Dr. James Kelly on Improving Conventional Treatments: Vestibular Rehabilitation and Eye Movements

Probably the the best example of a conventional treatment approach that has been shown to be useful is around vestibular rehabilitation. Helping people who have balance and equilibrium problems related to traumatic brain injury by a mechanical force factors that affect that fluid based system inside the skull and the wiring the neural networks actually that are a part of that. And it's dramatic how, once the diagnosis is made as to which version of a disorder that a given individual might have, how it is that very specific treatment in vestibular rehabilitation really can help them on a day-to-day basis. So vestibular therapy is actually a part of physical therapy such that it has to do with mobility, navigating space, maintaining one's balance and equilibrium under certain circumstances that would perturb it otherwise. And so the physical therapists, that our vestibular therapists, are particularly skilled at reorienting those components of the vestibular inner ear system and it's connections within brain stem and brain centers that actually help people truly become almost asymptomatic and, in fact, navigate the world better without the kinds of problems that they've had previously. That plus, another one would be changing changes in our understanding of eye movements and how it is that injuries to the neural control mechanisms and cranial nerves of our eye movements actually are now, we can actually help fix that, if you will, in a way that helps people negotiate and navigate the world. How it is that we reduce symptoms of nausea and movement and so forth that were there the entire time since their concussion. There are really dramatic improvements in conventional approaches to ... to healthcare that really are you know a physical, quite physical, and changing the way the brain functions. This video was produced by BrainLine thanks to generous support from the Infinite Hero Foundation.