The Waterkooler

When Fred Chabrow went out for a steak dinner with his parents here last Christmas Eve, he did something he had not done for almost a decade, not since a car accident ended his law career, consigned him to a wheelchair, erased his memory, and left him unable to start a simple conversation.

''Fred started hitting on a couple of the waitresses,'' says his father, Penn. 'He said, `Gee, it's Christmas Eve. It's a shame you have to work. We'd like a table for three, no smoking, please.' ''

It was the start of a week of miraculous breakthroughs, a week in which the old Miami Fred -- Fred the flirt, the sports fan, the smart aleck -- suddenly returned.

Until recently, doctors believed that a damaged brain could not be repaired, and little could be done to help the 80,000 people a year who, like Fred, survive traumatic injuries with serious brain damage. But a new wave of research shows that the injured brain can sprout new connections between cells and train surviving cells to perform new tasks, enabling some brain-injured patients to begin to reclaim their minds.

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