recovery of the patient’s movement, we should not only focus on the body, as we commonly think; we should, instead, consider the body and mind as a unit: “the mind-body”.
In fact, every action is performed as one by the mind-body, and this allows us to move, perceive and feel emotions. Whenever we move, we are simultaneously aware of direction, distance, contact and pressure.
Each exercise in the Perfetti neurocognitive rehabilitation method is designed to enable the patient to: pay attention to their body; comprehend and perceive it; know and understand its movement; and then, feel the pleasure of a connection with that part of the body, which has been lost due to the injury. It is not the effort or the training that helps the patient on his path to recovery but, rather, his attention, perception and ability to imagine.
Neurocognitive rehabilitation is a process of learning, which enables the patient to rediscover how to move his own body - feeling it, thinking it, imagining it.
During a Perfetti method session, the rehabilitation therapist asks the patient questions about the exercises they are doing. The therapist frames these questions in a way that activates certain cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, language and imagination.
This also has the effect of activating muscular contractions in the relevant part(s) of the body with an intensity, spatiality and speed that is coherent with the initial intention of the exercise.
The patient’s injury also alters their movement in a serious way because the cells, fibers and connections between the different neural networks, which are used for organizing movement correctly, are destroyed. The patient is no longer aware of his own body in space, which is essential for: organizing the different directions of movement; controlling muscular contractions; and projecting the movement through a correct representation of the movement itself.
Comparison is a very important process in Perfetti neurocognitive rehabilitation. Comparing the movement performed by the affected limb with: the same movement performed by the unaffected limb; the same movement seen in another person; and/or with the movement from a memory that the patient has from the period before the injury, can help the brain to organize and rebuild its structure.
- -
If you wanna know more about it, follow @fisioterapiastudio on Instagram .
Adrian graduated from University Pontificia of Salamanca in Madrid, Spain in 2007 with a BSc Physiotherapy degree. He has extensive experience and a very profound knowledge in working with Neurological conditions. He has worked in various hospitals in the public and private sector in Spain, Italy and England.
Now he is based in A Coruña, working with the complete training in Neurocognitive rehabilitation/Perfetti method, the most advanced therapy in Neurorehabilitation.
info@fisioterapiastudio.es
+34 623 105 808
Rúa Socorro, 19, 15003 A Coruña
@fisioterapiastudio
