Near-infrared light treatment could benefit patients with severe concussion

“The skull is quite transparent to near-infrared light,” explained co-principal investigator Dr. Rajiv Gupta, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Once you put the helmet on, your whole brain is bathed in this light.”

For this study, researchers tested near-infrared light therapy on 17 patients who had suffered a head injury severe enough to affect their thinking or be visible on a brain scan.

Patients put on the light therapy helmet within 72 hours of head trauma, and researchers used brain scans to assess the effects of the treatment. Another 21 patients put on the helmet but did not receive light therapy.

The researchers focused on the connectivity of resting brain functions, or the communication that occurs between brain regions when a person is at rest and not engaged in a specific task.

The researchers took brain scans one week after the injury, two to three weeks after the injury, and three months after the injury.

“There was increased connectivity in those who received light treatment, primarily in the first two weeks,” said researcher Nathaniel Mercaldo, a statistician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We were unable to detect any long-term connectivity differences between the two treatment groups. So, although the treatment initially appears to increase brain connectivity, its long-term effects still need to be determined,” Mercaldo added in a press release from the hospital.

The new study was published Tuesday in the journal Radiology.

It's unclear why near-infrared light might speed brain healing, the researchers said.

Light therapy could stimulate brain cells' energy production, promote blood flow in the brain or reduce inflammation caused by the injury, Gupta said.

“There is still a lot of work to be done to understand the exact physiological mechanism behind these effects,” said researcher Suk-tak Chan, a biomedical engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Researchers expect more studies of light therapy to be done on larger groups of patients and over longer periods of time.

If these results are validated, Gupta says light therapy could be used to treat many other neurological disorders.

“There are many connectivity disorders, primarily in psychiatry, in which this intervention could play a role,” Gupta said. “PTSD, depression, autism: these are all promising areas for light therapy.”

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on light therapy.

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