EEG Biofeedback: Traumatic Brain Injury Links | Neurofeedback Pages
Neurofeedback's Impact on Traumatic Brain Injury •
Neurofeedback Traumatic Brain Injury •
Neurofeedback Traumatic Brain Injury •
EGG Biofeedback Studies: Traumatic Brain Injury
Neurofeedback Traumatic Brain Injury
A lot of people get traumatic brain injury, estimates are 600,000 per year in this country. Often this happens from car accidents, including relatively "minor" accidents. The most common result is that you have lower concentration, trouble reading, mental slowness, often sleep disruption. Often vision is "not right," with sudden loss of reading speed, comprehension or comfort; depth perception may be dramatically worsened. Getting poor sleep because of sore muscles from whiplash injuries makes the effects of any mild brain injury much worse. The hard part is that you look normal to friends, family and your doctor.
What is it that we are doing to help Traumatic brain injury (TBI)?
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) typically occurs when the head is suddenly accelerated and/or decelerated during an accident of some type. There may or may not have unconsciousness, or even a blow to the head. A severe whiplash situation can cause the same kinds of twisting and shearing forces on the brain's axons - the nerve fibers connecting one part of brain to another - as does a blow to the head. It is thought that these forces damage the connections between nerve cells and possibly the conducting fibers themselves, resulting in impairment of function.
Damage to the networks of connections in the brain also occurs with a stroke or surgery. A "stroke" means that either there was a blockage in a blood vessel feeding a particular region of brain, or a blood vessel broke open and bled (aneurism). There will be a local area of damage from the cells not getting enough bloodflow. The piece of brain that is directly damaged by the stroke will be impaired, at least for a while, and won't be able to serve its normal function. Beyond that there can be effects in regions the local area of damage is supposed to communicate with. Many regions of brain perform regulation of other regions, so if an area is damaged by a stroke or surgery other areas - not necessarily nearby - can lose function because they're not being regulated properly.
Brain can also be injured if a person is unable to breath for long enough, or if the heart stops for too long. This happens from lack of oxygen and blood sugar getting to the brain cells. This is why it is so important to provide emergency CPR at the scene, immediately. If you do not know how to administer CPR, you should learn. Contact a local hospital, fire department or medical clinic and ask how to get basic first aid training including CPR. Even when the person is revived, the brain may have suffered widespread damage, since all the cells need oxygen and glucose to survive. Some are tougher than others in the face of oxygen deprivation. The cells in the hippocampus, which is vital for memory formation, are unusually sensitive to being deprived of oxygen, so loss of ability to store new memory is very common in "anoxic" (without oxygen) brain injuries.
Traumatic Brain Injury patients often show emotional instability, which may be from the emotional regulation regions having been injured, or from the incredible frustration of everyday life with a brain injury, or both. Brain injuries from many causes create impaired concentration and memory and reductions in the ability to "multi-task," that is, to keep on top of several things at once. Patients with brain injury (particularly from traumatic injury) often show a dramatic drop in their visual processing ability. This is measured by a relative failure of the eyes to converge and/or diverge rapidly and accurately. This results in decreased reading skill and decreased depth perception. Patients often have further accidents, and tell us they feel "clumsy," disoriented in space. In traffic for example, they feel confused about where the other cars are relative to their car. This is obviously dangerous and predisposes to further injuries. The impaired attentiveness coupled with the visual problems and emotional instability probably contributes to the finding that a person with a head injury is six times more likely to have another one. We've had great results correcting this problem with binocular vision training.
There may be major depression and anxiety associated with these symptoms. In fact, these symptoms are often misunderstood by family and health care providers as "nothing but" depression, or worse still, malingering. However, the symptoms do not yield to standard medical treatment (cognitive therapy plus medication). That may be due to the injury of brain systems that support normal mood, or to irritation in other systems that support irritable moods, or to the failure of the medical and psychological treatment to provide adequate explanation of what's going on, adequate rehabilitation and hope.
Source Material | References
Popular EEG Biofeedback Neurofeedback Pages
What is neurofeedback? •
How does neurofeedback work? •
How effective is neurofeedback •
Therapeutic uses of neurofeedback •
Who can benefit from neurofeedback •
How does neurofeedback training help better brain function •
Neurofeedback and Medications •
Science behind neurofeedback •
History of neurofeedback •
Neurofeedback Frequently Asked Questions •
Is Neurofeedback Covered by Insurance? •
Neurofeedback or Medications? • Neurofeedback CPT Insurance Codes
** WebSite Notice:
The information contained within this website is Not Intended OR
Implied to be a Substitute for OR Used Instead of Professional Medical Advice.
|
