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Brain Mapping

At Brain Health Hawaii, we believe in monitoring your brain activity regularly which helps us track your progress and personalize your treatments. We do this brain mapping.

A brain map is a diagnostic tool for people with brain related conditions. We use brain mapping to optimize your brain health. A brain map provides a window into how your brain functions and this identifies the source of dysregulation in your brain. We use this information to create treatment protocols to improve your quality of life. For some people, it may mean improving your quality of life without relying on medications. Getting a brain map to enhance/improve your brain health is comparable to getting a bacterial culture to find out which antibiotic will work best to treat an infection.

A brain map detects subtle changes in brain-wave forms. Sometimes, symptoms are caused by underactive brain areas, showing excessively slow brain waves that impair function. Other times, symptoms are caused by overstimulated brain areas, showing too many fast brain waves. Either one of these situations is disruptive and can cause your brain to be impaired.

A brain map can also show whether networks in the brain are correctly functioning. Networks of neurons regulate mood, behavior, attention, sleep, and learning. These different networks communicate with each other so the brain can optimally perform complex tasks. The process can be compared to a company with many managers who need to communicate and coordinate to keep the company running efficiently and at peak performance. The brain is the same.

The brain tells us everything.

The brain is a highly complex organ made up of billions of cells called neurons. Neurons send and receive messages to and from all parts of your body. These messages are electrical impulses that create brain waves. Brain mapping evaluates your brain-waves and identifies opportunities to improve communication within and between various regions of the brain. The brain map captures a window of brain activity, analyzes the data, and creates a visual representation for each lobe of the brain and each specific brain wave (i.e., beta, alpha, theta, and delta).

 

Beta Band – An indicator of cortical arousal and increases during active concentration

 

 

Alpha Band – Involved in motor functions and cognitive functioning

 

 

Theta Band – Involved in memory encoding and retrieval and increases during drowsiness

 

 

Delta Band – Predominates during deep sleep

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How does brain mapping work?

Sensors are placed on the surface of the head and the sensors record the underlying brain waves. Brain mapping is non-invasive and painless. Much like a thermometer, which records your temperature but does not affect your temperature, the brain map records the brains electrical activity for analysis without affecting the brain. The brain map identifies dysregulated brain areas that need attention.

Like lab tests, the brain map detects specific brain waves (i.e., beta, alpha, theta, and delta) in each brain lobe. For example, a thyroid blood test will show whether your thyroid hormone levels are within the normal range, low, or high compared to a population of people with normal thyroid levels. Similarly, the brain map will show if your brain activity is within normal range or dysregulated. Brain mapping is also comparable to a physician performing an electrocardiogram (EKG) for chest pain to find out what is causing the chest pain. We use a brain map to determine the underlying cause of your symptoms. When a patient has chest pain, the physician will evaluate the heart. When you come to Brain Health Hawaii showing signs of sleep, behavioral, or cognitive dysfunction, we assess the brain.

Functional connections between brain regions are critical for optimal brain functioning. The brain map measures coherence between different regions, which indicates the normalcy of communications between brain regions; in other words, it measures how well the brains different areas communicate to perform complex tasks. For example, there needs to be adequate coherence connectivity between the attention, auditory processing (hearing), and visual (eyesight) processing networks in the brain to be a good reader with proper comprehension.

How is a brain map used in treatment?

The brain map is like a fingerprint of the brain. We personalize your treatment to improve the specific dysregulation linked to your symptoms. For example, if you have problems with keeping concentration on tasks that aren’t interesting and the attention network; on the brain map shows abnormalities, we will target treatment to the disrupted connections in the attention network; areas. We might also focus treatment to improve the connections between the attentional network (your attention span) and other networks required for optimal brain functioning and concentration. Or suppose your brains frontal region shows excessive slow brain waves, and you have challenges paying attention. In that case, we direct treatment to regulate the frontal lobe to help improve your concentration. As another example, the right temporal region is responsible for your emotions. If it is malfunctioning, you may have difficulty with emotional regulation or low frustration tolerance. Again, we can target treatment to strengthen this region to improve emotional regulation.

How does brain map-guided treatment improve quality of life?

Not everyone has the neurophysical capacity to meet the everyday demands in life. This explains why you don’t sleep well, become emotionally overwhelmed, or are unmotivated to complete tasks that are not interesting to you. It is frustrating for you and equally frustrating for those around you who don’t understand the challenges you might have with disrupted neurophysical capacity and the struggle to self-regulate. Brain Health Hawaii’s brain map-guided treatment protocols enable you to strengthen the connections in your brain. This results in improved efficiency and speed of information processing both within and between regions of the brain.

Medications can be helpful but they don’t provide the ability to target the brain in specific areas like rTMS with guided brain mapping.

You will have a different life experience when your brain works harmoniously versus in dysregulation.

Without a brain map, there is no way to know if your symptoms are caused by a neurological issue or a psychological issue.

If it’s neurological, the brain map pinpoints which brain-wave patterns are abnormal and where the abnormality exists.

We develop individualized treatment protocols based on scientific evidence.

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