BRIGHT Foundation

BRIGHT is a newly forming 501(3)c non-profit. We are primarily a parent's group with the strong involvement of clinical and research professionals. We serve the population of infants and children that suffered an acquired brain injury early in life. We are concerned with the developmental process, both motor and cognition. We have a quickly growing... membership of parents and professionals (currently about 400) that primarily benefit from our website http://brightfoundation/.tripod.com where we feature current research reviews, therapy effectiveness reviews, advocacy information, and practical advice and support forums. While these website services serve to enlarge our membership and provide much needed resources to the community, they are not our primary focus. Our primary focus is the engagement of the professional community to accelerate the translation of cutting edge research into clinical applications, to promote focused research in limited high impact areas, and to generate excitement among media and public and private funding sources. Our research agenda is guided by a growing world class Scientific Advisory Board, consisting of experts from multi-disciplinary backgrounds including basic medicine, rehabilitation, neurology, bio-mechanics, robotics, kinematics, etc. Our goal is to help the professional community achieve significant improvements in clinical outcomes with-in three to five years through a focused research agenda. Given this aggressive timetable we will focus on promoting the enhancement of existing rehabilitation methodologies to optimize plasticity, rather than venture into more uncertain territory such as stem cells. With the help of our Scientific Board, we have conducted an extensive evaluation of the current state of knowledge in the field of childhood rehabilitation after brain injury (BI). We have found ample evidence that plasticity can play a powerful role in dramatically improving outcomes. We have found splintered research that suggests effective treatment modalities. However, in ...Read More