Improving Your Brain… Improving Your Life

NeuroTherapy, Part 1: Improving Your Brain… Improving Your Life

The term Neurofeedback describes a rather complex and important subject.

Neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback therapy that enables an individual to train their own brainwave activity, and the easy way to do this is by placing small electrodes on the scalp.

Then on the screen you will see your brain in live action with brain waves rolling across the screen.  The job of the electrodes is to measure the brain waves and send them to the computer, where they show up as “live” on the screen. Once they are on the screen, then you can start training the brain in how to behave for its true and correct ways of functioning.

The software of the computer has numerous programs to make training the brain waves easy and enjoyable.

With the use of computerized pictures and audio sounds, the computer provides positive feedback when normal brain wave patterns are produced.

These visual pictures and audio sounds are the feedback the brain wants and needs in order to make correct decisions about how it is performing, and in this way people learn how to self-regulate and control their own brain waves.

This self-regulation leads to the individual changing and improving their mental abilities and emotional states, and their patterns of behavior.

The computer also has “games” and “programs” where you can run activities, like keeping a ball up at the top of the screen.  When ever the ball drops, this means that the brain has dropped in Re-Training, and then the object is to raise that ball up again on the screen, and you do it all with your mind.   Your brain controls the activities on the screen, and as you do this, your brain is learning the improved ways of better functioning.

This is  Re-Training the brain to do what it should be doing, and what you want it to do, how and when you want it.

The words of “training” the brain means that the brain can learn.

Neurologists call this “plasticity” meaning that the brain can change, and one of the ways it can change is by watching itself perform on a computer screen.

It just needs to be told what to do.  And we do this with Neurofeedback.

One of the quite fantastic ways for the brain to learn is with doing Neurofeedback, which is accomplished by the brain actually watching its own brain waves as they happen right on the screen.

The brain can see itself and learn what it is doing wrong and what it should be doing, and then what it is doing right.   As the brain sees what it is doing right, it learns that it can do things in a better “right” way.   The brain is really very smart and can learn how it should be performing.   It then starts to move its actions over to the correct beneficial patterns, and it does this simply by seeing its own actions on the screen, and learning from seeing itself on the screen, it makes changes and improves.  It is the brain monitoring itself, of watching itself on the screen, and as it does this, it learns how to improve itself.

This Neurofeedback process corrects and normalizes malfunctioning brain wave patterns.  This includes improving long and short term memory, reducing anxiety, adjusting one’s overall attitudes back to positive thoughts and behaviors, and improving cognitive thought processing.

The Neurologist determines the best placement of the electrodes and the computer settings by studying the Brain Map.  With each person’s Brain Map, the Neurologist is able to accurately target the brainwave frequency that needs to be changed and “Re-Trained” to be improved.   In this way, with Neurofeedback , the brain is changed and improved by actually changing and re-training the brain waves as they are happening on the screen.

Re-Training the Brain

The words Re-Training the Brain means the brain can reverse itself and return to a neurological pattern that it used to have.

This is vitally important for such things as strokes and brain injuries that cause missed dropped words, confusion, and an overall loss of memory.

Neurofeedback: Re-Training the Brain

Dr. Cory Hammond, Professor, Psychologist, and Clinical Psychophysiologist in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Utah School of Medicine, is an authority in the field. Dr. Hammond has over 100 professional publications, including 8 books, and has served as President of the International Society of Neuronal Regulation.  He has used Neurofeedback to work with a wide range of clinical problems, including open and closed head injuries, strokes, anxiety, depression, and mental slowing due to aging.

Dr. Hammond states that the EEG, “measures the electrical patterns coming from the brain – much like a physician listens to your heart from the surface of your skin.”

He further states that, “Ordinarily, we cannot influence our brainwave patterns because we lack awareness of them.

However, when you can see your brainwaves on a computer screen a few thousandths of a second after they occur, it gives you the ability to influence and change them.

The mechanism of action is operant conditioning. …We are literally reconditioning and retraining the brain.”

Playing “Games” Improves the Brain

In video games, the play is often controlled using hand held controls or “joysticks”.  With Neurofeedback therapy, video games are also played; only there are no hand held controls, the “joystick” is the brain itself.   In Neurofeedback, there are numerous activities on the computer screens, referred to as “games”, that teach the brain how to behave properly as it should.  

Imagine a Neurofeedback game involving a floating bubble on the computer screen.  The goal is to keep the bubble contained in a rectangle that is displayed at the center of the screen.   The bubble floats higher as the person’s targeted brain wave improves, or sinks as the brain wave activity decreases.   The individual, in order to maintain the bubble within the rectangle, must concentrate.   As he or she concentrates, the brain wave changes, and the bubble is mentally manipulated.   A sound also accompanies each “success” as an audible reward for the brain, when it keeps the bubble contained in the rectangle.  The game essentially “shapes” the targeted brain wave toward the desired performance.

Another game is keeping a race car on a race track.  When the car “goes off” the track, this means that the brain is not on target and doing what it should.  When it does focus with the right brain wave frequencies, the car stays on the track, thus training the brain how to use the correct brain wave frequencies that it should be using.

After doing a number of Neurofeedback sessions of training, the brain eventually finds the optimal state of functioning on its own, and the therapy is successful in activating neurological changes of improvement.

Neurofeedback is biofeedback for the brain, specializing in brain waves.

High tech electronic equipment provides you with real-time, instantaneous audio and visual feedback of your brainwave activity. The goal is to normalize the abnormal EEG frequencies.

The mechanism of action is operant conditioning, which impacts the regulation of arousal and increases the brain’s regulation of its own functions.