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EXCEL YOUR BRAIN, EXCEL YOUR LIFE

A satisfying life is all about function. When your body and mind function well, your life becomes more satisfying. Brain Excel will help you function at your optimal. Consider Brain Excel a gym for your brain fitness, and along with Dr. Andrew Hill and his team at Peak Brain Institute, to be your personal brain coaches. 

 

Is there an area that you would like to improve on in life? What is true potential and quality of life worth to you? Do you feel there is something that holds you back from being at your optimal? Do you want to operate at the cutting edge of your ability?   

 

At Brain Excel, we apply neurotechnology to identify these areas and model a customized training protocol to help you access your optimal brain and cognitive function.

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Every brain is inimitable. QEEG (Brain Mapping) is the technological bedrock for neurofeedback training and helps us get an evidence-based assessment of your brain, which informs the protocol that is tailored to your specific needs and desired outcomes. 

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Design your own brain performance. Neurofeedback exercises your brain and helps it correct and heal itself. This technology uses visual and auditory feedback to the production of specific brainwaves (EEG), and enhances brain circuitry.

WE PROVIDE NEUROFEEDBACK SUITABLE FOR:

  • Sleep
  • Focus
  • Enhanced Creativity
  • Mood
  • ADD / ADHD
  • Stress
  • Depression
  • Migraines
  • Brain Injuries
  • Insomnia
  • Autism & Asberger's
  • Learning Disabilities
  • Anxiety
  • Substance Abuse Disrorders
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Cognitive Decline
  • Developmental Disabilities
  • Seizures

Peak Perfromance

  • Athletic Performance
  • Cognitive Improvement
  • Creativity Boost
  • Emotional Regulation
  • Focus/Attention
About Us
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ABOUT

Brain Excel is a gym for your brain. Training your brain can help you overcome your own performance and cognitive challenges, while also helping you meet your optimal performance goals.

 

Our training protocols include Quantitative EEG “brain mapping” assessments, neurofeedback training, and heart rate variability biofeedback. Consider Brain Excel a gym for your brain fitness, and along with Dr. Andrew Hill and his team at Peak Brain Institute, to be your personal brain coaches.

 

We offer alternative interventions for focus, attention, creativity, traumatic stress, mood, sleep, migraines, AD/HD, rumination, impulsivity, seizures, addiction recovery, test preparation, and traumatic brain injuries.

 

Train with us at our Encinitas location, or remotely through Peak Brain Institute.

 

Contact us for a free consultation to discuss how we can help you meet your brain performance goals.

STAFF

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ELIA NIKOLAEV,  CHT, C-IAYT

Founder and Lead Neurofeedback Specialist

Elia Nikolaev is a certified hypnotherapist and yoga therapist that has been working in the field of human wellness and performance for 15years. As a hypnotherapist, Elia has obtained a deep appreciation for the mind as the central mechanism of human wellbeing. As a yoga therapist, he has studied the human body and its function extensively, and has grasped the relationship between mind and body first hand from thousands of hours of training and observation. Having been a longtime student and enthusiast of neuroscience and psychology, Elia first learned about neurofeedback training in 2015 from the work of Andrew Hill, Ph.D. of Peak Brain Institute, who is one the world’s top experts of this method of brain regulation. After seeing mood, attention, and sleep results in his own life, has driven Elia to become a Neurofeedback practitioner. Receiving first-hand experience in QEEG and neurofeedback from the Peak Brain team, and direct tutelage and supervision by Dr. Hill has given Elia a time tested and evidence-based foundation that will assure greater success to his clients. 

Brain Training
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BRAIN TRAINING

Consider Brain Excel as your brain fitness center. You will receive a full-service mind training program at our location in Encinitas, CA in North San Diego county.. Contact us today to schedule your brain update!

 

We can accommodate a wide variety of clients, and assist many individuals who wish to improve stress management, attention skills, improving sleep quality, and other brain health and performance basics. Share your goals with us for addressing something you are struggling with or for performance improvement. 

 

We offer QEEG brain mapping services as an assessment tool to inform our understanding of the mind-brain relationship, and to help evaluate unusual patterns of resting activity that might be related to less than optimal function or goals

 

Brain Excel works closely with Peak Brain Institute’s neuroscience team, who supervise the custom tailoring of a neurofeedback training program for your brain, your specific training goals, and delivers a comprehensive program of training as well as assessment. Our brain fitness and wellness tools can change the direction of your experience and help your brain and mind learn new skills or resources. 


Brain Excel does not currently accept insurance, however we try to keep costs as low as possible. Our training programs are offered on a monthly membership basis, at a manageable monthly cost without any hidden fees.  Train for as long as you prefer – from one month to a full year, without any contracts or unexpected costs. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

QEEG

QUANTITATIVE EEG (BRAIN MAPPING)

What Is QEEG?

A Quantitative ElectroEncephaloGram is a recording of your brain waves which represent brain activity on a visual map. Our experienced staff, along with the staff at Peak Brain Institute are able to use this map to learn a lot about you and your brain’s unique needs. Receiving a QEEG is the preliminary step before you begin Neurofeedback training. 


Once your QEEG is processed, we will discuss our observations with you and gain a greater understanding of how to best design your treatment. We will perform an initial QEEG and a follow-up QEEG after 30 sessions of neurofeedback. Comparing these maps gives us a clear sense of the improvements your brain has made through our program.

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How Is QEEG Used?

QEEG provides a lot of very useful information, including your unique brainwave frequencies (speed, power, distribution, and connectivity) and how your brain state changes. During the QEEG, your unique brain signature is compared to a database of thousands of “typical” brains. All QEEG recordings are assessed to rule out pathology, and identify patterns that diverge from the typical brainwave signature. This information is necessary to identify functional issues and helps direct the training to meet your optimal brain performance. 

 

What To Expect During Your QEEG Recording

  • The QEEG brain scan takes about 20 minutes, the process is painless and non-invasive.

  • You will be fitted with a wet headset which records your brain waves from multiple scalp locations. First we will record 5 minutes of your brain activity with your eyes closed, then an additional 5 with your eyes open.

  • The night before or morning of your QEEG, wash your hair twice and rinse very well. AVOID CONDITIONER and shampoos with conditioner or “creme” rinse. The waxes in those products make it very hard to get a good signal.

  • PLEASE AVOID CAFFEINE the morning before and ideally 18 hours before your QEEG.  Otherwise don’t do anything differently in terms of your eating or sleeping habits.

  • Please discuss any medications you are on with us before scheduling your QEEG.

NEUROFEEDBACK

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.

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