NeurOptimal Neurofeedback Introduction Part 1

Learn more: http://clevelandneurofeedback.com

Transcript:

If you’re watching this video, you may be thinking about trying NeurOptimal neurofeedback at Lake Erie Brain Performance Institute. We’ve made this video to introduce you to this kind of neurofeedback, and also to give you a feel for what your first session will involve, and what results you might expect.

All neurofeedback uses information about your brain’s electrical activity to enable your brain to change from inefficient patterns to more efficient ones. Traditional neurofeedback, which has been around for over 50 years, often uses a brain map to diagnose what electrical patterns might need to be corrected, and then rewards the brain for moving more and more in that direction.

While this approach is effective, especially in the hands of a very experienced clinician, it has a few limitations:
• brain maps are very expensive, and may need to be repeated when the brain makes changes as a result of the feedback it is getting
• It often produces unwanted side effects. For example, as the brain is trained to move away from patterns associated with depression, the depressive symptoms begin to decline…but then if the training continues, depression may be replaced by anxiety. Superb clinicians constantly tweak the program they use in order to maximize positive results and minimize side effects, but less experienced clinicians may leave their clients suffering from unwanted and unnecessary side effects.

At Lake Erie Brain, we began with this traditional neurofeedback, but have switched to a system called NeurOptimal. Let me tell you why.

While traditional neurofeedback is “state-oriented” (that is, it trains the brain to move away from undesirable states like anxiety or depression or “unfocused” [for an ADHD child]), NeurOptimal is dynamically-oriented. “Dynamical” here refers to “HOW the brain is moving or changing from one state to another.”

Think about it. There is nothing wrong with being worried or sad or having your mind wander. But when worry moves into such an extreme loop that it has become anxiety, or sadness moves into such an extreme loop that it becomes depression, or a child is absolutely incapable of focusing on what the teacher is saying—no matter how hard he or she tries—that IS a problem.

So NeurOptimal is designed to maximize the brain’s flexibility (its ability to move easily and gracefully from one state or pattern to another) and resilience (its ability to return to appropriate, efficient patterns when it its current pattern is less than desirable). So a simple way of distinguishing traditional neurofeedback from NeurOptimal is to say that traditional neurofeedback trains for WHAT the brain should look like, while NeurOptimal trains for HOW the brain should do what it does.

Here’s an analogy I like. Suppose you are at the airport a little bit late, heading down a long concourse toward your gate. You might think that the “state” you want to be in is “fast walking.” But what if you come to an area of the concourse where there are lots of people trying to get access to a gate or a restaurant? If you continue with your fast walking, you’ll probably run into some of them, make them angry, and possibly slow yourself down.

But if you focus on your dynamics, that is, how you move to get to your gate as quickly and smoothly as possible, you’ll realize that you don’t always want to be doing the same thing. Sometimes you’ll speed up (when the area in front of you is clear), sometimes slow down (as you head into a crowd), sometimes veer to the left or right to avoid people in your path. This is a dynamical approach to moving through the airport, and it’s really the most effective way to get to your gate quickly. And in this way it’s a lot like a dynamical approach to brain optimization: we’re asking, can we train the brain make whatever adjustments it needs to make, quickly and seamlessly, in order to function as well as it possibly can—no matter what situations it faces?