A recent CNN column by a psychologist discusses the range of effects different people with a traumatic brain injury can experience. TBIs vary in severity and vary in how the injury affects different people. People who experience a TBI can experience personality changes, short-term memory loss, amnesia, loss of language ability or loss of other skills that might have once seemed basic, such as talking and walking.

A new movie that will be coming out examines how a wife's traumatic brain injury challenges a new marriage because the wife has amnesia so severe that she cannot remember the previous five years, which includes meeting and falling in love with her husband.

The movie is actually based on a true story. The movie leaves out, however, the personality changes that also came about with the wife's TBI. Traumatic brain injuries can change a person. The most famous story of this happening was the medical phenomenon of Phineas Gage who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a iron bar shot completely through his head in a work accident.

Gage remained conscious while he was carried by co-workers to get medical care. He never lost consciousness and he survived, but he changed after that. Gage went from being a perfectionist and organized hard-worker, to being impulsive and sloppy and irritable and unable to keep a job.

In the same way, many people with TBIs may be unable to work after their injuries and may need to apply for disability benefits.

Source: CNN, "Doctor: 'The Vow' shows our brains are stranger than fiction," Dr. Charles Raison, Feb. 10, 2012