If you’ve been dealing with neck pain, headaches, dizziness, or unexplained neurological symptoms for any length of time, there’s a good chance you’ve heard some version of this:
“Your imaging looks fine.”
“Everything checks out.”
“There’s nothing structurally wrong.”
And yet — you still feel terrible. The headaches haven’t stopped. The dizziness comes and goes. Your neck aches when you sit at your desk, when you turn to check your blind spot, when you wake up in the morning. You’ve been through the appointments. You’ve done the imaging. And somehow, nobody can give you a clear answer about what’s actually happening.
This is one of the most common experiences patients describe when they first call Keystone Chiropractic. And it has a real explanation — not a dismissive one.
The problem isn’t that nothing is wrong with you. The problem is that most testing doesn’t look in the right place, or measure the right things, to find it.
What Standard Testing Measures — and What It Doesn’t
When you see a doctor for neck pain, headaches, or dizziness, the standard workup typically involves some combination of X-rays, MRI, blood work, and a neurological exam. These are valuable tools. They rule out serious pathology — tumors, fractures, significant disc herniation, and other structural problems that require immediate medical attention.
But here’s what they don’t measure:
How your neck actually moves. X-rays and MRI are static images taken in a fixed position. They show you what the spine looks like at rest. They don’t show whether your range of motion is restricted in one direction, whether movement drops off asymmetrically between left and right rotation, or whether a specific arc of movement is generating the pain and dysfunction you experience in daily life.
Whether your neck knows where it is in space. The upper cervical spine — the atlas (C1) and axis (C2) — is packed with proprioceptive nerve endings that constantly report head position and movement to the brainstem. When those receptors are disrupted by misalignment or injury, your brain starts receiving inaccurate information about where your head is. That mismatch drives dizziness, balance problems, and chronic instability. No standard imaging study measures this. No standard chiropractic exam measures this with any precision either.
How well your neck and nervous system are coordinating. Sensorimotor control — the coordinated communication between your eyes, your vestibular system, and your cervical spine — is frequently disrupted in patients with whiplash injuries, post-concussion syndrome, and chronic upper cervical dysfunction. When it breaks down, patients describe it as brain fog, difficulty concentrating, delayed reactions, or a general sense that their body isn’t responding the way it should. Again — nothing in a standard workup measures this.
The gap between “your imaging looks normal” and “something is clearly wrong” is often exactly this: the testing that was done measures structure, and the problem is in function.
The Function Gap — Why So Many Patients Fall Through the Cracks
Medicine is excellent at finding things that show up on imaging. It is considerably less equipped to find things that don’t — and a significant portion of chronic cervical spine symptoms fall into that second category.
Consider what happens after a car accident. A patient comes in with neck pain, headaches, and dizziness. X-rays look normal. MRI shows no herniation. The neurological exam is unremarkable. The patient is told their cervical spine is fine, given a course of anti-inflammatories, and sent home.
Three months later, they’re still not right. Six months later, they’re still not right. Two years later, they’re still dealing with symptoms that nobody has been able to explain — because nobody has measured the things that are actually driving them.
What the imaging didn’t show: a subtle misalignment of the atlas that’s disrupting proprioceptive signaling to the brainstem. What the standard exam didn’t assess: that the patient’s proprioceptive accuracy is significantly off on one side, and their sensorimotor coordination scores fall well outside normal range.
These aren’t rare findings in patients who’ve “fallen through the cracks.” They’re common ones. And they’re exactly what the NeckCare System is designed to find.
What the NeckCare System Measures That Nothing Else Does
The NeckCare System is an FDA-listed assessment device used at Keystone Chiropractic as part of every initial evaluation. It uses a lightweight wireless sensor worn on the head to capture over 120 positional data points per second, running three specific tests that measure cervical spine function in ways that standard exams simply don’t.
Cervical Range of Motion — Precision That Actually Matters
Most practices that assess range of motion do it visually or with a basic goniometer. A clinician watches you move your head and makes a judgment call about whether the arc looks restricted. That judgment might be accurate to within 15 or 20 degrees on a good day.
NeckCare measures range of motion to a fraction of a degree, in all six directions, with automated comparison against normative data for your age group. It identifies not just whether total range is reduced, but where in the arc the restriction occurs, whether it’s symmetric between sides, and whether the pattern of restriction matches what we’d expect given your symptoms and imaging findings.
For patients with chronic neck pain, this often reveals asymmetries they weren’t aware of. For patients with headaches, it frequently shows restriction patterns in rotation and extension that correlate directly with symptom triggers.
The Joint Position Error Test — Finding the Proprioception Problem
This is the test that most often produces an “aha” moment for patients who’ve been told nothing is wrong with them.
You close your eyes. You move your head to a target position. Then you try to return precisely to neutral. NeckCare measures how far off you land — in degrees — compared to where you actually started. That error score is your proprioceptive accuracy, and it’s compared against normative data from healthy individuals.
Patients with significant proprioceptive deficits often have no idea until they see the number. They’ve been living with it so long that they’ve adapted their movement patterns around it — unconsciously avoiding the positions and activities that expose the inaccuracy. But those adaptations have costs: compensatory muscle tension, altered posture, chronic fatigue, and the persistent sense that something is just slightly off.
