Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), concussions, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), are just some of the varieties of head injury, whose occurrence is becoming increasingly common in the modern world. According to medical statistics, nearly 3 million people suffer from some kind of brain injury in the United States, which imposes around an $80 billion economic burden, in both direct and indirect costs.
One of the reasons that there is a growing rate of reported brain injury is because the definition of what constitutes clinically valid diagnosis, has been expanded by the available evidence. For a head injury to be significant enough to impact brain function, it does not always take the form of severe accidents. Brain injury can and does occur in some of the most popular sports and physical activities, making children and adolescents especially susceptible.
Post-traumatic stress (PTSD) is another way that the brain can be traumatized in a way that clinically affects the very physiology of the brain. Issues with attention, stress management, and various cognitive abilities have been linked to unresolved and unmanaged emotional trauma.
Whatever the causes are, brain injury of any sort, can go undiagnosed, and even unnoticed for years. The progression of damage that even a minor head injury can precipitate, commonly evolves into producing symptoms of depression, anxiety disorders, and poor cognitive performance. Since the brain and nervous system influence every other system, the implications of injury can actually span the entire body (see image), and include dysregulation of immune and digestive function. This can be a huge problem because treatment for any dysfunction can be incomplete if the underlying driver—brain injury—is not being addressed.
Neurofeedback and QEEG is the best technological advantage to identify any possible trauma that the brain may have sustained, and then improve the function of sites that were impacted by it. One of the most common markers of a previous head injury, is the presence of excess slow brain waves, especially in the Delta range. Among the other functions in which Delta brain waves play an important role, the detrimental effect that their excess plays on sleep maintenance, makes neurofeedback a primary candidate. Since the most common reported benefit of neurofeedback is its restoration of quality sleep, allows the brain to heal the damage it has incurred, and thereby regulate the amount and production of Delta waves.
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