Brain Mapping and Cognitive Recovery with Dr. Michael Bagnell | E13

Dr. Bagnell shares his 30-year journey as a "health detective" in functional neurology, revealing how he helps patients with persistent cognitive symptoms after brain injury through careful investigation and targeted interventions.

• Brain fog often stems from disrupted neurovascular coupling, where blood flow fails to properly supply active brain regions
• Dysautonomia (autonomic nervous system dysfunction) can create cognitive symptoms by limiting blood flow to the brain when needed
• QEEG brain mapping identifies specific patterns of brainwave dysfunction, showing signatures of "too much delta and too much high beta" in concussions
• The brain functions in interconnected networks rather than isolated regions, requiring comprehensive assessment
• Combining "passive" therapies (neurofeedback, audiovisual entrainment) with "active" functional neurology exercises creates optimal recovery
• Spatial awareness problems after concussion explain why patients frequently bump their heads
• Brain activation can naturally restore neurotransmitter production without medication
• Creating a personalized "brain formula" for each patient yields better results than one-size-fits-all approaches
• Dolphin-assisted therapy provides unique neurological benefits through echolocation and movement patterns

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Chapters

• 0:51 Welcome to Life After Impact
• 1:52 Meet Dr. Bagnell: Health Detective Journey
• 8:10 Cognitive Symptoms After Concussion
• 16:34 Brain Mapping and QEEG Analysis
• 25:04 Neurovascular Coupling and Blood Flow
• 32:50 Brain Network Functioning
• 41:31 Active vs Passive Brain Therapies
• 49:58 Spatial Awareness After Brain Injury
• 56:17 Neurotransmitters and Brain Activation
• 1:03:32 Dolphin Therapy for Neurological Healing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And we look at two factors in your brain map how much power in every brain wave, every bandwidth? How much power Do you have? Too much power or too little power, or a normal amount of power, normative range. And then we look at coherence, like the communicating signal. So an example of coherence would be you and I are talking, we can hear each other. We have normal coherence. If I turn off, if I mute myself and I'm talking, hypo coherence it's too low, you can't hear me. And if I turn up your volume and turn up my volume and we're yelling at each other, that's hyper coherence. So think about the brain kind of screaming at different places inside or racing thoughts. Hypo coherence is super sluggish. Another way to think about it is like too much gas and too much brake in the car. And so we're looking at these measures coherence and power.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Welcome to Life After Impact the concussion recovery podcast. I'm Dr Ayla Wolf and I'll be hosting today's episode, where we help you navigate the often confusing, frustrating and overwhelming journey of concussion and brain injury recovery. This podcast is your go-to resource for actionable information, whether you're dealing with a recent concussion, struggling with post-concussion syndrome or just feeling stuck in your healing process. In each episode, we dive deep into the symptoms, testing, treatments and neurological insights that can help you move forward with clarity and confidence. We bring you leading experts in the world of brain health, functional neurology and rehabilitation to share their wisdom and strategies. So if you're feeling lost, hopeless or like no one understands what you're going through, know that you are not alone. This podcast can be your guide and partner in recovery, helping you build a better life after impact.

Speaker 2: 1:52

All right, dr Bagnell, thank you so much for being on the show today. I am so excited to talk to you. You have been a functional neurologist, and in private practice, for over 30 years in South Florida, and one of the things that I absolutely love is that you call yourself a health detective, and I love, love, love that. I think we need more health detectives in the world, so why don't you start by giving us a little bit about your background, how you became interested in neurological disorders specifically, and then we can go from there.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Very good. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. So it's always nice to be able to share with another colleague and for people, lay people or even professionals, really what it is we do in the different worlds of neurology and oriental medicine oriental medicine, excuse me. So this is kind of fascinating for me. This is a first. I love it.

Speaker 1: 2:45

So, yes, I, when I graduated chiropractic university many years ago, I was very interested in the brain, right out of the doors basically, and so I started with program with Dr Carrick, who we both know, kind of the patriarch of functional neurology, and at that point it was a postgraduate program for doctors to really start to understand more of the neurologic basis of physical medicine, chiropractic. And so that began and I was like, so intrigued and fascinated. So this is going back to 89 and 90. And, as life would have it, I was always interested. But we got married and children and said, okay, time to work, pause the studying for a while in a way, and so I had to put that a little bit on the back burner. But I was always interested in the brain, the nervous system and the understanding of the different aspects of how it really works, which, of course that many years ago wasn't neuroscience so much, it was more neurology. So as the years went forward, my wife gave me the green light, many years later, as our kids were older and grandkids were already on the way and already here she said you really love that, you might want to jump back into that.

Speaker 1: 3:53

So I did get back into functional neurology, which was much more advanced at that point, and completed the fellowship and brain injury rehabilitation. So that gave me a beautiful window into what we could do with people who have the difficult cases like we were talking about previously, the really challenging ones that don't seem to respond to other types of approaches, or no one was able to help them or no one even in a way believed, because it's really the invisible injury, isn't it? People that continue to suffer. They say you have that minor thing, how could that still be bothering you? So our work in functional neurology yours and mine has really opened up a window, maybe even a door, we might say maybe even sliding doors, big doors into what's really going on in the brain and how can we help people to not only recover but optimize really their brain function right, to get back all of these functions and maybe even improve to a way that they didn't even anticipate. So that's been my health detective journey, and I did write a book like no, you're on the path to that and I can't wait to see that and read that.

Speaker 1: 5:02

But that was about detectives, because I feel that good medicine is looking into many things, not just what I like to call it fast and slow medicine. Right, like fast food. I'm not into fast food, never have been and I'm not into fast medicine like oh yes, this, this, this here, take this, do that, you're done. Let's really spend time I know you do, so this is at your heart too and get into what is going on with the person and keep asking myself the question why is that and why is that and why do they have this and why, rather than just defaulting to something that might be seemingly simple but yet not get the quality of results. So we're really into one-to-one patient care, very focused, highly specific, high touch my wife likes to say high touch and high level quality. And so that's being a detective is looking for the clues, as I know you do looking for the clues and getting underneath the hood to help people get back to the things they want and love to do.

Speaker 2: 6:06

I love that. I love that concept of fast versus slow medicine and especially when it comes to the brain and people that have had brain injuries, they need people to put the time in to ask the questions and do the investigation, and so I just I love that kind of differentiation there between fast and slow.

