Setting goals for cognitive rehabilitation.

Evidence for experience-dependent plasticity of the brain, including cell regeneration, means that rehabilitation can aim at reinstituting impaired cognitive function, as well as at training compensatory strategies for the lost function. New theoretical frameworks make predictions regarding the circumstances under which these two approaches should each be attempted. There has been progress over the past 6 years in designing effective rehabilitation strategies, with more of these having a strong theoretical basis in cognitive neuroscience. Basic cognitive science has generated counter-intuitive, but effective cognitive rehabilitation methods, showing that the goal of rehabilitation need not always be the most obvious one dictated by real life performance. Limb Activation Training for unilateral neglect is an example of a theoretically derived cognitive rehabilitation procedure that has now been clinically evaluated in clinical trials.