Source: Lakshmiraman Oza/Pixabay
“Do you think all mental illnesses have a physical component in the brain?” someone once asked me.
“Absolute!” I replied. Then I noted that I did not believe that the mind and the brain are the same, nor that the mind becomes diseased. I’m joining in Descartes on dualism.
The subtitle of my memoirs Concussion is a brain injuryis ‘Treating the neurons and me’. That, to me, expresses the essence of brain injury treatment: treat the physical brain cells and their rivers of neural networks with neurostimulation and neuromodulation and use traditional methods such as dialectical behavior therapy to treat the mental states that coexist with them.
We do not know whether the mind arises from brain activity or exists in a form that we cannot perceive, which form ‘speaks’ through the brain. We don’t know whether mental states arise purely from physical brain activity or are a combination of brain activity and the mind. But we know that the brain controls everything in our physical, mortal body; and that phenomena such as terminal lucidity suggest that a mind exists separate from the brain in an unexplored form.
Meanwhile, doctors and psychologists are left with the practical realities of treating brain injuries.
To do that, we must address both the neurons and mental states that result from the cause of the injury, and its social, environmental, financial, psychological, and spiritual consequences. The standard treatment model includes rehabilitation, neurochemicals, short-term behavioral therapies and superficial ideas about neuroplasticity – but not direct neuronal therapies. In other words, the focus is on mental states rather than on their causative damaged physical components (neurons and neural networks).
Over the past few weeks I have been reading about one aspect of the neuron for the fiction trilogy I am currently writing, namely life after death, and life after life after death. NT Wright shapes the resurrection. Book one, The awakening of the soulis out now. For the second book I needed to know more about the neuron. How do neurons respond to direct stimulation? Normally stimulation comes through the five sensory inputs: eyes, ears, skin and hair, tongue and nose. That’s a simple way of putting it. But we are not born with electrodes implanted in our brains that stimulate a neuron’s axons, dendrites, or their neural networks.
Research into deep brain stimulation and prosthetics implanted in retinal ganglion cells to give sight to the blind has enlightened me. This research focuses on the electrical properties of cells with axon potentials, whether they are the neurons of the brain or the ganglion cells of the retina of the eye.
I learned that high frequencies on the order of 200 Hz excite neurons and propagate high-frequency activity beyond stimulation at 10 Hz (alpha wave frequency). I learned that too stimulating retinal ganglion cells at different frequencies can create color perception. Cones transmit color information via the optic nerve through the retinal ganglion cells, but it appears that directly stimulating the cells can create the same perception.
Neurotransmitters are well known even to people who do not know or understand how they are secreted and detected in the brain. This widespread knowledge gives the false impression that the main way to treat the brain is through medication – even for a clearly electrically based condition such as epilepsy or disturbed sleep, which requires an EEG-based diagnosis. There seems to be a clear dividing line between obvious electrical problems with the brain and all other ‘mental’ disorders. Still, medications are the first order of business in treating seizures and sleep, not the kind of therapies that affect brain waves, epilepsy diagnostic tests, and the sleep record.
Why record brainwave activity and then use neurotransmitters instead of neurostimulation therapies that directly change malfunctioning brainwave activity toward health?
Neurotransmitters are simply a chemical way for one neuron to communicate with the next neuron(s), whether an axon potential is to be generated or not. Axon potentials and the brain waves they create lead to brain function. You can flood the brain with neurochemicals, but if the neurons can’t generate electrical impulses, not much will happen.
Why do doctors ignore brain waves and electrical activity?
The question I was asked provides, I think, a partial answer.
As a society, we generally believe that psychiatric conditions are mental states and not physical ones. Even many researchers and doctors are unaware or aware of this incorrect view, even when it comes to brain injuries.
Furthermore, it seems to me that healthcare professionals wrongly view learning electrophysiology as drudgery of mental work with little payoff. But learning about neurotransmitters and how to safely prescribe brain medications also requires many studies and annual courses to stay abreast, both of medication changes and the increasing understanding of the mental states they affect. Perhaps the emphasis on neurotransmitters and chemical treatments and surgeries is because that is what society prefers?
A growing alternative is neurostimulation, which is used synergistically with talking therapies. The latter are effective, but act on the mental states rather than treating the neurons directly. As a result, although essential, they take time while not healing the injured neurons. When used in combination with neurostimulation they work faster.
The clinic that treated my neurons started offering counseling in a new way. They provided regular three-minute bursts brain biofeedback during an hour of talk therapy to facilitate the client’s ability to express themselves and respond to treatment. One of my psychologists used audiovisual entrainment with me in the same way.
Treating the neurons and me – my mental states – synergistically was found to speed up and improve healing. This also applies to other people with brain injuries, healing their injured neurons and providing the necessary guidance, support and guidance.
Copyright © 2025 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy
