Spasticity is one of the impairments affecting function following brain damage. If spasticity is only one of several impairments following brain damage, physiotherapists need to clarify how spasticity affects the ability to move. Historically, spasticity was seen as the major determinant of activity limitations. The difficulty in assessing the contribution of different impairments to activity limitations makes it possible for other impairments to be mislabeled as spasticity. The operational definitions and relative importance of spasticity are confounded by the issue of how spasticity affects growth and maturation in children with spastic-type cerebral palsy. An important component of the clinical management of brain damage is careful assessment of the contribution of various impairments to activity limitations. There are many pharmacological and surgical options available in the management of spasticity, which may be focal or general, reversible or permanent in action.

Neurorehabilitation is the clinical subspecialty that is devoted to the restoration and maximization of functions that have been lost due to impairments caused by injury or disease of the nervous system. The concepts of neural plasticity have been accepted as important elements in the scientific understanding of functional recovery. As practiced in most countries, rehabilitation is a multidisciplinary process, involving combinations of treatment modalities administered by multiple therapists. Moreover, the most important outcome of the rehabilitation process is the degree of reintegration of the patient in society, in terms of roles in work, family, and community. In order to catch up to other fields in the practice of evidence-based medicine, the rehabilitation field has been forced to become extremely resourceful in designing outcome measures to evaluate the efficacy of its treatments. The combination of rehabilitation and either neuroplasticity or regeneration did not appear until after the term neurorehabilitation became current.