From Neuroscience News: For More Info, Go Here…
A new study funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Navy finds that veterans and service members with a history of combat-related mild traumatic brain injury–compared with those in a control group–have much higher levels of abnormally fast brain waves in a region that plays a key role in consciousness.
In recent years, Huang and other MEG researchers have learned that the brains of people with mild TBI generate abnormal slow waves. His latest study expands the knowledge of abnormality to fast gamma waves in people with mild TBI. MEG imaging is a promising marker for detecting specific regions of the brain that are impaired by a mild TBI, with an 85% accuracy rate. More conventional imaging tools, such as a CT scan or structural MRI, have an accuracy rate of only about 5% in detecting mild TBI.
The findings from his most recent study, he says, can be used to help with brain stimulation techniques as a therapy for mild TBI, such as transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Results from the study suggest that effective targets for TES and TMS treatments are likely to be the pre-frontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex.
Huang and his team are currently working with two TES companies to gain approval of their brain stimulation instruments by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
