Cognitive impairment

According to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance as many as 50% of children with CP have an intellectual disability. However less, 20%, have an intellectual disability that is moderate to severe. While there is some correlation between increased physical impairment and cognitive impairment, it is not 100%. Each child must be evaluated thoroughly.

https://cparf.org/what-is-cerebral-palsy/how-does-cerebral-palsy-affect-people/#:~:text=severe%20intellectual%20disability

Reid et al. (2018), in a study of 1,141 patients from the CP registry data, found the following results considering the percentage of intellectual disability connected with physical impairments.

• Intellectual disability occurred in 45% of the cohort
  
• 47% of disability is associated with non-ambulation versus 8% with ambulation.
  
• Quadriplegic children had a 42% level.
  
• Children with epilepsy had a 52% level.
  
• Grey matter injuries 13%

Some of the brain’s functions that fall under cognition include:

• Attention span
  
• Comprehension
  
• Decision-making
  
• Difficulty processing emotions and feelings
  
• Language skills
  
• Learning
  
• Memory
  
• Problem-solving
  
• Recognition
  
• Speech proficiency https://www.cerebralpalsy.org/information/cognition

In a study by Gupta et al., it was found that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (r-TMS), and cognitive brain training exercises lead to the most cognitive improvement, although the improvement was small.

References

Gupta, M., Bhatia, D., Sinha, T. K., Dogra, S. & Jha, S..K. (2020). Investigation of cognitive changes in cerebral palsy children employing different integrated sensing techniques. Sensors International. 1,2020, 100016,

Reid, S.M., Meehan, E.M., Arnup, S.J. & Reddihough, D.S. (2018). Intellectual disability in cerebral palsy: a population-based retrospective study. Dev Med Child Neurol.60(7), 687-694.