This test is particularly meaningful for patients with vertigo and dizziness, Meniere’s disease, and post-concussion symptoms — conditions where the upper cervical spine’s role in balance and spatial awareness is most directly implicated.
The Butterfly Test® — Seeing the Sensorimotor Breakdown
The Butterfly Test evaluates how well your neck, eyes, and brain are working together — following a moving visual target by moving your head in sync with it while the system measures accuracy, smoothness, and timing.
Poor performance on this test reflects disruption in the three-way sensorimotor loop between the visual system, the vestibular system, and the cervical spine. This is the loop that governs balance and spatial orientation. When it’s working poorly, patients describe it in ways that sound hard to explain to a doctor: “I feel off,” “I can’t track things the way I used to,” “driving feels different,” “I get overwhelmed in busy environments.”
These aren’t vague complaints. They’re accurate descriptions of sensorimotor dysfunction — and the Butterfly Test puts a number to them.
What Happens When You Finally Have the Data
The first thing most patients experience when they see their NeckCare results is relief.
Not because the findings are minor. Often they’re not. But because after months or years of being told that nothing is wrong, seeing objective data that says something measurable is off — that validates everything they’ve been experiencing. It wasn’t in their head. It wasn’t anxiety. It was a real, measurable functional deficit that standard testing wasn’t designed to find.
The second thing that happens is clarity. Dr. Schurger uses the NeckCare findings alongside CBCT imaging and infrared thermography to build a care plan that’s specific to what’s actually wrong — not a generic protocol applied to everyone with neck pain. If proprioception is the primary deficit, the care addresses that specifically. If range of motion is more restricted on the right than the left, we know that before the first adjustment, not after.
And when the assessment is repeated at progress exams, patients don’t have to rely on whether they feel better on a given day to know whether care is working. The numbers tell the story. Range of motion expanded. Proprioceptive error decreased. Sensorimotor coordination improved. That’s not hope — that’s evidence.
Who This Matters Most For
The NeckCare System is valuable for any patient with cervical spine involvement. But there are specific groups for whom this level of functional assessment is particularly meaningful:
Patients who have been told their imaging is normal. If you’ve had X-rays or MRI that came back clean but you’re still dealing with significant symptoms, functional assessment is the logical next step. Structure isn’t the whole story.
Patients who’ve tried other treatments without lasting results. General chiropractic, physical therapy, massage, injections — if you’ve been through the standard options and still don’t have answers, it’s worth asking whether the underlying functional deficits were ever actually measured and addressed.
Patients with vertigo, dizziness, or balance problems. The cervicogenic component of vertigo is one of the most consistently under-diagnosed causes of recurring dizziness. The proprioception and Butterfly tests directly assess whether neck dysfunction is contributing — something no other standard test does.
Patients recovering from concussion or whiplash. Post-concussion syndrome and whiplash injuries both commonly produce sensorimotor and proprioceptive deficits that persist long after the acute phase of injury. If you haven’t fully recovered and you haven’t had functional cervical testing, there’s a good chance something hasn’t been measured yet.
Patients with chronic headaches or migraines. Cervical dysfunction is a documented contributor to headache patterns — but identifying it requires assessing function, not just structure. Range of motion restriction and proprioceptive deficits in the upper cervical spine are frequently present in chronic headache patients and are often missed entirely.
Why Dr. Schurger Uses It — In His Own Words
Dr. Schurger has spent nearly two decades focused on upper cervical chiropractic care. He holds the Diplomate in Chiropractic Craniocervical Junction Procedures (DCCJP) — one of the most rigorous post-doctoral credentials available in the field — and has built a practice around the principle that precision matters more than volume.
The NeckCare System fits that philosophy because it replaces estimation with measurement. It means that when a patient walks out of their first visit at Keystone, they have a baseline. When they return for a progress exam, they have a comparison. When care is working, the data confirms it. When it isn’t, the data prompts a reassessment.
For patients who have been through other practices, other treatments, and other conversations that never quite gave them a clear picture — this is what different looks like.
Learn more about Dr. Schurger’s background and credentials →
The Bottom Line
If you’ve been struggling with neck pain, headaches, vertigo, or unexplained symptoms that haven’t responded to previous care — and especially if you’ve been told that your imaging looks normal — the question worth asking is this: has anyone actually measured how your cervical spine is functioning?
Not how it looks. Not how you feel on a given day. How it’s actually moving, sensing, and coordinating.
At Keystone Chiropractic, that measurement is part of every evaluation. And for many patients, it’s the first time anyone has given them a real answer.
Schedule your upper cervical evaluation with NeckCare assessment →
Or call us directly: (217) 698-7900
Keystone Chiropractic | 450 S Durkin Drive, Ste B, Springfield, IL 62704 | (217) 698-7900
Dr. Frederick Schurger, DC, DCCJP — Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor serving Springfield, Chatham, Rochester, Sherman, and Central Illinois since 2007.
Related Reading:
- The NeckCare System at Keystone Chiropractic — What It Measures and Why It Matters
- Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic — How It Works
- Vertigo and Dizziness — Could Your Neck Be the Cause?
- Post-Concussion Care at Keystone Chiropractic
- Whiplash and Auto Accident Injury Treatment
- Headaches and Migraines — Upper Cervical Care in Springfield, IL
- New Patients — Schedule Your First Visit