Dr. James Thompson of Evoke Neuroscience spoke to Hopes&Fears about how biofeedback training can help rehabilitate the physiological changes resulting from traumatic brain injuries. In 2009, Doctors James Thompson and David Hagedorn founded Evoke Neuroscience with exactly this goal in mind. Specializing in traumatic brain injuries caused by sports injury and military trauma respectively, both Thompson and Hagedorn were using electrophysiology as a measurement tool to see how injury was affecting brainwaves and heart rate patterns and figure out how they could recover normal functioning. “A lot of medications deal with symptoms [of traumatic brain injury] but aren’t actually treating the root causes of the symptoms,” Dr. Thompson tells Hopes&Fears. “The anxiety, the depression, the sleep disorders—they’re all a result of physiological changes in your brain.”
Evoke uses brain processing speed measures, cardiac measures and neuropsychological testing to target parts of the brain which aren’t functioning properly, and then uses neurofeedback to train the neurons back to health. “By doing EEG neurofeedback training, you’re teaching the neurons to release chemicals and to communicate in specific patterns. And by reinforcing those patterns, the neurons actually learn to communicate in a process called long term potentiation,” Thompson explains. “The saying is, ‘the neurons that fire together, wire together.’”
Take your typical concussion patient. Traditionally, related symptoms such as chronic headaches and sleep disorders are treated using medication with hopes that patients can cope with the symptoms long enough for the concussion to resolve itself. But with Evoke’s system, a doctor can identify the physiological problems and prescribe treatment that actually resolves the functional damage caused by the concussion. So if the patient is experiencing sudden difficulty with their emotional regulation for instance, a doctor can check for frontal lobe functionality, which deals with emotional regulation, and assess whether it’s functioning optimally. Or if the patient is complaining of headaches, a physician can measure heart rate variability which, when unbalanced, can affect blood flow, thus causing headaches. With this information, a physician can target neurofeedback training to the frontal lobe or set up an HRV program to re-regulate blood flow. Combined with proper medications and supplements, the Evoke system rounds off a holistic approach toward rehabilitation. Read article at: http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/future/science/216483-brain-biofeedback-trauma