The Dr. just called and said that my MRI, "showed that everything is fine, just as suspected it would, except for a possible sinus* cyst." I asked if I should still take the EEG and he said."yes, to rule out seizures." As for the symptoms, he said what I've already known, "they take time to heal."

*sinus cyst-I can't remember what the medical term for it is called. Anyone have any info?

My recent MRI also came back "normal." Apparently it's pretty common for those of us with mTBI--not that that's much consolation.

Hang in there.

I had heard the same thing before I even had the test, "that it won't show anything as being wrong." I was also advised to get one just to "cover my *****" for something that might come up later.

Just one more thing that makes us and other people think that , "it's all in our heads" very frustrating.

Yep..my mri and mra normal. My head not normal. I dont care what that test shows. Its not in my head its a problem in how my head functions. Frontal head injury and im all scrambled. Hang in there. We understand.

A sinus cyst is like nasal polyps. A cyst is under the tissue and a polyp is sticking out from the nasal wall. A cyst can usually be drained. A polyp is cut off and removed.

I have had the same diagnosis, That the MRI showed nothing. Does that mean I am empty headed?

Keep in mind that much of medicine is done by ruling out different diagnoses.

The EEG to rule out seizures is a bit extreme unless you are experiencing losses of awareness or lapses of time.

But, an EEG can also cause events to happen that are not otherwise evident. Since it is non-invasive, it is worthwhile. And it is much less expensive than an MRI.

Anybody wonder why health care in the US is so expensive? We do it all backwards. The doctors rule out the most expensive ideas first.

My theory is that the damage can be to the "programming" of the brain, and not physical per se. An analogy would be a computer virus that changes the data on a hard drive to random strings of binary code. There is no physical damage to the computer, yet this kind of attack could be so severe that the computer might not run at all.

So many of us getting MRIs with negative results. Makes me wonder.

My mate is desperate for an MRI on his ankle which has been giving him gip for years and stopped him doing all sorts of things, he's convinced there's something structurally wrong with it and has not been able to tolerate all the physio etc he has been referred for, but the NHS won't pay for an MRI.

I on the other hand was given one as the first resort and with virtually zero expectation that it would show anything. I got the strong impression that the main reason I was given it was because my neurologist knew nothing about mTBI and wanted to make me feel like he was doing something.

Shouldn't complain at least it ruled out certain unlikely complications. However it would have been far more useful if the money spent on it had been spent on paying someone to read up on the evidence around diet, cognitive rest, exercise, environmental adaptation, lack of insight following TBI etc and had explained these things to me rather than leaving me to find them out for myself.

Yes I agree entirely that more information needs to be given to victims of head injury by their health care providers.

I'm actually gearing up to write a letter to the President, and my Senators and Congressperson to that effect. Something really needs to be done about this.

I think that the last thing we need is for the US government to get involved with diagnosing concussions and mTBI. The Brain Trauma Foundation has just been awarded a Department of Defense contract worth $1.3 million for a 2 year study to develop a best scientific evidence based definition of concussion. I doubt BTF will consider the qEEG based diagnostic criteria.

kenjee, I understand your idea but thing you are missing the fact that most concussions and mTBI's include a fair amount of diffuse axonal injury. This would be like cutting or otherwise short circuiting the microscopic wires between the different transistors and such in a computer CPU. When we look at the latency speed of many CPUs and consider the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, it is easy to understand the miles and miles of connections between the 1 billion or more transistors in a modern CPU.

The brain has between 10 billion and a 100 billion neurons with as many as 10,000 axons connected to a single neuron.
Wiki says it this way: Each of the one hundred billion neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 10 to the 15th power synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates vary for an adult, ranging from 10 to the 14th power to 5 x 10 to the 14 power synapses (100 to 500 trillion).

The brain has the structural integrity of a bowl of stiff gelatin. It is not very tolerant of physical impact.

With this in mind, it is much easier to understand how a simple concussion can cause such devastating symptoms.

Mark, thank you for the counterpoint as always. Together (meaning everyone on the forum), maybe we can figure this thing out.

OK, to put it simply, you're saying that there really is physical damage involved with all mTBI, but that the current level of non-invasive scanning can usually not pick it up? Sounds plausible. But it's disappointing, as a programming error might be more addressable than physical damage.

I am not getting your speed of light analogy, though. Can you explain?