Just wondering if you ended up going, and what the results were.

Mark in Idaho & Jennifer RN,

Thank you for the responses. I ended up deciding not to pursue CognitiveFx (at least for now). Mostly because I have done many of the therapies they discuss.

I have ongoing mTBI/post-concussion syndrome symptoms. Done a number of diagnostic testing including vestibular/Balance testing, VIPE, MRI's, CT, VEP, Saccades, VOR, SPECT, PSG/Sleep, PTSD, Color Field, Vision Field, EEG, video EEG, neuro-psych eval.

Treatments/Therapies done: vestibular rehab therapy, vision therapy, light therapy, neuro therapy, speech therapy, medications, acupuncture, CBT, prism & tinted eye glasses, nutritional supplements, dietary modifications.

Still hoping for a breakthrough.

Pete, You have done some diagnostics I have never heard of. VIPE, VOR, Saccades,,, Can you explain what these are any what the diagnostics have found.

How did you respond to the various therapies ?

What ongoing symptoms are you still struggling with ?

How did you suffer your concussion ? How much improvement have you had ?

VIPE = Visual Information Processing Exam. I believe it was described as a neuo-behaviorial exam but focused on how the brain processes visual information. It had some similarities to the neuro-psych exam. I actually took this long before the neuro-psych. These tests were administered by a Neuro-Optomitrist. Saccades test was a phase plot of looking left, the right. Measured position & velocity. VOR I used this term loosely for OPK testing done with the VNG which looked at color strip testing. The VNG was administered by a functional neurologist. Ongoing symptoms are those I described above.

It sounds like you just had a thorough behavioral or neuro optometrist assessment (There is a large overlap between the two) and a Carrick chiro exam.

You did not mention above any of your symptoms beyond "I have ongoing mTBI/post-concussion syndrome symptoms." The "mTBI/PCS symptoms" is wide-ranging.

"VOR I used this term loosely for OPK testing done with the VNG which looked at color strip testing." Lost me again. VNG is a Carrick diagnostic but what are the other 2? Did you do the VNG in the chair?

How have you responded to any therapies?

Mark, Sorry .. for some reason I thought I mentioned specific symptoms. There are quite a few but most are typical PCS items ... light & sound sensitivity, excessive blinking, double vision, imbalance/unsteady, vertigo, nausea clumsiness, objects jumping, challenges reading, tonic pupils, clonus, fatigue, irritable, distracted, harder time focusing and comprehending, slurred speech, headache & visual migraine, intermittent insomnia, lingering brain fog, and a few others.

I did VNG at a balance center and Carrick practitioner. VOR = Vestibular occular reflex; OPK = Opto-kinetics. VOR and OPK tested at Carrick practitioner and neuro-optometrist.

Response to treatments has been slow overall from the beginning. I usually show good initial uptake, but then would have to work very hard to make significant progress. Even then the therapies have proved challenging to take hold permanently. While I worked very hard to get results, never got back to 100%.

Wow, Your symptoms go far beyond the usual cluster of PCS/mTBI symptoms. It appears you have focused on Carrick chiro threatments.

I wonder if you have been influenced by a sell job by the Carrick chiro. It is a problem many have.They tend to think every symptom, no matter how minor it is, deserves highlighting.

Many symptoms can be observed by a detail oriented diagnostician but do not mean the patient has a deficiency due to every symptom.

I have horizontal nystagmus. I've had it for decades. It does not change my life unless I try to swing at a pitched baseball.

If you are experiencing slurred speech, you are still in an acute phase. Have you been assessed by a rehabilitation neuro or physiatrist?

Or, is the list of symptoms what you started with?

What work-arounds do you use to reduce the impact of your symptoms? Studies show that most improve better when they use work-arounds to overcome symptoms and get on with their lives.

sorry for the delayed response. I did go to cognitive fx in march of 2017 and wanted to give the post treatment (brain HQ) some time, before I weighed in on the overall experience/efficacy.

