Neurological Activity – By Terry A. Rondberg, DC

Part One of three articles.

Achieving positive results from chiropractic care is easier than explaining why or how such results are accomplished. This has led the profession to accept that, “Even if we can’t prove why we get good results, we know it works and that’s good enough.” This notion is no longer acceptable. Our critics claim we are unscientific and invalid. We urgently need credible and objective evidence that is published in scientific peer-reviewed journals!

Chiropractic care continues to seek valid instrumentation to demonstrate the connection between chiropractic adjustment and neurological change. Our first attempt at instrumentation was Radiology. The dated concept of vertebral mal-position correction being the field of Chiropractic, lead to X-Ray pictures proving the adjustment shifted the bone. But questions remain:

• Do static radiographs provide proof and/or correction of cause?
• Is the vertebral mal-position the cause or is it an effect of cause?

According to B. J. Palmer, the Vertebral Subluxation is a result of neurological influence and not the cause.

Today we have the next generation of instrumentation to address the cause of abnormal neural activity, which leads to abnormal muscle activity and creates abnormal joint mechanics. Such upgraded instrumentation provides information about neurological function at both the cortex (brain function) and at the Limbic System level (sympathetic/para-sympathetic responses). It is designed to test these over time and assess stress and recovery. It is a test for a dynamic system which deals directly with cause and can demonstrate the ability and power of chiropractic to alter neural function. The NeuroInfiniti was developed by chiropractors to provide research findings and has been used in chiropractic offices for the past several years. It is scheduled for its third upgrade even though it is already light years ahead of anything on the current market. The non-reproducibility of static sEMG and/or thermal scans has created many challenges, including third-party pay not covering the costs, which leaves many of the old sEMG/thermal units either gathering dust or used as a marketing tool at mall displays.

One can hardly escape reading about neuroscience in the press, and it’s easy to see why the topic fascinates some. Intellectual capital is the foundation of business in the knowledge economy. Yet as with any new field of knowledge, there’s much hype about the benefits of recent developments in brain science. For example, one notion claims that executives can become better leaders by emulating the management secrets of the human brain. Unfortunately, if one emulates the management secrets of the brain, one can create an organization that operates like the stock-market floor on Black Friday.