Light therapy could help people recover from major brain injuries, suggests a new study. Low-level light therapy appears to improve healing in the brains of people who suffered significant injury, say scientists. They believe it may also assist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and autism.
Lights of different wavelengths have been studied for years for their wound-healing properties. For the new research, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the United States conducted low-level light therapy on 38 patients who had suffered "moderate traumatic brain injury" - defined as an injury to the head serious enough to alter cognition or be visible on a brain scan. The participants received light therapy within 72 hours of their injuries through a helmet that emits near-infrared light.
Study co-lead author Dr Rajiv Gupta said: “The skull is quite transparent to near-infrared light. Once you put the helmet on, your whole brain is bathing in this light.” The researchers used an imaging technique called functional MRI to gauge the effects of the light therapy.
The team focused on the brain’s "resting-state functional connectivity" - the communication between brain regions when a person is at rest and not engaged in a specific task. They compared MRI results during three recovery phases: the acute phase of within one week after injury, the subacute phase of two to three weeks post-injury and the late-subacute phase of three months aft.