Speaker 1: 6:25

It's great yes, agree 100% with you.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Yeah well, today I wanted to explore the topic of cognitive symptoms and cognitive dysfunction, because that is one of the things that so many people do experience, and a lot of the you know the research says, oh, maybe% to 30% of people go on to have lingering, persistent symptoms, but then when they started looking at actual cognitive symptoms, they started to recognize, ooh, maybe that number's closer to like 40% to 50% of people actually experience lasting cognitive symptoms, and so I think that now that the research has gotten a little bit better at paying attention to the cognitive aspect, we're recognizing that's really important.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, the cognitive aspect. Actually, this is a perfect discussion because we just completed a two-week immersive. Many of our clients come from different locations, as I'm sure yours do, around the country, even some from outside the country for shorter periods of time, called immersives, and this one young man who's in college, he was dealing with let's just call it brain fog that's the way he positioned it which affected his ability to function in college, so his cognitive abilities, and so when we looked at him, we had to get under the hood as a health detective and determine what could be causing this experience of a cognitive impairment we could say in some official language, or brain fog in his language. And so he had been to the Mayo Clinic with his family. He had been to numerous other practitioners in different disciplines looking at immunology, which of course could be a very important component, gastrointestinal, another very important component that should be considered, mayo Clinic, looking at things like chronic fatigue syndrome.

Speaker 1: 8:15

When we looked at everything, all the information, and re-evaluate everything neurologically, really from a hierarchy, you know, we start with what I call brain-based healthcare. So here's another nugget we think about brain-based healthcare, so we're looking at the brain to determine is it primarily involved with what you're dealing with, or secondarily involved or not involved. And so if we can go through that hierarchy, we can determine is this someone we can help or is this someone that really needs to be referred to the appropriate type of caretaker? So with him, his brain fog, his cognitive issues would be in this category dysautonomia. His blood pressure when he stood up would drop and his heart rate would soar. So you can imagine if your heart rate went up to as if you were jogging 120, let's say, well, maybe, if most people might be in that area, 120 with 30. But his blood pressure went down to 90 over 60. And if you're 6'3" and your blood pressure drops down and you're a 20-year-old male who was a high school state champion volleyball player, that's not a good feeling player, that's not a good feeling.

Speaker 1: 9:28

And so we realized, through autonomic testing on a tilt table, we ran the tests, we ran evaluations for what's going on in his brainstem, which is really that autonomic hub. We could say we're looking at a blood flow issue, a brain to cardiovascular blood flow issue to his brain. Is that the source for everyone with cognitive issues? No, it's not. But with him that's the underlying cause. And so we worked the whole week. We got him a percentage improvement and actually I was on a Zoom call with him yesterday. We follow our patients after that for weeks each week to determine are the things we prescribed for them helping them to trend in a still continued improvement direction? So yesterday we tweaked some of his exercises, so to speak. We improve those, we got rid of some things that were not seeming to help and keep moving the needle forward for clarity with his cognitive function by improving his dysautonomia.

Speaker 2: 11:27

I love that and I think that that speaks volumes to the health detective that said okay, we've got a case of brain fog, this could be coming from a gut dysbiosis, it could be coming from other issues, and so that autonomic testing is such an important foundation of the work that we do, because the autonomic nervous system controls so many things, and I think that one of the things that we often talk about, especially in the world of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, is blood flow right, Blood flow to the brain, and I think also, people can maybe get a little confused between global blood flow versus regional blood flow and this idea that you can have kind of maybe in some cases, normal overall global blood flow versus regional blood flow, and this idea that you can have kind of maybe in some cases, normal overall global blood flow, but when you're trying to activate certain parts of your brain, it's your autonomic nervous system that is supposed to say, ooh, I need to send more blood flow to that prefrontal cortex so that people can be thinking and strategizing, and that that actually might not be working so well either.

Speaker 2: 12:29

Can you speak a little bit to how you are kind of assessing these maybe regional aspects of blood flow and activation?

Speaker 1: 12:37

Yeah, very good. I love the way you're kind of taking what I'm saying and then kind of putting in a better. I, like you, tie a bow on it. That's very good. So let's throw out a terminology for your listeners neurovascular coupling. Neurovascular coupling and I'm putting my fingers together we can see on the video like these things are bound together.

Speaker 1: 12:55

So my nervous system, my nerves, neurology, is bound to my blood vessels to allow them to get a signal to function in that moment. As you're saying, even inside the brain, where we're delivering blood flow in different directions. So, as we need things in the body, if I'm going to run, I need to shunt blood to my legs and my lungs and, of course, my head. If I'm going to do bicep curls, I better shunt blood to my biceps. If I'm going to be working in a cognitive capacity, working in some problem solving, I better be shunting blood to that frontal lobe.

Speaker 1: 13:36

And when someone has an injury, that system can become uncoupled. So it may not shunt blood at a moment right, in the right moment that you need it. It may be a little delayed, which we call a latency, it may be a little slower, so I don't feel quite good. Oh, a very good example of this, for most people have experienced it. You're laying down, you stand up really quick and you might feel a little bit of like, oh, I'm a little light-headed. I mean, most of us have felt that to some small degree. Well, someone with dysautonomia might stand up, as you know, and might feel horrible for five minutes and that would be difficult, right, but then eventually, oh, I'm starting to feel okay now. So there's a latency, it's too slow. These things are physiologically linked in time. So things happen so automatically, right, so in milliseconds, these things are all operating because your brain is really good and it's tightly wired to the blood vascular system and the heart, regulating the heart. Actually, most people don't realize right, you and I do that the brain regulates the heart function. Right, you know, we have one electrical system causing another electrical and pumping system, more of kind of like a plumbing system, to move.

Speaker 1: 14:43

So I love that language neurovascular coupling, that is language that is in the literature that gets somewhat uncoupled when we have an injury. It could happen in our brain, it could happen in our limbs, it could happen in one leg or in one arm, you know. So we want to evaluate. So your question was how do we evaluate that? So when we run a tilt table, which is really in the past, has been considered the gold standard for evaluating that. So when we run a tilt table, which is really in the past, has been considered the gold standard for evaluating that.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Now we know there's another test, the hand grip test, which gives you a very good window into the same type of function or dysfunction of the autonomic system. But we'll focus on the tilt table test where we hook up pulse oximeters to the feet and the hands. So we're watching the oximetry, the oxygenation of tissues in the extremities, blood pressure, cuffs on the ankles and the arm, and EKG. So we're monitoring heart, we're monitoring things in the extremities, we're monitoring all these parameters of the sympathetic, the parasympathetic system and how they react. When we have someone do different types of parameters, like deep breathing, maybe we'll have them do a breath hold, which is called a Valsalva, you know. We'll have them do a hand grip during the test and we'll bring the table up into an upright position, which really is not a stress for the person whose nervous system is working right, but it's a pretty big stress if your autonomic system has been injured through a concussion.

