At ChiroHouse, understanding how your nervous system is functioning is an important part of our assessment.
That’s why we use INSiGHT scanning technology as part of our neurological and spinal evaluation. These scans provide objective information about patterns of autonomic regulation, physiological adaptability, neuromuscular activity, postural loading and temperature regulation.
Together, they help us build a clearer picture of how your nervous system is responding to the physical, chemical and emotional stresses of everyday life.
Simply put, the scans help us better understand how your nervous system is functioning, adapting to stress and coordinating your body.
And because the results are measurable, we can repeat the scans over time and compare changes as your care progresses.
The Nervous System: Your Body’s Communication and Control System
Your nervous system is involved in virtually everything you do.
It receives information from inside and outside your body, processes that information, and coordinates an appropriate response.
It influences movement, posture, muscle activity, heart rate, breathing, digestion, sleep-wake rhythms, stress responses and countless other processes happening automatically throughout the day.
For simplicity, we can think about three important areas of nervous-system function:
Sensory
Your sensory nervous system continuously gathers information about what is happening both inside and outside your body.
That includes everything from touch, movement and balance to information coming from muscles, joints and internal organs.
Motor
Your motor nervous system sends signals from the brain and spinal cord to muscles throughout the body.
These signals help coordinate movement, posture, muscle tone and physical responses to the environment.
Autonomic
Your autonomic nervous system helps regulate many of the functions that happen without you consciously thinking about them.
This includes things like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature regulation, digestion and your physiological response to stress.
Rather than these systems working independently, they are constantly communicating with one another.
That ability to receive information, respond appropriately and adapt to changing demands is an important part of nervous-system function.
Stress and Your Nervous System
Your nervous system is designed to respond to stress.
And stress itself isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Exercise is a stress. Learning something new is a stress. Changes in sleep, illness, injuries, emotional experiences, work demands and the physical positions we spend our days in can all create different demands on the body.
A healthy nervous system needs to be able to respond when demand increases and then shift again when that demand has passed.
This ability to adjust to changing circumstances is often referred to as adaptability.
Rather than trying to determine whether someone is simply "stressed" or "not stressed," we are interested in understanding the patterns we can objectively measure.
That is where INSiGHT scanning technology becomes useful.
What Do INSiGHT Scans Measure?
At ChiroHouse, we use three different INSiGHT technologies.
Each looks at a different aspect of nervous-system and neurospinal function:
neuroPULSE measures heart rate variability and other autonomic signals.
neuroCORE measures electrical activity in the muscles along the spine.
neuroTHERMAL measures patterns of skin temperature regulation along the spine.
No single measurement tells us everything about a person.
Instead, we look at the scans together and interpret them alongside your health history, spinal assessment and other clinical findings.
This gives us objective information that we can use when developing and monitoring your chiropractic care.
1. neuroPULSE: Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Adaptability
One of the ways we assess autonomic nervous-system function is through Heart Rate Variability, or HRV.
Your heart does not beat at perfectly even intervals.
If your heart rate is 60 beats per minute, for example, that does not necessarily mean there is exactly one second between every heartbeat.
Those tiny variations between beats contain useful information about autonomic nervous-system activity.
Why does variability matter?
Your autonomic nervous system has two major branches:
Sympathetic activity is associated with mobilizing the body in response to demand.
Parasympathetic activity is involved in processes associated with rest, recovery and restoration.
Both are necessary.
The goal isn't to eliminate sympathetic activity or remain parasympathetic all the time. Your nervous system needs the flexibility to shift its activity appropriately depending on what your body needs.
HRV gives us objective information about this autonomic activity and the body's physiological adaptability.
The INSiGHT neuroPULSE collects several physiological signals, including heart rate and HRV, to help us evaluate patterns of autonomic activity, balance and adaptive reserve.
What are we looking at?
When we review your neuroPULSE scan, we are interested in things such as:
heart rate variability
autonomic activity
the relationship between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity
physiological adaptability
how your results compare over time
In simple terms:
The neuroPULSE helps us understand how adaptable your autonomic nervous system appears to be when responding to stress and changing demands.
2. neuroCORE: Neuromuscular Activity Along the Spine
The second technology we use is the neuroCORE surface electromyography scan, commonly called sEMG.
Surface EMG measures the electrical activity produced by muscles.
At ChiroHouse, the sensors are placed along specific areas beside the spine to measure patterns of paraspinal muscle activity.
Your brain and nervous system are constantly coordinating the muscles that support your spine and posture.
Even when you think you're sitting or standing still, these muscles are continually making small adjustments.
The neuroCORE allows us to objectively measure some of that neuromuscular activity.
What are we looking at?
The scan gives us information about:
the amount of muscular activity occurring along different areas of the spine
differences in activity from one region to another
differences between the left and right sides
patterns of neuromuscular recruitment
postural loading
areas where muscular activity may be relatively increased or decreased
This can help us identify patterns that aren't always obvious simply by looking at someone's posture.
For example, two people may appear to stand similarly while the muscles supporting their spine are working very differently.
Total Energy, Pattern and Symmetry
The INSiGHT software organizes sEMG information into several measurements to help us interpret the overall pattern.
Total Energy reflects the overall amount of electrical activity being measured through the paraspinal muscles.
Pattern looks at how that muscular activity is distributed through different regions.
Symmetry compares activity between the left and right sides.
These measurements don't exist in isolation. We interpret them alongside what we find during the rest of your assessment.
