Traumatic Brain Injury
Our brain is the consistency of Jell-O™, suspended in a thick glycerin-like fluid, wrapped in a thin, rubber inner tube-like material, and enclosed in the skull, a rigid, hard case. Nature has done an awesome job of protecting our most valuable asset.
Unfortunately, even Nature's best design has limits: Hit your head with enough force to overcome these protective barriers, and the price is horrendous.
Striking the head with sufficient force damages the brain at the site of impact. To make a very bad situation even worse, the blow may cause the brain to bounce off the other side of the skull. Damage is doubled -- the potential for loss of mental, physical and emotional capacity and flexibility is multiplied.
Defeating nature at its own game.
Axons -- Our brain's vital links.
A heavy blow to the head causes a rapid acceleration and deceleration
of the brain. The head whips forward, stops suddenly, and then violently
whips back. Because the white matter (the brain's bulk) and the grey
matter (the brain's thin outer layer) are of different densities,
they move at different speeds. As the two tissues to slip against
each other, billions of axons are damaged, some even severed (called
axonal shearing).
Axons are slender, thread-like filaments that connect
nerve cells in the brain and throughout the body. Their job is to
send communication signals from one area of the cortex to another,
from the cortex to the brain's deep structures, and to all parts of
the body.
When injured, the axons are not
able to efficiently carry the brain's communication signals. If sheared,
signals will not be able to transmit at all. Brain performance is
hampered, and symptoms such as confusion, headaches, visual disturbances,
speech problems, coordination, spastic limbs, and even paralysis occur.
The slow brain waves of Traumatic Head Injury.
Those suffering from the effects of a Traumatic Brain Injury often
show generalized (all over) and focal (one or more areas) slow Delta
and Theta brain wave activity. The slow waves are a cardinal sign
the brain is damaged and not able to do its job efficiently.
The "fused" brain -- Locked and in a box.
Our brain does much of its work by communicating with itself -- by rapidly connecting, disconnecting, and then reconnecting its many specialized areas. In those with head injury, the brain's Coherence may become excessive, locking the brain into inflexible thinking and behavior patterns.
Other mental problems, fuzzy thinking and confusion, for example, and physical symptoms, such as dizziness and headaches, are common.
Remediating the effects of Traumatic Brain Injury.
A
Quantitative EEG discovers the nature and extent of any axonal injury
and if there are the characteristic slow waves of focal brain damage.
Remedial Neurofeedback Training™ provides undistorted information
to the brain on how it is performing complex tasks. The brain uses
this updated information to further resolve local areas of damage,
and to restore and create new communication networks.
Specific brain problems...