Speaker 2: 16:20

Absolutely, and in Chinese medicine we have the saying that's been there for thousands of years where qi goes, blood flows, and that was their way thousands of years ago of saying we don't have enough blood to be perfusing everywhere, at every point. And, like you said, if we're eating, our blood needs to go to our stomach to help digest. If we're using our brain, we need to send blood up to our frontal lobe and our cortex. If we're exercising, we need to send to our muscles, and so you know this idea of uncoupling. It's the same concept Like if we're trying to do cognitive work, we're trying to use our energy, our chi, and then all of a sudden it's not coupled with blood flow. Well then that manifestation of brain fog kicks in, and often I hear people describe it as my brain just doesn't want to work, which is a very frustrating experience for people, especially when they are at work or at school.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Yeah, when you need to step on the gas, so to speak, for your brain, you need it to respond right now, just like you're on the highway or you're getting on the highway. You can't have a sluggish car, that's kind of sputtering because it's dangerous. So it may not be as dangerous in the cognitive realm, but it's very frustrating, it's very limiting and it can create even mood changes for people because you're not the person you used to be. And so it's important for us to consider how do we analyze it? As you're saying and I really like that language, I never heard that before where chi goes, blood flows. That's very good, something new for me to put on my tool belt that I can speak. Yeah, I enjoy that. Yeah, but how to analyze it properly? Because, as we talked about before we started, a lot of people are not it's not acknowledged by a clinician or physician. I mean, we're in a very large metropolitan area. I know you're in Minnesota, I know how large it is, but Miami is very large and I can't tell you the number of patients who have come to us and said my, I won't even say names, but this kind of physician, this kind of physician, this kind of therapist said I don't really have that. Here's an antidepressant. You don't really have that, here's an antidepressant. You don't really have that, you just need to exercise more. You don't really have that, you need this.

Speaker 1: 18:33

And I thought, my goodness, because we know people with brain injuries. It's very hard for them to get and longer term symptoms. It's very hard for them to get the proper type of analysis. We even had a 10 yearold boy from out of town who found out about us. The parents brought him to us and he had had a concussion. He was a very high-level baseball player. As a kid got hit in the face with a fly ball, suffered a concussion and weeks after that was suffering with various symptoms, anxiety and a pediatric neurologist said kids don't get concussions. Are you serious? Are you kidding me? Wow, are you kidding me? It reminds me of a movie where Matt Damon Martian the movie Martian.

Speaker 2: 19:14

I don't know if maybe your listeners? Yeah, love the book, love the movie.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Yeah, yeah, you like the books. Yeah, I need to read more. But all these are the things I'm reading, all that how the brain's working. But he says they say to him, when he says we're gonna have to come and get you, it's a delay, and he says Are you serious? Are you really serious? So I mean, that's what I wanted to say. Of course I didn't say that, but I thought this is a problem. But not everyone has the training. So I'm going to say that not everyone has the training, but at least don't diminish the fact that and I will say this often because I think I've made many errors over the years is that it's possible.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I'll say to a patient asking what do you think about this or that or this? I say, well, I guess it's possible. It is possible. Instead of shooting something down. We really want to support patients. We want to give them agency to recover their health. Even if it's not in my wheelhouse, someone might ask me something about a medication. I said, well, it might be a help. I'm not really certain, but it's possible. So I think, giving open possibilities as a person that people come to like yourself and myself, being careful with taking care of them empathy and concern and not thinking I know everything, because I certainly don't, you know, I don't want to close the door on the possibility of hope for them and we want to look at things prudently and rationally and with data and with information.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Absolutely. And I think too, you know, when you talk about doing the tilt table testing and you're observing that somebody's blood pressure is dropping and then their heart rate goes up, the conventional approach is to say, well, let's just try to artificially control this with pharmaceuticals. And so you do get a lot of people that are just given a beta blocker to try to lower the heart rate. And I think it's really important to recognize the error in the system is the original error is not necessarily the elevated heart rate. And I think it's really important to recognize, you know, the error in the system is the original error is not necessarily the elevated heart rate, that's just a reaction to everything else that's not functioning right. And so you're kind of coming in and trying to just squash a response to an error, and so I think it's really important for people to recognize that. That's one of the reasons why the outcomes of just trying to artificially control the autonomic nervous system typically don't have good outcomes.

Speaker 1: 21:31

It's oh, that is very well said the error in the system. I like that a lot because that is very accurate. Everyone does what is in their wheelhouse, right? So whether you're a chiropractic physician, whether you're an oriental medicine physician, whether you're a you know, a traditional neurologist, we might say, or cardiologist, you're going to work with what's in your wheelhouse. What I think is beautiful about the area that we have been had the opportunity to work in is that we have the opportunity to think outside the box. That's not necessarily something that they can do. I'm trying to be more altruistic, right, they're trying to do the best that they can, but they're working within a limited range. Like, if you do not prescribe those things, there's five other doctors that will testify against you that you should have prescribed them. So that's a problem, because the modeling for what's really going on, as you said, where's the error in the system is not being addressed. It's symptomatic, even if it does give symptomatic relief. And how much more? If you get an ablation and you didn't need it, that's even more intense, right? So I agree with you Having people that are working outside of the traditional quote area and thinking a little differently can be very beautiful. We see that all over the country. Right, If we can think differently and talk, maybe we can help people more. So it's really wonderful to know that.

Speaker 1: 22:52

Yeah, drugs are really suppressive in one area and they're not going to actually strengthen. So when people say, yeah, there's no cure for dysautonomia, I say, well, what do you mean by that? Because if you can strengthen it and resolve the imbalance in that dysautonomic function, isn't that a cure? If a person doesn't have the symptoms anymore and they can function to the capacity they did? So I wouldn't say that lightly, like oh, we cure everyone. That's foolishness. But I would say let's look at what's a resolution rather than just a compensation with medication or salt intake or stockings or an abdominal belt or something that's compensating you. Let's get in there and see if we can understand it, untangle it and then fix it if possible, for the long-term health that you might be able to enjoy.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Yeah, absolutely. And if the point of the autonomic nervous system is to be responsive to what's happening in the moment, taking a medication that takes away that responsiveness is also not a great long term solution.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Yeah, totally, that's very well said. You know, when we talk autonomics, you know we're talking about heart rate and blood pressure and blood flow and it's probably good to mention all the other end organs that can be affected because people may go in that direction. So we mentioned gut. I think there's two things I want to mention, but this one will be the first one. So someone, let's say their disautonomic function affects their gut much more. They may go off to the GI specialist.

Speaker 1: 24:23

If someone else is saying, you know, I'm in my fifties, I think my hormones are probably the source of this problem. Now they're off to the endocrinologist or the gynecologist or to someone in anti-aging medicine Could be a help. Or if they say I'm having problems with, you know, dry eyes. So these end organs of the autonomic system can cause someone to go off into that direction not inappropriate, but not the whole picture maybe. And so we've tried to look back at what other symptoms they're having. And there's a very good survey that someone can do a compass 31, to give you an overview of their autonomic system. I'm sure you can probably link that into the podcast so people can do it on their own and understand. Am I having issues like this, because this might be part of all of my other issues as the underlying cause. I think that's really critical. I'll stop there because I keep having very long answers. I'll give you a chance to jump in.

