I don’t think of anything that would be contra-indicated for brain training if you are willing to take on the person/support system that carries the brain around. We screened out families with split parents (one strongly favoring training, the other strongly opposed) and kids on three or more psychoactive meds. We worked with things that I didn’t think had much of a chance of responding, telling the client that up front and letting them choose to take the flier (e.g. a guy who was losing his sight, people with active Alzheimer’s). Maybe the main contra-indication would be for clients: don’t work with careless trainers who don’t know what they are doing. That is the largest group of “damaged” people I see. You might also want to stay away from shoppers with absolutely mind-boggling stories who have tried a dozen other things, none of which worked or which made them worse. I still might try if I were intrigued by the person, but I’d go into it knowing that our chances were pretty slim.

Perhaps a corollary to the question is, “are there things you don’t think NF can help with?” My answer would be yes, though I know there are folks on the group who will disagree with each of these, and if they are truly helping clients get results with those issues, then I hope they’ll enlighten me. I don’t train active Alzheimer’s, because I’ve tried several times and gotten absolutely no results trying everything I could think of or others had claimed efficacy for. The folks who tell me they are getting results say, “I think we are slowing the rate of decline.” If everyone agrees with that, then great. I just have no idea how one measures that, and I haven’t seen anything I could seriously propose for that in my own experience. I use a simple rule. If it were ME who was paying for this training, would I keep spending the money. I wouldn’t if I had a family member with active Alzheimer’s. I’ve had no success in working with very low IQ children. Not that we couldn’t train them; just couldn’t get any lasting effects we could notice. Broken bones or nerve transmission issues or tumors or other physically-based issues aren’t likely to be helped much by NF. But anything that has a connection to the brain and its efforts can probably be impacted by a knowledgeable trainer.

I don’t think of contra-indications as the same as side-effects. Side-effects are signposts (as much as positive outcomes) that guide the trainer (if he/she happens to be paying attention) in steering the training. We can certainly make folks more tuned in to certain of them (nobody ever told me about beta and itching, but now that I know about it, I keep a careful eye out for it). And we can try to steer people away from certain kinds of things that are more likely to trigger them.

I think of contra-indications as elements in the assessment that would say, “don’t do NF with this client”. You don’t give medications to a person who is allergic to them. That’s contra-indicated. Other than the ones I mentioned (parental splits and heavy medication) there really aren’t any that I can think of in my own work.

Pregnancy and Neurofeedback

I don’t know any reason why making a prospective mother calmer, happier, more focused, better centered or whatever would have anything but the most positive effect on her (during a stressful period) or her child. Just make sure to increase your prices (training two for one!).

Seizures and HEG

I don’t think there’s any reason not to do LIFE HEG.  Seizures are generally related to lesions in specific areas of the cortex–generally not the prefrontal.  They are the result, simplifying a bit, of a very slow brain area which slides down toward sleep and results in an idiosyncratic response where the brain bursts into very fast activity to wake up.  If that move results in kindling of the beta–so it spreads across neuron pools in a highly coherent way–you get a seizure.

Improving function in the PFC should, if anything, improve control, not reduce it.