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Dr. Parente is a Professor of Psychology at Towson University in Towson Maryland, where he regularly teaches graduate courses in statistics, neuropsychological assessment, neuro-rehabilitation and artificial intelligence. He earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of New Mexico in 1975, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Physiology at the University of Maryland Dental School in 1981. Now an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Medical College of Virginia in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, his research and publications involve developing and evaluating techniques and applications for neuro-rehabilitation after brain injury and computer simulation of cognitive dysfunction. Along these lines, he has published three books and over 30 journal articles that involve efficacious treatment of cognitive dysfunction after TBI.
NAJP: What prompted you to initiate a cognitive retraining program at Towson University?
RP: Towson University is a metropolitan academic institution that provides services and expertise to the community. Like most universities, faculty members teach and do research; however we also apply our skills and knowledge in the community. Therefore, one of my duties as a professor is to provide expertise in brain injury rehabilitation to community based institutions such as the Division of Rehabilitation Services and to individuals who need my skills. I do not run a program per se at Towson University; I simply make my services available to the community because of my affiliation with Towson University.
Most of my early research in cognition was with college students. However, in 1981 I was contacted by an attorney who wanted me to work with a person who had been electrocuted. At the time, there was not a great deal of information available that concerned rehabilitation techniques. Fortunately, I had just gotten married to a woman whose area of expertise was Rehabilitation Psychology. We merged our efforts and began to treat this new client. At that point, I realized that although my research with college students was interesting, the help that my wife and I were able to provide to this client was far more rewarding. Around that time, I also read a journal article by Rosamond Gianutsos (1980) entitled "What is Cognitive Rehabilitation?," which convinced me that this was a practical and fruitful avenue of research for me to pursue. Now, 28 years...