Light therapy Could Help Heal Brains
Exploring the potential of light therapy in brain recovery.
Light is a vital part of life and without it plants would not grow or produce oxygen that people need to breathe. But light, it turns out, does so much more.
A new study in Radiology has shown that treating patients suffering from moderate brain injuries with low-level light therapy can improve connections within the brain.
The idea that low-level light therapy can be healing is not new,according to PsyPost . Previous studies have indicated that, among other things, it can reduce inflammation and cell death. But the new study took light therapy much further.
Healing light
The recent study in Radiology is one of the more robust studies that have been done in the field. It was a double-blind, sham-controlled study. Neither the participants or the researchers were aware of who received the treatment and who received a placebo.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recruited 38 patients who had suffered moderate brain injuries, according to a news release from the Radiology Society of North America. Seventeen of the patients received low-level light therapy through a helmet that emits near-infrared light within 72 hours of their injury, while 21 of the patients wore the helmet without any light being emitted.
The researchers then used fMRIs to view the patients’ brain in its resting state. They took three fMRIs of each patient: one a week after the injury, during the acute phase, one during the subacute phase, two to three weeks after the injury, and the last about three months after the injury during the late-subacute phase.
What they found, according to PsyPost, is that the patients who received the treatment had more changes in their brain connectivities during their resting state than did the control group. The regions in their brains that showed more connectivity included ones related to sensory processing, cognitive function, and motor control.
No long term lasting effect
All of this seems like very good news. And yet, strangely enough, the researchers found that the light treatment had no long term effect on the patients.
“We were unable to detect differences in connectivity between the two treatment groups long term, so although the treatment appears to increase the brain connectivity initially, its long-term effects are still to be determined,” Dr. Nathaniel Mercardo, a statistician at MGH and a co-author of the study said in the news release.
Still, as PsyPost points out, the study does suggest that low-level light therapy could possibly help the brain in its natural healing process. If this type of treatment does prove beneficial, it could possibly be used not only in the context of brain injuries, but also to help patients with depression, PTSD, and more.
So even though the Radiology study is not 100 percent conclusive in terms of the benefits of low level light therapy in the long term, it is a good start. More research obviously needs to be done to ascertain whether this potentially life-changing treatment holds water.
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