Deans' stroke musings: Light Therapy Increases Brain Connectivity Following Injury

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, May 31, 2024

Light Therapy Increases Brain Connectivity Following Injury

Didn't your competent doctor start using this years ago? Oh, you don't have a competent doctor, do you?

Augmentation of cognitive brain functions with transcranial lasers December 2014

Exposure to near-infrared light before bed linked to better sleep, daytime function June 2023

Near-Infrared Light Regenerates Damage From Traumatic Brain Injury, Latest of Five Studies Show May 2016

Light Therapy Increases Brain Connectivity Following Injury

Low-level light therapy appears to affect healing in the brains of individuals who suffered from a moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to a study published in Radiology.

Previous studies have shown that low-level light therapy can modulate recovery in patients with TBI. However, the impact of this treatment on the functional connectivity

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of the brain when at rest has not been well studied.

For the current study, Suk-tak Chan, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the effect of low-level light therapy on whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity in patients with moderate TBI at acute (within 1 week), subacute (2-3 weeks), and late-subacute (3 months) recovery phases.

The researchers evaluated 17 patients treated with low-level light therapy, 21 treated with sham, and 23 healthy controls.

Seven brain region pairs exhibited a greater change in connectivity in patients treated with low-level light therapy than in those treated with sham between the acute and subacute phases (range of z differences, 0.37; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.20-0.53 to 0.45; 95% CI, 0.24-0.67; false discovery rate (FDR)-adjusted P value range, .010-.047).

There was an increase in connectivity in 13 different brain regions among patients treated with sham between the subacute and late-subacute phases (range of z differences, 0.17; 95% CI, 0.09- 0.25 to 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14-0.39; FDR-adjusted P value range, .020-.047).

When measured according to Rivermead Postconcussion Symptoms Questionnaire scores, there was no evidence of a difference in clinical outcomes between patients treated with low-level light therapy and those treated with sham (range of differences in medians, -3.54; 95% CI, -12.65 to 5.57 to -0.59; 95% CI, -7.31 to 8.49; P value range, .44-.99).

“There was increased connectivity in those receiving light treatment, primarily within the first 2 weeks,” said Nathaniel Mercaldo, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital. “We were unable to detect differences in connectivity between the 2 treatment groups long term, so although the treatment appears to increase the brain connectivity initially, its long-term effects are still to be determined.”

“There is still a lot of work to be done to understand the exact physiological mechanism behind these effects,” added Dr. Chan.

Additional studies with larger cohorts of patients and correlative imaging beyond 3 months may help determine the therapeutic role of light in TBI.

“There are lots of disorders of connectivity, mostly in psychiatry, where this intervention may have a role,” concluded Rajiv Gupta, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital.

Reference: https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.230999

SOURCE: Radiological Society of North America