To the fullest extent they can, persons suffering from traumatic brain injuries still need to get on with life, and a customary tool they use to remember tasks, names, numbers and other details during rehabilitation -- or permanently -- is a diary with relevant information and reminders.

Not everyone likes that. "Research that had been done previously said they were effective," says Belinda Carr, lead researcher in a new study from the Royal Rehabilitation Centre in Sydney, Australia, "but most people we see with brain injuries are young guys who don't like carrying around diaries."

How about the more modern update of a handheld digital device, such as a smartphone or tablet computer?

The two-fold conclusion that Carr and her team reached from an eight-week study of 21 brain injury patients using a personal digital assistant ("PDA") is that (1) the patients like using them far more than they do diaries, and (2) the use of PDAs actually improved their memory function.

"We found that their levels of forgetting were reduced and their carers reported the amount of memory failures were less," said Carr, who also engaged another group of 21 patients using standard paper diaries for testing comparisons.

The research team hopes that their study will convince insurance companies to pay for PDAs for brain injury patients.

Related Resource: Sydney Morning Herald, "Tech toys help brain injury patients" June 27, 2011