The week at cognitive fx was exhausting. They really push you hard cognitively. I had some problems sleeping that week, which probably didn't help matters. My initial fMRI showed significant abnormalities in blood flow, which are supposed to correlate to neurological activity with respect to a given mental task. I asked for the raw fMRI results, and they claimed that they were proprietary, and instead they give you a detailed summary of the various brain regions activity based on certain mental tasks. I guess that the fMRI processing that they do is their 'secret sauce', that they have spent a lot of research money refining it, so they want to protect it. After the treatment week, myfollow up fMRI showed normalized blood flow, and their departing statement to me was that my neurovascular coupling was reset, and I am well on my way to recovery from symptoms, and should probably be experiencing a vast improvement already.

The problem is that this improvement in fMRI didn't necessarily correlate with symptom improvement. My symptom index was relatively consistent across the whole week, meaning that I didn't experience much relief in any of my symptoms. I did however notice that my performance improved on the cognitive exercises that they employed on me throughout the week. I can also say that I had some weird symptoms immediately after the week at cog fx. I felt a vague opening and clearing of the head, like it had less cob webs in it or something. I also felt a strange opening feeling in my sinuses, like I could smell better. very peculiar and interesting. I was taking it as a sign of real changes occurring in my brain, until about 3 days after I got back from cog fx when I went back to feeling about the same as I was feeling before I went there.

When I got home, I devoted myself to doing brain hq exercises for about 30-60min/day for about 2 months. Again, performance improvements, but little symptom improvements were noted. So, I stopped the exercises as my functional time is a valuable commodity for my family, and not to be spent frivolously.

I've read that it takes about 6 weeks for neurogenisis to take place for a given stimulus, and I believe that that is the desired end goal of cognitive fx's focus on neurovascular coupling. I am now 7 months out from my treatment at cognitive fx, and though I have had some improvement since then, I can not definitely say that the improvement was from cognitive fx and not from my normal healing trajectory over time. It was an educational experience for me in cognitive exercises and stimulated me to look for other ways I can promote neurogenisis through cognitive demand (exercises). That said, I have talked to another (and hear of others) who have had profound improvement in their week at cog fx. Its hard to ascertain how they are able to get this kind of improvement when all the research shows that neurogenisis takes time. I am thinking that maybe these fortunate recovery stories at cog fx stem from a different type of cognitive compromise than the rest of us. They may be experiencing symptoms from some other pathology other than neuronal damage, like for instance brain noise. A brain that is structurally sound can malfunction from excessive noise (misfiring or improper inhibition at the synapses). In which case, a simple reboot (a week of intense cognitive demand at cog fx) might get the neurons to start communicating better with each other. don't know...

Next up, I'm trying infrared light therapy. Red light man just came out with a new infrared device that is pretty powerful at the 830nm spectrum.
thanks for all your input,
Shane

2.5 years out from initial head injury: current symptoms - cog fatigue with mod-heavy cognitive stimulation. headache, wooziness, phonophobia also with excess stimulation. occasional sleep problems. exercise intolerance above 120 beats/min.

Shanebox,

Have you seen this?

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shanebox,

Neurogenesis takes much longer than 6 weeks. It takes thousands of repetitions to program those few new neurons. Think of it as unformatted memory that cannot be used until a path is made to it. This is sometimes called indexing

CogFX tries to push that timeline. Mostly, they just work are reawakening areas that have become dormant.

It's odd that they claim fMRI data is a proprietary form of data. fMRIs are common and they do not have any special way of imaging. Their proprietary concepts are how they interpret that data and use it to direct their therapies.

I agree with you that many with noticeable improvements may have attained those improvements without CogFX. They have never done any studies to prove otherwise.

I had similar results with brain training. I got good at the exercises but did not improve my global functions. Studies show that brain training only improves the limited skill sets of that exercise.

The brain training that is shown to have benefits trains quick response functions and observation skills. Most benefits are limited to healthy brains because injured brains are often overtaxed. I've contacted these companies and begged them to look at injured brains.