Speaker 2: 25:19

That's great. To take it back to ancient Chinese medicine, which really did have a reference frame for dysautonomia, they talked about disharmonies, and they talked about disharmonies between the circadian rhythm and the ability to actually have a proper immune response, and these disharmonies between how the kidneys and the heart are functioning and disharmonies between the liver and the spleen, or that really manifests as these digestive problems, and so they were really looking at this from a functional perspective a long time ago to say where is the disharmony? And again like how can we harmonize the system which, when it comes to dysautonomia, you know, that's really what we're trying to do too, as functional neurologists is we're like how do we bring harmony back to a system that controls so many different things in the body?

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, I mean so far ahead of its time, oriental medicine, right Even medicine back then, as you're saying that it's like, yeah, they were right on the money and you're talking about blood flow. We don't really talk about that in. We'll call it Western medicine or more modern medicine in terms of the whole body. It's rather that you have a circulatory issue you go to, you know, but not in terms of the whole body, like global or local or regional, but yet you all were doing it thousands of years ago, at least considering it. Now we just have different language, but it actually was already a thing.

Speaker 1: 26:42

I've often thought of that when it comes to the chakras, and for my thought is just and this is a little off topic is what would be the kind of possible equivalent of that? And I'm thinking about the endocrine system, all these midline glandular functions that are energetic in a way. Anyway, that's just a little side note, but there's so many things that are, I don't even want to say confirmed in Western medicine, but as science has identified things or as technology has been able to identify things, we go oh, that was right on the money. In Oriental medicine, that was right on the money, and so this is really beautiful that you have the marriage in your own practice of those two things. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 27:23

Thank you. For me, I look at it as maps. You know, if you're hiking in the woods, you need a trail map or a topographical map. If you're driving in a car, you want a roadmap, and so all these different forms of medicine and all these different ways of looking at the brain and the body are just. They're just maps that we can use interchangeably to say what is the appropriate map I want to use right now to kind of look at this particular problem. So you know, no attachment to any map, just what's the what's a good map right now for approaching the problem.

Speaker 1: 27:53

Yeah, but you got to have a few maps in your backpack so you can decide which one right? Yeah, that's right. Topographical is it more river map? Is it more, you know, atmospheric map? You better have a couple of maps and you do. That's the beauty of that.

Speaker 2: 28:07

Yeah, talk to me a little bit about the QEEG that you use, because that also gives you a whole nother level of analysis to say where is the brainwave activity happening. That's maybe a little bit depressed or too active, and I would love if you could kind of tie that into patterns that you see in maybe people that are coming in with brain fog or cognitive symptoms versus, say, I know you do a lot of work with kids with ADHD and I'd be curious if you could speak to maybe any kind of different patterns that you see with somebody that has ADHD versus somebody that's coming in with post-concussion syndrome and cognitive symptoms.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Yeah, it's very good. So one of the analysis tools we use is a brain map, an EEG, known to us as a QEEG, as you mentioned, which is a quantitative EEG. So the difference if someone says, yeah, I already did that, I went to the hospital, I had that after my concussion and they didn't find anything. I said no problem, so that's good. What they're primarily looking for, I would say, is any type of seizure activity, post-concussion, so epileptiform, to use the right language. But in the absence of that, you're good to go. When we do the analysis, we take the data and we compare it to normative databases one European model, one American model and we look at two factors in your brain map how much power in every brain wave, every bandwidth, how much power? Do you have? Too much power or too little power? Or a normal amount of power, normative range, normal amount of power, normative range. And then we look at coherence, like the communicating signal. So an example of coherence would be you and I are talking, we can hear each other, we have normal coherence. If I turn off, if I mute myself and I'm talking, hypo coherence, it's too low, you can't hear me. And if I turn up your volume and turn up my volume, we're yelling at each other. That's hypercoherence. So think about the brain kind of screaming at different places inside or racing thoughts. Hypocoherence is super sluggish. Another way to think about it is like too much gas and too much brake in the car. And so we're looking at these measures, coherence and power, and we compare them to a normative database. So we have people with post-concussion or concussion. We have people with cognitive issues, maybe from the concussion or not, and we have people with ADHD. Actually, as you know, someone could have a post-concussion effect and not have a classic ADHD diagnosed, maybe early in their life, but could develop attentional problems because of the injury right. So there may be more self-diagnosed, but there are signatures. There are signatures when you look at a brain map. So it's not really ethical to diagnose from a brain map. That's known across neuroethics when we're looking at EEG. But what we can do is say there is a signature pattern here. There's a pattern and that pattern is common with people who have brain injuries and that pattern would be too much delta and too much high beta. So a quick class on the brainwaves right, very short, probably good for listeners. Five brainwaves we'll just talk about that. Delta is very slow, deep sleep, theta is a little bit faster. That's your REM sleep. Very important.

Speaker 1: 31:28

Alpha is a beautiful brainwave, the first one ever identified, considered very flow state, very much where people want to train to be in their athletic best. So they're kind of relaxed but they're still sharp and crisp and ready. I always say it's kind of like for us waking still sharp and crisp and ready. I always say it's kind of like for us waking up in Asheville on a fall morning and having a nice coffee on the deck and just being. I'm ready to go but I'm chill. That's my thought of alpha. Or maybe a summer in Minnesota summer, but not winter. It can't be winter, unless you love that then it would be your alpha.

Speaker 2: 32:03

I mean, going snowshoeing during a snowfall is pretty relaxing no, that's true.

Speaker 1: 32:08

I haven't experienced it, but that sounds like yeah, I think that would be a good thing. So alpha is this very flexible brain wave. It increases when we close our eyes, when you're visualizing something. If you're that type of person, your alpha goes high. If you're artistic, you have a lot of alpha. Then you go into beta. Beta is a higher brainwave. So if you're exercising a little bit, you're in a beta state, probably a low beta. High beta is complex problem solving Very good if you're a complex problem solving, but can also be agitation, could also be anxiety if it's too much. Then we rise up into gamma. Gamma is a very high frequency and I'm trying to make these just simple for people because there's a lot of detail that can be overlaid. But you know just this was a simple takeaway. Gamma is your memory, binding into deep memory the gestalt, understanding the bigger picture and being able to process that deep in the memory. So delta, theta, alpha, beta, high beta, gamma Great.

Speaker 1: 33:08

So when we look at someone with a brain map that has a lot of delta in one region and they're not asleep during the taking the brain map and they have a lot of high beta, a question I would ask is have you ever had a brain injury? Have you ever had a concussion? I ask it in different ways because some people say no, no brain injury. Did you ever hit your head kind of hard and you kind of knew it for a while? Oh yeah, that happened when I was 10 or 11. Because there's a lot of definitions. That's part of the problem, as you know, with concussion or MTBI it's got this very and they're trying to bring all that into one alignment in the consensus documents. But to this point I think there's over 50 different definitions, which is a problem. So we look at that signature do you have that? And if they have that, we start considering and looking into that history very carefully.

