Neurofeedback, or EEG biofeedback, is a highly advanced, scientific approach used to optimize your brain function. With the latest technology (patented by NASA and used to train astronauts and fighter pilots) we can use your brain's natural ability to adapt in order to train you to produce particular brain wavelengths at particular sites in the brain. Producing the right wavelength at the right site can enhance desired traits (e.g. allowing you to achieve incredible focus and concentration, emotional balance, improved mood) and minimize many symptoms (reducing migraines, hyperactivity, anxiety).
With our state of the art equipment, we teach the brain to add more of one brainwave, and get rid of others, depending on what we want or need. We teach the brain to inhibit the parietal fast waves, which cause overactivity and to inhibit cortical slow waves, which cause daydreaming and spacing out. Simultaneously, we teach the brain to augment brainwaves necessary for concentration.
The Training
The Feedback in neurofeedback is a computer game or a DVD. You sit in front of a computer screen playing a game or watching a movie with electrodes that measure your brain activity attached to your scalp. Each time your brain produces the desired brain activity (more/larger of one brainwave or less/smaller of another), you get a reward. The DVD screen size may increase or the character in the game performs better instantaneously based on what your brain is doing. Your job is to watch a movie, or play a game, while the brain learns to produce what we ask of it.
There are times when we see dramatic results within the first couple of sessions. Normally, we expect to see results within the first 5-10 sessions. Training is typically conducted 3 times per week for the first 3 or 4 weeks. Length of treatment depends on the individual's condition and their sensitivity to training. However, it is not abnormal to expect that 40 sessions will produce a lasting change. For some conditions, less is required. It is difficult to give a definitive prognosis, as every brain is different, and each person responds in their own way. Each session is $150 with a 5-session minimum to begin the training. This is a state-of-the-art technology that is not yet covered by insurance.
The Scientific Basis
When we measure different places in the brain with an EEG, we are actually adding together a number of different brain wavelengths. The type of brainwave, the amount you have, and where you have it correspond to states of feeling and abilities. If you have a preponderance of:
22+Hz - Anxious, tense, stressed, full of mental chatter, irritable
15-18 Hz - Intensely focused, uplifted
12-15 Hz - Calm, passive, relaxed
8-11 Hz - Daydreaming, meditation, place where a Yoga master gets
4-7 Hz - almost in dream sleep
0-3 Hz - sleep
The Effects
Current neural pathways have lead to your current condition. To change that condition, we must teach the brain to make new connections. This starts by producing the desired brainwave during neurofeedback training, which requires the brain to initiate a chemical reaction. In essence, the brain learns to make its own drug to get what it needs. This excitation establishes the new neural pathway - the one that will allow you to function better. Like a river cutting through rock, the more you use this new pathway, the easier it becomes to maintain.
The training stabilizes brain function and allows you to move from state to state more easily based on the demands of the situation. As the brain re-learns to regulate itself, we often find that people are able to minimize their need for medications. Once established and reinforced, these new pathways often lead to life-changing results.
Athough other forms of treatment are certainly efficacious, there are no other methods that directly influence the brain activity of the individual. Other forms of treatment are indirect (e.g., by doing a certain exercise, the frontal lobe might be affected, which might subsequently have an effect on behavior or cognition). In neurofeedback, the brain’s circuitry itself is targeted for change. Reward is based on the brain’s ability to create new circuitry, inhibit old, and shift to accommodate new demands. For the past five or six years, standard approaches to neurofeedback have been used with modest effectiveness to treat a variety of conditions. However, there are two protocols which have been developed over the last year and a half which have shown great benefit, and allow us to treat a greater number of conditions with greater efficacy (including those individuals diagnosed with autism). One of these methods taps slow cortical potentials which activate glial cells and enhance the brain’s ability to self-regulate. The second methodology uses a normative set of z-scores to teach the brain to connect pathways in the proper magnitude and with proper timing. Each of these approaches requires a different set of hardware, software and experience. I am aware of few people in the country, much less in Jacksonville, who are fluent in all three methodologies.
These conditions and many others have shown improvement with neurofeedback:
