Cuttings from an interview with Dr Jamshid Ghajar, MD, PhD, FACS, Stanford Brain Performance Center Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery.
The brain is designed to interact with the outside world and we have a major problem.
The problem is that there's a delay in sensory-motor processing and we all want to interact in real-time.
In order to do that you actually have to be in the future.
This is the only way to get over that present hump, so our brains are actually about two-and-a-half seconds in the future.
The brain's present is the present's past. We’re acting in the present moment and we're evaluating the sensory consequences in the past, so by the time you sense something it has already happened.
That is why 80% of our brain cells are involved in some way in predicting what will happen in the present.
Put in another way;
The brain has a problem; it takes time to process input so it is constantly "out of sync" with real-time.
To fix that problem the brain evolved an accurate neuro-prediction mechanism.
In regard to the consequences of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI);
Most people think that with a concussion, everything slows down, but with smooth pursuit eye movements the eye jumps ahead of the target.
This shows that inhibitory control is impaired and supports of our anticipatory neural network hypothesis.
A good analogy is that you have your foot on the gas going 120 miles per hour and you use the brake to pull back to 60 miles an hour, and for the fine speed control.
With a TBI the brake is broken so you jitter and jump ahead and also have other inhibitory problems such as mood swings, crankiness and sensory overload.
We recommend you read tis most interesting article by one of America's top neurosurgeons.
Here at VisionLink, we help our concussion patients rehabilitate their Neural Timing, sometimes using the InterActive Metronome.