Speaker 1: 33:58

And then we want to re-regulate that brain, help that brain to self-regulate better, and that's through neurofeedback, training and, which is a passive form of therapy, very effective and functional neurology, which is the active form of therapy layered together and I'm very much a fan of the passive and the active together. In my experience, which is limited, my own personal experience, in my experience, which is limited, my own personal experience people's responses are faster than what you say, than previous history of only doing passive types of therapies. So passive types of therapies might be CBT, as you know, or audiovisual entrainment with sound and light, or neurofeedback. Those would be considered passive, but they're very valuable to people recovering. I like them layered together with oriental medicine, functional neurology, another approach that complements it as well. So I'll pause there for a minute. Did I answer the first part of that?

Speaker 2: 35:02

You did yes, and I love that you are also differentiating things between passive and active, because in my book I use the same language to say here are passive therapies that have shown to be helpful, here are the active therapies. It's important that you do both, and I've heard you speak before about I think somebody had asked you a question of you know well what is what's a device I can try or what's a therapy I can use. And you gave such a great answer because you said it's not just about let me go out and try one thing, let me just do vagal nerve stimulation or let me just do acupuncture. It's about creating this orchestra of therapies that really help to bring integrity back to the body. That is often a combination of these passive and active and utilized in the appropriate dose, in the appropriate order, at the right time, and so I love that. That's kind of how you speak to it.

Speaker 1: 35:58

Yeah, I agree with that. They kind of it's helpful for them to have a coach or kind of a quarterback to help them figure out what is their personal brain formula. That's helpful for them to have a coach or kind of a quarterback to help them figure out what is their personal brain formula. That's the language we use here. We help people determine their personal brain formula, whether you're a teenager, and if it's a younger child, then we help the parents determine their child's personal brain formula. What does that mean? What combination of things therapies, exercises, diet might be the best based on the data we have for their family member?

Speaker 2: 36:29

Yeah, I like to tell people think of me like a personal trainer for your brain.

Speaker 1: 36:36

I like it. I don't do one exercise in my gym, I don't just do pushups. I have such a variety of things bands and ropes and box jumps, and running and jogging and yoga. So I do a variety of things because it affects my body in so many different ways. And so why not the same thing with the brain? Aren't we going to get a better response because the brain is doing so much all the time? How about if we come at it from different directions and different angles and different types of demands on it to cause it to increase its bandwidth, literally when we're talking about brainwaves? So another thought about brainwaves is with attentional issues. So we have some areas that are very important for attention the midline I read the other day actually, in a book the lady discusses it as the Mohawk area. So the midline, the cingulate, the limbic area very important attention. And then we have the frontal cortex, which most of us know. And so here's one thing people should start to think about that your brain works in networks. This is really helpful. So it's not just this region or just that region, it's how they network together and this is important.

Speaker 1: 37:49

I talked with a father yesterday. Came from out of the country with his daughter, the central executive network carrying out your activities, like we're there right now, but later we might drop our brain back into the default mode network and kind of step back, consider our future, consider things that are hopeful, consider, you know, stepping back out of the activity of the day, and so these networks have to shift back and forth and they do very well, beautifully, as a matter of fact, until there's an injury or there's a trauma or there is, etc. An immune problem that can affect the brain, like a chemical concussion. Almost right, we talk about that. You didn't have a physical injury, but you had so much chemistry, maybe from an immune overload or Lyme or mold these things happen a lot down here that it overwhelmed the brain chemically and caused the same type of dysfunction as if there was a physical injury. So it's an inflammatory cascade.

Speaker 1: 38:49

So, attentional issues we work to train those areas of the brain that are involved to improve function, whether you have diagnosed ADHD or whether you're dealing with attentional problems as a result of an injury later, whether you're dealing with attentional problems as a result of an injury later. And that really touches cognition, because when you talk about cognition, attention, focus and concentration are the three main components. Someone might say no, no memory. I say yes, I agree 100%. So I'm just using these top three in this discussion Concentration, attention and focus and so we will do things to drive activity into those areas, as long as there's good blood flow, adequate blood flow, in an appropriate manner, like you mentioned just a few minutes ago, dose specific. So we don't want to drive someone into complete fatigue. We want to kind of exercise that area of the brain as it's getting good blood flow, because we actually fix that first, and now that area is starting to become stronger, almost like a muscle from a brain coach like you.

Speaker 2: 39:54

And sorry to put you on the spot, but focus, concentration and attention all sound like adjectives describing the same thing. Are you differentiating those three terms?

Speaker 1: 40:06

They're a little bit different. Yeah, because there's different regions that come into play, not completely different, like if you drew three over, what is it a Venn diagram? And you had overlapping focus, concentration, attention. There are some areas that are consistent among all three in the middle, but they also have areas that are a bit different and you can actually see these on a platform where you don't see the diagram, but you can. You can read them on a platform that you and I are both familiar with, that is out of Canada actually, that we use for a lot of our cognitive assessment, but we actually use it in the office as well.

Speaker 1: 40:39

I can mention it's Crayos, it used to be Cambridge brain science and so we'll use that with people where we'll do an act, an active therapy, and then they'll come to the laptop and I'll say, okay, I'll load it and they'll do one that is focusing on the right prefrontal cortex for attention, and they'll do that task.

Speaker 1: 40:56

Go back and do the active therapy, come back and do the task and I'll work them back and forth just as an example. And it's pretty marvelous to see are. I'll work them back and forth just as an example, and it's pretty marvelous to see are they trending up, are they staying level, are they trending down? And then I may send that home through their email and have them do it every single day for a week until I'm seeing them again, or things like that. So I keep working the area that I feel is the most needed to bring up the other three, because if they're all overlapping to some degree, if you strengthen one, you may have an effect on the others, and in fact that's what we see. We see that yeah, excellent.

Speaker 2: 41:31

I love that idea of you know, pairing different exercises together and saying, okay, let's go activate this and then come back and test that, and then go back and and exercise this activity and then retest, and I think that that is, you know, like you said, being a health detective, you're being a detective in the middle of the therapy as well, to say is this the right therapy?

Speaker 1: 41:54

Yeah, I mean, as an example, we do, as you mentioned, that you're going to have in your book a chapter on oculomotor and eye movements. So how could they do a score? Let's say they score, I'm just going to pick an arbitrary number, an 80 percentile. Then they do some oculomotor exercise, they come back and they're at 82. Then they go back and do the oculomotor exercises again that are specified to them. They come back and now they're at 92. Wow, that jumped up. Now they go back and do them again, they come back and they're at 60.

Speaker 1: 42:22

I said, oh, we hit a fatigue level. We're done so by activating and retesting the actual thing they want to improve, because they're saying, doc, I'm not that concerned, my eyes are better, I believe you, and those are brain networks that are running my eyes, but I'm concerned about my attention. I said, look at your attention just improved. Look at your score just went up. And that's what we're going to work on, but not excessively so.

