Project: Brain Injury Neurorehabilitation Project
Acronym: BRAIN REHAB
The Brain Injury Neurorehabilitation Project (Brain-Rehab) will generate cutting edge research in brain injury neurorehabilitation. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a worldwide silent epidemic resulting in significant chronic disability, health and societal burden. Over 1 million Europeans across all ages are hospitalized every year due to TBI and about 10 million new TBI cases are estimated around the world annually. Patients are often faced with cognitive and behavioral difficulties that interfere with their ability to return to productive living thus contributing to unemployment, psychiatric problems, and low quality of life for decades post injury.
BRAIN REHAB is a 3-year project hosted by the Center for Applied Neuroscience and funded by the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation. The project aims to determine the effectiveness of a theory-driven neurocognitive therapy program, the Categorization Program (CP) in combination with a social-communication training on an outpatient basis, during the chronic phase of the recovery process. In addition, BRAIN REHAB we will establish the first TBI surveillance system in Cyprus and implement epidemiologically-principled and systematic data collection from large cohorts across the severity continuum. The project will then integrate neuropsychological, lifestyle, injury, imaging, genetic, and biological data using state of the art computational methods and quantitatively assess the exact contribution of critical variables to brain injury recovery. The outcomes of Brain-Rehab will have significant impact in TBI rehabilitation research, can result in larger scale multi-site clinical trials and will inform health care practice and policy for allocation of resources and rehabilitation priorities.
The Center for Applied Neuroscience, University of Cyprus led by Professor Fofi Constantinidou is the host of the project. The consortium of the project consists of the Melathron Agoniston tis EOKA, the Department for Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance) and the State Health Services Organization.
Professor Fofi Constantinidou discusses BRAIN REHAB on Cyprus News Digest with Rosie Charalambous on November 22, 2019: click here to listen.

The Project is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation.