Participants
traumatic brain injury, meningitis, stroke, visual, auditory or motor deficits, Brain Injury, psychiatric, congenital brain damage, anoxia, meningioma
RECRUITMENT, MENINGITIS, STROKE, EVENT, DISEASE, ENCEPHALITIS, PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY, ACOUSTIC NEUROMA, ANOXIA, MENINGIOMA
To be eligible, participants had: (1) to present a brain damage, either a CBM, a non-progressive ABI (i.e., traumatic brain injury, stroke, anoxia, meningitis, encephalitis, post-surgical meningioma and acoustic neuroma) or being survivor from a BT; (2) to be aged 11–16 years; (3) to speak Italian as a primary language. Additional specific inclusion criteria were being in chronic phase (at least 1 year after the event), for children with non-progressive ABI, and having no active disease and having received no postsurgical primary adjuvant therapies in the 6 months before enrollment, for children with BT.Exclusion criteria were: (1) severe visual, auditory or motor deficits that could interfere with training execution and outcome assessment; (2) undergoing a parallel cognitive rehabilitation treatment; (3) a diagnosis of photosensitive epilepsy, as a computer-based training may produce negative health effects. An additional specific exclusion criterion for children with non-progressive ABI and BT was the presence of a previous diagnosis of psychiatric or cognitive problems.Recruitment was not based on a specific FSIQ range to provide data that could be generalizable to the whole population of children with non-progressive ABI, BT or CBM, who usually displays different injury severity levels and cognitive functioning also within the same clinical subgroupEligible children were identified from the acquired and congenital brain damage registry of the Severe Acquired Brain Injury Unit, the Neuro-oncological and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Unit and the Neuropsychiatry and Neurorehabilitation Unit of Scientific Institute, at the IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy. These Units provide care to children with severe non-progressive ABI, BT and CBM, respectively. In about a week after identification, the referring physician in each Unit proposed the research project to children and their parents. In case of interest, a member of the research staff contacted parents by phone to provide specific information on project objectives and methodology. We obtained written informed consent by all parents of underage children who agreed to participate into the project. Children of legal age directly fulfilled the informed consent. Participants were continuously recruited across the three Units until reaching a total sample of 60 participants who performed the training, independently from the specific diagnosis (i.e., non-progressive ABI, BT, or CBM). No stratification based on diagnosis was performed.