Speaker 1: 42:50

Especially with people with post-concussion, we have to be cautious and I know you are to watch their metabolic capacity not to push them too far, because I have found well, I think it's pretty classic you have a group of people that don't push themselves hard enough. And then you have a lot of people that really just push themselves way too hard and they do too many things I'm talking about in post-concussion and so our job is to help them. I'll say this word shepherd them a little bit more here or a little bit less here, kind of guide them, walk with them, help them through that and kind of taper them down if they're going too much, or get them going a little bit more, maybe just to the next level if they're not kind of doing enough.

Speaker 2: 43:23

Well, and that touches upon that really important concept of cognitive reserve.

Speaker 2: 43:26

And I think that's where some of the maybe traditional neurocognitive testing is not capturing the point at which somebody gets fatigued and so somebody that is coming in with a really high level of cognitive reserve and cognitive capacity, they get a concussion. Maybe they can do a neurocognitive test and perform just fine on it the first time around, but if you ask them to sit there and keep repeating that test over and over again, all of a sudden you'd see their scores tank. And for me, I remember obviously I've had a number of concussions and there was a time where if I had to drive my car for more than an hour and a half, my brain would get so tired I would have to pull over and take a 20 minute nap and then it was like I had. You know, years later I can drive for 13 hours in one day and be listening to podcasts and I'm completely fine, you know, and it's that difference between I couldn't hold my attention and focus and concentration for more than 90 minutes to now I can do it for 13 hours.

Speaker 1: 44:33

Wow, because that's substantial difference. So there's so much that we have on our tool belt that can really help people not only with-concussion but especially that are kind of struggling still to improve and get back functionality, whether it be through these different active or passive therapies, especially when it comes to the cognitive issues, like you're saying is, you know, getting the right fuel. I know you had that in the email there. I love the way you put that getting the blood flow appropriately going. If that's happening, then we're training those areas in a systematic way based on what their needs are, where they may have brainwave imbalances, increasing bandwidth and brainwave bandwidth improving coherence. I didn't talk too much about that, but that's a whole, nother animal, but just really having good, clean phone lines, so to speak, inside their head so that the signaling is fast when it needs to be fast and it's calm when it needs to be calm. Yeah, these are really wonderful things that we have and we get to share them with people and through this podcast I'm glad we're able to do this.

Speaker 2: 45:36

I love that, and so you have this cognitive testing platform, the KREOS that you can then also send home to people, and are you using that purely as a testing platform or also as a therapy?

Speaker 1: 45:51

Yeah, therapy and testing, yeah, and it also has outcome assessments. So we do a lot of outcome assessment testing. So, for instance, people dealing with anxiety, people dealing with depression, people dealing with possible bipolar, people dealing with PTSD, we can do an analysis on outcome assessments that are standardized in mental health and I can keep following up with them. So, as we have someone that leaves our care for an immersive, I can follow up with them month by month to see are they trending still well in their improved level of anxiety and depression that was caused by PTSD, and so we can keep watching those trends with people. And which is what we like to do.

Speaker 1: 46:31

Because people often ask, right, I'm sure they ask you, how long will this last if we do this brain training? And I say, well, it's based on factors, but we're looking for long-term potentiation, we're looking for long-term improvements with people, and so that's always the goal, that's my bullseye Can we get you back to what you love and want to do and can we keep it for a long term? Those are the goals and we have to see what we have to put in place to bring that to fruition.

Speaker 2: 46:58

Yeah Well, and we don't get to just exercise our bodies for six weeks and then say, okay, now my muscles are toned and I'm strong and I don't have to exercise anymore. And so I think, for people who do ask those questions of, well, how long do I have to do these exercises?

Speaker 1: 47:25

It's to everybody's benefit to see their brain as a complicated series of muscles that also need activation and training for their lifespan. Yeah, our brain. As you're saying that, what comes to my mind is that our brain is an afterthought. Until we have an injury, we're not even thinking about it. I know I wasn't. I've had, I estimate, five to eight concussions. I know you've had a history of those. We've both done very well, thankfully, and it's just an afterthought.

Speaker 1: 47:46

It's like people like well, I didn't do things before, why should I have to do them now? But we wouldn't think that with our body that's already been drilled into us or with our teeth, right, oh no, I need regular dental work and even so, much to nutrition. No, I have to take in the right nutrients. I have to eat a particular way. That's very good for me.

Speaker 1: 48:01

A lot of people, not everyone. But with the brain, I think we just have to develop that with people like a culture of that. I like what Dale Bredesen says out of UCLA, that every year maybe people should have a cognoscopy instead of just having a normal physical like we used to have. But now having their brain evaluated would be beautiful. I always think that an EE brain evaluated would be beautiful. I always think that an EEG yearly would be fantastic, would be a great way to get a non-invasive baseline of how your brainwave activity is and you go from there. Everyone would be different, but I think that's a very good non-invasive, low-cost way to at least get some analysis on your brain.

Speaker 2: 48:41

Absolutely. There was a study that came out that was estimating that millions and millions of Americans that are developing mild cognitive impairment, that that's going missed, it's not being caught. And I do think within the world of fast medicine there's almost an acceptance of, well, you're getting older and so there's a certain amount of cognitive decline that we're just going to call normal, and I think that that attitude, you know is it takes quality of life away from people.

Speaker 1: 49:10

Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, it's an uphill battle. It's an uphill battle because it's just. I think the way I think about it is one to one. I'm going to help the next one and I'm going to help the next one or the next family, and I'm going to help educate them, because my wife and I feel that one of our primary roles is educators. We are educators for people and we try to bring forth, you know, information and data that is actionable, that they can decide to do something with. You know, that's really kind of language that we enjoy. Give people agency, give them actionable data about themselves, about their environment, about their internal health that they can move forward on, whether it's gut health, metabolic health, but of course, it's under the umbrella of brain-based health care when it comes to our office.

Speaker 2: 49:55

Yeah, absolutely Switching gears. I wanted to talk a little bit about spatial awareness, because this is one of the things where, when people get a concussion, the thing that I hear frequently is that they then start hitting their head all the time, and I think that that's something I'd love to talk about, because obviously we're talking about cognition, which is not just our ability to focus and attention, but also these higher cortical areas in our brain is also where we have our maps of our body, our concept of spatial awareness, and one of the things that can often be affected is that idea of where am I in space. Once we lose that or it becomes distorted, it becomes much easier to then hit your head on the cabinet or on the doorframe of the car when you're getting out of it, and so I would love for you to speak a little bit to maybe how you're looking at testing that and what you see in your practice and then some of these kind of body remapping therapies.

