Stroke, Brain injury and Cerebral palsy

We do work with facial paralysis following stroke, brain injury and cerebral palsy. The difference being the location of the injury. In facial nerve paralysis the nerve or wire itself is injured, in upper motor neurone injury the wire is fine but the brain or computer has been injured. Depending on how ling its been since the muscles were woken up there can be as aspect of weakness to train in the muscles too.

Training usually involves high volume repetitions to help the brain “locate” the face for expressions again and avoiding neglect of the unaffected side. The challenge is often getting conscious activation i.e when you want to smile and your brain says smile it happens vs you laugh at something funny and it just happens without thinking about it. We will often use tactile feedback and mime therapy to train this.