Brain Injury and ADD

  “BRAIN INJURY:  The last major theory, which has a strong scientific basis, holds that we can experience a brain injury that will cause ADD-type behavior.  This injury can be structural, functional, or both.  A structural disorder is when the brain is physically damage, as with a heavy blow to the head.  These injuries usually show up on hospital diagnostic imaging such as MRIs.  The functional  injury relates to how the brain is functioning. For example, there may be no structural damage, but the brainwaves are dysregulated.  These disorders usually do not show up on MRIs or CT scans.  We believe that the functional type of injury is much more prominent in ADD.  The brain’s physical structure may appear normal on conventional diagnostic imaging.  As a matter of fact, almost all of the ADD patients we have seen over the years have had normal CT scans and normal EEGs. But when we break the EEG down into functional bandwidths (a specific range of the EEG) at specific sites on the head, we usually see abnormal patterns in people with ADD.  Examples of functional bandwidths are the dominant brainwaves in the low bandwidth range of four to seven cycles per second or the higher  bandwidth of fifteen to eighteen cycles per second.  The dominant bandwidth will have a profound effect on the behavior of the individual.”  pp35-36.  Getting Rid of Ritalin by Robert W. Hill, Ph.D. and Eduardo Castro, M.D.     Most functional injuries respond well to neurofeedback training.  Dr. Kelsey