Neecha Bhanga is unusual in the structure of jyotisha because it is a rule about rules. The tradition holds that a planet in its sign of debilitation is weakened; Neecha Bhanga states the conditions under which that weakening is cancelled, and the more enthusiastic readings hold that the cancelled debilitation produces a strength greater than an ordinary placement would have given.
The cancellation conditions given in the sources include the lord of the debilitation sign being in an angle from the ascendant or the Moon, the planet that would be exalted in that sign being similarly placed, the debilitated planet being aspected by its own dispositor, and the debilitated planet occupying an angle. Different authorities give different lists and different weightings, and there is no settled canonical set.
Two cautions follow. The first is that a rule with several alternative triggers, each of them fairly common, will fire often, and a debilitation that is almost always cancelled is not much of a debilitation. The second is the interpretive slide from cancelled to reversed: the sources that promise a rise from difficulty are making a considerably stronger claim than the sources that merely say the weakness is offset.
The atlas records the mechanism and the variation in the sources, and asserts nothing about outcomes.