What Is Neurofeedback?
Is a non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical, reward-based training system for your brain. Think of it as physical therapy, or a corrective exercise for the brain itself. Neurofeedback uses your brain’s own attentional networks to reinforce the brain waves that form the basis of your well-being. Sophisticated technology allows audio and video output to be used as reward cues for specific brain events. By customizing which patterns of activity we can reinforce, allows certain abilities to become strengthened and stabilized, as well as influence the connectivity between various parts of the brain. As the function of the brain improves, the quality of your cognition, mood, and emotions follow.

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How Does It Work?
Neurofeedback allows the brain to monitor its own activity, which encourages and permits it to make adjustments in real time that are based on this monitoring. A common example is when a brain makes too much of the frequency called theta, which typically manifests as high impulsivity and distractibility in a person. Neurofeedback can train the brain to produce less theta, which gives the person a greater controlled focus. 

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Brain training is similar to physical exercise. The more your brain trains, the more apparent and observable the results. Only after exercising regularly will you experience a gradual shift in your experience, your cognitive performance, and even in emotional quality. However, unlike physical exercise, exercising your brain with neurofeedback typically requires between 20-40 sessions to make noticeable and lasting changes!

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What Does A Typical Neurofeedback Session Look Like?

Prior to starting neurofeedback training, clients are required to receive a QEEG brain scan. The findings of the QEEG report will be reviewed with a Peak Brain team member, to develop the protocol that is tailored to the clients needs and chosen outcomes.

A standard neurofeedback session at Brain Excel includes making yourself comfortable in a supportive armchair. A brief initial consultation will get an inventory on how you have felt since your last session, to see if your brain training protocol needs to be adjusted. You will have up to 5 electrodes attached gently to your scalp using a saline paste. Electrodes only just read the brainwaves that are naturally produced by the brain. Depending on the specific protocol assigned to you, you may play a video game, watch images, or just lie back with your eyes closed and listen to calming nature sounds. The video graphics and the sounds on the screen in front of you will change in accordance to your brain waves. Neurofeedback provides a version of learning referred to as “operant conditioning” which is a simple system of reinforcing those events that are already occurring within the brain. Based on your own personal goals for peak performance, the brainwaves you want increased will be rewarded by the sounds and visuals of the game, and over time become reinforced in a lasting and durable way.

 

What are the Types Of Neurofeedback?
Neurofeedback can be called EEG Biofeedback when training “brain waves” (delta, theta, alpha, beta), or HEG Biofeedback when training frontal lobe blood flow. While EEG biofeedback encourages more or less of a specific frequency band, HEG biofeedback is an infrared brain training technique which increases cerebral blood flow and consequently increases brain activity in that region of the brain, and performance on tasks related to it. HEG not only increases perfusion but the metabolic rate of the brain as well.

EEG and HEG are forms of “central” biofeedback. Complementary “peripheral” biofeedback modalities include Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) training.

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What Are the Benefits of Neurofeedback?

The best way to think about brain performance, is that no matter how well it functions, it can always function better! Perfection is more of a journey and less of a concrete destination, and when it comes to the function of the human nervous system, the limits of its functional ability still remain undiscovered.

The effect of neurofeedback is targeted at broad regulatory function, that includes attention, mood, self-control, sleep, energy, stress, as well as migraines and seizures. There is a body of research verifying the outstanding success of neurofeedback in treating anxiety disorders, age-related cognitive degeneration, addiction, and autism spectrum symptoms.

Neurofeedback is also effective at triggering a deep state of relaxation (for anxiety, overstimulation, or even creativity), or to train the brain to have better stability and increased metabolism. At Brain Excel we provide only high quality, research backed, and evidence-based services to ensure you receive the best opportunity to improve your brain and your life.