Speaker 1: 50:54

Very good, because you mentioned earlier in the podcast maps. We're talking about having a map to analyze the person overall. But I was immediately thinking when you said that the maps in our head. We have maps in our brain and a person's probably saying what are you talking about? And I would tell anyone of the listeners right now, if you're a listener to this, you touch your right hand with your left hand. You just touch your top of your hand. You're not looking at it. Your brain knows I just touched the top, something touched the top of my hand, which I'm doing right now. So how does it know that? Because your brain has a map of your body on the inside. Actually, it has more than one map. It has many maps, not only to the physical structure, but it has sensory maps to know, oh, that's like something is on my left hand, maybe it's a fly, maybe it's a mosquito, ouch, or maybe it's something dangerous. So we have all kinds of maps that help us function in the world, navigate our body, move our body, know where our body is in space, know where space is in relation to our body, tonotopic maps for sounds.

Speaker 1: 51:55

We don't really have smell maps or olfactory maps, but we have tons of information stored in there based on things we've smelled before that are linked to memory. Right, we do that actually with a lot of our memory work with people. Talk to them about some favorite smell that they might have. I'll just use like lavender, it might be peppermint, and then they'll smell that. What does that remind you? Oh, that reminds me of my grandmother's kitchen, when we used to have lavender in France on the windowsill. Now they're getting memory, they're getting visualization, they're getting olfactory into the frontal lobe. That's just another. That's a free one for people. You can link olfactory to memory restoration and music. It's fantastic when you can figure out those things as a detective. So we're talking about the maps in the brain.

Speaker 1: 52:38

How do we remap? One of the best ways to analyze the maps is with eye tracking, eye tracking, testing. So when the eyes are inaccurate in their tracking or their testing, then more than likely the maps of where our body is in space are also what we call skewed. They're not accurate. So we can remap some of those things by using the eyes and the brain. Connection number one, number two, body movements and knowing. We use things like a head applied laser on some glasses and people will use that to recognize areas of the body and to move that laser slowly on that body part. We might use vibrational therapy at the same time, so it's causing the brain to have a greater recognition of a body part, visually, vibrationally. So we're getting two sensory inputs there, so we use many different ways.

Speaker 1: 53:34

The key, I think, is understanding is there map skewed or isn't it? And yeah, there's so many things to properly evaluate there. But we also think about their cerebellum and their parietal lobe, physically right, not only the maps but also the areas of the brain that are involved with moving and knowing where. And then, if you go to the qeg, that default mode network is very important towards the back of the brain and in figuring out where you are in the world and your place in the world and your spatial awareness. And it's located right back there in that parietal area primarily.

Speaker 1: 54:12

And then we have to talk about the vestibular system, which we won't talk about now because it's too much which gives you a self-reference. And so I actually spent the weekend in Pittsburgh and we were looking at some very novel vestibular testing equipment. That is just. It's really on the cutting edge of being helping people to rehabilitate a brain injury very quickly, faster than, I think, anything we've seen before. So that's really coming up in the next year or two. That's really remarkable Using the vestibular system. Year or two that's really remarkable using the vestibular system. So all these different systems default mode, network, vestibular system, parietal lobes, cerebellum, eye movements all can tell us how good are your maps and can we improve them. And we can use those same systems not only to test but to treat them and improve them. I think that's the end of that statement.

Speaker 2: 55:00

Yeah, love it, I love it. And do you use transcranial magnetic stimulation in your practice, or do you refer out for that, or what are your thoughts on that, because a lot of the research coming out is just so positive on it.

Speaker 1: 55:15

Yeah, we do not use it. So first state that I've always wanted it, many years ago. That was one of the first things I looked into, but we put it on the back burner and I think it has dramatic applications. It's being used primarily now, as I think we could say I think this is a generalization, but we could say it in psychiatry and it's being used with it has been approved with depression. You know non-responsive types of depression, but there's so many other applications for it and so you have to be able to use it outside of that. I know one of our colleagues uses it in Texas with a lot of former military PTSD. Great results. She's brilliant with that, and so I think it's got great applications. It should be considered.

Speaker 1: 55:57

Lately there's been a trend here in South Florida where they're doing it with children. I mean little children, three, four, five. I don't know enough about it, but I'm a little hesitant about that. So I guess knowing more about it might open my eyes, but I'm a little hesitant about that. I did see some of the pre and post data on one of the children that did that and it caused a little bit of a pause in me. So I think it's got great applications. I think it's worthy of looking into and finding out who can do it, because it's also, just for you know, listeners to be educated. Caveat emptor it's a money-making thing and it's been brought into a lot of practices like that. It wouldn't be that way in functional neurology because many of our colleagues are working outside the box to improve OCD and other brain functionality. So you have to be cautious about what's being recommended and is it the right application. But it is a brilliant therapy and I would highly recommend people look into it as a potential for them.

Speaker 2: 56:59

Yeah, I had a patient who, through the VA hospital, actually they were covering it and she was doing it, you know, every, every day and it was very helpful and so I love that even the VA is now utilizing these non-pharmaceutical options to address depression.

Speaker 1: 57:17

Couldn't agree more. I mean vagal stimulation. I know they're using and now using this. Tms is brilliant. I'm wonderfully happy that those are in that space for people.

Speaker 2: 57:27

And on the topic of depression, I think it would be worthwhile to also explore this concept of again, when we talk about depression, the age-old approach has been oh, it's a neurotransmitter imbalance, let's just give people some pharmaceuticals to modulate the neurotransmitters. I think it's really important for people to recognize that the brain produces neurotransmitters and different neurotransmitters in different parts of the brain, and that a lot of the brain activation work that we do in functional neurology has the ability to actually create better integrity and bring function back to these areas that actually produce neurotransmitters, and so maybe speak a little bit to this concept of you know neurotransmitters in the brain and the difference between just trying to pharmaceutically come in and kind of push pathways versus this idea of engaging different networks and activating different parts of the brain.

Speaker 1: 58:31

Right, I mean wonderfully stated. The previous model in psychiatry has been pharmaceuticals. It's a chemical imbalance. I think most people can acknowledge that. At least if you're over 40 years of age, you've heard that before. It's a chemical imbalance and so could there be a chemistry imbalance. Certainly there could be. It's absolutely possible.

Speaker 1: 58:46

Very hard to measure those things. There's some different schools of thought of measuring it, through urinary excretion or through this or that, but anyway it's difficult to measure neurotransmitters. So most of it has been used, diagnosed on symptoms, how you feel. Dr Daniel Amen would say why have we been the one profession not using imaging to understand what's going on in the organ we're treating, when everyone else has been? So that's from Dr Daniel Amen, one of the top psychiatrists in the world.

Speaker 1: 59:16

And so with that we can say that, yes, dopamine is produced in the brainstem. Serotonin is produced in the brainstem. Norepinephrine is produced in the brainstem. Serotonin is produced in the brainstem. Norepinephrine is produced in the brainstem. These are three of the major chemistries that our brain uses. Yes, there's serotonin produced in the gut, but sometimes it gets a little too much attention maybe. So it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a healthier diet. It does not mean that. What I'm saying is it's not all the serotonin in your gut is going to your brain. Your brain is making much of what it needs right there, very close to it.