In simple terms:
The neuroCORE helps us understand how the nervous system is recruiting and coordinating the muscles that support your spine and posture.
3. neuroTHERMAL: Autonomic Temperature Regulation
The third component of the INSiGHT assessment is the neuroTHERMAL scan.
Your autonomic nervous system plays an important role in regulating blood flow to the skin, which influences skin temperature.
The neuroTHERMAL technology measures temperature patterns along both sides of the spine.
Because skin temperature regulation is influenced by sympathetic autonomic activity, these measurements provide another way of looking at patterns of autonomic function.
What are we looking at?
Rather than simply asking whether an area is "hot" or "cold," we're looking at the overall pattern.
That includes:
temperature differences between the left and right sides
changes occurring through different regions of the spine
patterns of temperature regulation
consistency or variation between repeated scans
A single temperature reading doesn't tell us everything about your nervous system.
However, when thermal findings are considered together with HRV, sEMG, your spinal assessment and your history, they provide another piece of objective information.
In simple terms:
The neuroTHERMAL helps us identify patterns in the autonomic regulation of skin temperature along the spine.
Putting the Three Scans Together
This is where the scans become especially useful.
Each technology measures something different.
HRV tells us about autonomic activity and physiological adaptability.
sEMG tells us about neuromuscular activity and how the muscles supporting the spine are being recruited.
Thermal scanning tells us about patterns of autonomic temperature regulation along the spine.
When we put those measurements together, we can begin to see patterns that would be difficult to appreciate from any single measurement alone.
For example, we may see differences in autonomic adaptability alongside increased neuromuscular activity or asymmetrical temperature-regulation patterns.
That information doesn't replace your health history or physical assessment.
It adds another objective layer to it.
Why We Scan Children
The nervous system is developing rapidly throughout childhood.
As children grow, their brains and bodies are constantly receiving sensory information, developing movement patterns, adapting to their environment and learning how to respond to new physical and emotional demands.
This is one of the reasons we believe objective nervous-system assessment can be valuable in pediatric chiropractic care.
The scans allow us to look beyond what we can observe from the outside and gather measurable information about several aspects of autonomic and neuromuscular function.
And because the scans are non-invasive, they can be used with patients across a wide range of ages.
At ChiroHouse, we regularly use INSiGHT scans as one component of our assessment for children as well as adults.
What About Kids With Regulation or Developmental Challenges?
Many families who come to ChiroHouse are trying to better understand their child's nervous system.
Their child may have challenges involving things such as sensory processing, emotional regulation, sleep, focus, behaviour, movement or development.
These experiences can be complex and can have many contributing factors.
Our neurological scans don't diagnose ADHD, autism, anxiety, sensory processing disorders or other developmental conditions.
What they can do is provide objective information about autonomic regulation, adaptability, neuromuscular activity and other measurable patterns of nervous-system function.
We combine that information with your child's history, our chiropractic assessment and what you as a parent are observing day to day.
For many parents, seeing these measurements visually also makes an otherwise complicated conversation about the nervous system much easier to understand.
Why Do We Repeat the Scans?
One of the greatest advantages of collecting objective information is that we don't have to rely exclusively on how someone feels on a particular day.
Symptoms are important, but they are only one part of the picture.
A person may feel different before measurable patterns change, or measurable changes may occur before they notice a significant difference day to day.
That's why we periodically repeat INSiGHT scans during care.
We can compare the new results with previous scans and look for changes in:
HRV and autonomic activity
physiological adaptability
paraspinal muscle activity
neuromuscular recruitment
symmetry and postural loading
temperature-regulation patterns
Those results are then considered alongside your progress, examination findings and goals.
So, What Do the Scans Really Tell Us?
Neurology can sound complicated.
The simplest explanation is this:
INSiGHT scans give us objective information about several ways your nervous system is functioning and responding to stress.
They allow us to measure:
Autonomic regulation
How patterns within the autonomic nervous system are presenting.
Physiological adaptability
How your body appears to be responding and adapting to changing demands.
Neuromuscular activity
How much electrical activity the muscles supporting your spine are producing.
Postural loading and recruitment
How those muscles are being used across different areas of the spine.
Temperature regulation
Patterns in skin temperature influenced by autonomic nervous-system activity.
Instead of relying only on symptoms or observations, we can add objective measurements to your chiropractic assessment.
Your Nervous System Is Always Adapting
Your nervous system is constantly responding to the world around you.
Movement. Posture. Work. School. Exercise. Sleep. Illness. Relationships. Growth. Pregnancy. Parenthood. Screens. Injuries. Emotional stress.
Your body is continually taking in information and adapting to it.
At ChiroHouse, our goal is to understand those patterns as clearly as possible.
INSiGHT scanning technology gives us objective information that helps us assess your spine and nervous system, explain what we're seeing in a way that makes sense, and monitor those measurements over time.
Whether we're assessing a newborn, a growing child, someone going through pregnancy, or an adult who simply wants to better understand their nervous system, the philosophy is the same:
Measure. Understand. Reassess.
Because when it comes to something as complex and important as your nervous system, we believe having objective information matters.
Want to learn more?
If you'd like to better understand your spine and nervous system, our New Patient Visit includes a thorough health history, detailed spinal assessment and INSiGHT neurological scans.
Following your assessment, we'll review your findings with you, explain what they mean and discuss our recommendations for your care.