Speaker 1: 59:48

So, yes, this brainstem which we talked about earlier is the autonomic hub, you could say, of the brain. This brainstem is actually creating chemistry by firing. So we go from the ancient Chinese thought, where qi goes, blood flows, to Sherrington right, I think it was Sherrington. If it fires together, it wires together. And now we're going to. Firing creates chemistry. Oh wait a minute. Firing creates chemistry of neurons. Yes, that's how they talk to each other. So we can approach it from the chemistry or approach it from getting it to fire properly because it may have been suppressed.

Speaker 1: 1:00:25

So, yes, we have seen dramatic mood changes in many individuals with functional neurology applications by treating things in a region that increases chemistry activation. And many times we have to add by subtraction and say what does that mean? We have to take away too many things they're putting in so that their brain can start working properly. And we do that, whether it might be maybe there's too many supplements they're taking, maybe there's too many medications that they're taking and many people don't want to do that they just don't know what is the other option. They need another health detective or coach to kind of present some other maps to them to think about how they might be able to do this. And we've been, I would say, pretty successful in that and helping people navigate away from some of those things, because they got the improvement that they needed and now they're more functional.

Speaker 2: 1:01:16

Yeah, I love that and I think that's so important for people to recognize is that you know, like you said, there's a lot of focus on the guts production of serotonin, but a lot of that serotonin does stay in the gut and it really is the brain that is producing its own neurotransmitters that can at times be suppressed because of an injury and we can bring activation back to these regions. That then it's kind of like jumpstarting a car All of a sudden the areas are firing again, they can produce their own neurotransmitters and you start to actually very naturally get the brain's neurotransmitter balance back in play simply by providing the right activation.

Speaker 1: 1:01:54

Totally, and that's such a key component, especially with people with ADHD, when we're working with them, and that brainstem function for proper dopamine levels, I would say, and more appropriate levels, it would be the better word of serotonin, so now, and their epinephrine, norepinephrine, so their attentional issues can improve from a chemistry side, as well as strengthening brain networks and so forth.

Speaker 2: 1:02:17

Before we wrap up, I would love for you to talk about your work with dolphins, because it's so, so unique and it sounds absolutely phenomenal, so share a little bit about this very special thing that you're doing.

Speaker 1: 1:02:29

Who would have thunk it that it would be such an incredible thing? Yeah, everyone would. Because for me it was like oh, the holy grail kind of thing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be working with Jacques Cousteau I don't know if you remember that name so my mom even helped me write a letter because I wanted to go and visit the Calypso. That was what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: 1:02:48

So, many years later, this opportunity comes up with some of our patients who are co-owners in habitats, dolphin habitats around the world. Well, they happen to be very close to us here in South Florida, in the Keys. And so they said you know, there are some occupational therapists and physical therapists that work in another facility down there with children with disabilities. Would you consider doing something in neuroscience with the dolphins and with clients? And I said, oh, wow, this is an interesting opportunity. So we spent the better part of six months going down there almost every weekend, working with the marine mammal specialists in the water and determining what types of movements the dolphins could do that our clients could do. That would actually integrate things in the brain. And so that was the beginning of it. And then we ran a number of camps with larger family groups. We had two different families one time and another family another time. So we had about six to eight people and they would do on land. First we evaluated everyone right, evaluated their brain function, brain maps, eye tracking, everything. And then we designed therapies for each individual person on land and then in the water. So they would train on land for an hour and a half, then they'd be in the water for an hour, then they'd have lunch, then they train on land and they train in the water. We did that for a week and so we did that over two camps. Since then, of course, the pandemic, there was a big change in the environment and so we have gone back and periodically worked with one client at a time and it's been similar. So now we work out of our facility where they do on land dry training, so to speak, based on what they need. Then we'll go down to the Keys and they'll do sessions in the water with the dolphins based on the exercise we developed together, which have a lot to do with the vestibular system is very much life changing.

Speaker 1: 1:04:45

I would totally do that every week. I love this so much because they're like giant puppies, these things. They say the marine mammal specialists say, when you come here, the dolphins will take your heart and they will keep it. And it's true, they really do. They're incredibly intuitive animals. We had one lady who is the wife of a doctor and he brought her down with a seizure disorder. And so we do this one component where it's.

Speaker 1: 1:05:08

We call it a dolphin meditation. So you'll lay on your back, floating with a device under your feet and under your shoulders, you have a vest on and you're in the lagoon and this marine mammal specialist will bring the dolphin around and they are echolocating around you and and this, and she doesn't force the dolphin around, and they are echolocating around you. And she doesn't force the dolphin any way, just allows the dolphin to go wherever she wants, he or she. And in this case the dolphin would not leave this woman's head, and we saw with other people around the back, the legs, the feet, the head this dolphin would here, and then she's trying to move. Nope, the dolphin came back here. Nope, came back here.

Speaker 1: 1:05:42

And we've heard stories like that, where dolphins recognize that some women are pregnant prior to them, even knowing when they go into the water there, and then they'll say yeah, and they find out later. So the intuitiveness and dolphin brains are marvelous. I've done quite a bit of reading after that to find out. Let me understand these creatures even more. And they are in echolocating. They're providing a very high frequency exposure, a biologically healthy frequency, to the individual.

Speaker 1: 1:06:11

And we actually recorded that with microphones that go into the water, which are called hydrophones, and we recorded that over time so we could know with each client what was the profile, what was going on there. Because we did a little bit of what was the profile, what was going on there, because we did a little bit of research on the front end of those camps. So the results were really wonderful. People had improvement in many different symptoms. There was PTSD, there was autism, there were previous concussion cases in there. People love it, they enjoy it and it's very novel, as you said, and it's a life-changing event. So we still have it available. We just do it on a one-to-one basis, as people might find interest in that, and so it's a blended approach to functional neurology and a dolphin experience that will radically alter your life.

Speaker 2: 1:06:56

Oh my gosh, I just love that. I love it Well, thank you so? Much for being so generous with your time. I know you have to run Well. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I know you have to run. Where can people find you, Maybe?

Speaker 1: 1:07:08

give us some of your information there. Yeah, we're on all the social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook and so forth. I think even they have a TikTok place for us there. We have someone who handles that for us very well. She's an excellent young lady and she takes care of those things, as we film videos. And we also have a website, bagnellbraincentercom bagnellbraincentercom, and there's extensive information there. There's links to our podcast as well, and I love that you invited me to yours, so I appreciate it so much. So, yeah, we have a neuro collective podcast on Spotify that people can listen to.

Speaker 2: 1:07:41

Excellent, awesome. I will put all of that in the show notes so people can click on all those links. And thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:07:49

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 1:07:56

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