Depression

Ideally, I recommend that a person do an assessment before starting training, so you know what patterns are actually present in the brain you are training before you try to change them.

There are a lot of different brain patterns for depression. One of the most common is called alpha asymmetry, which is too much alpha (especially 10-12 Hz) in the left hemisphere compared to the right. Another common one is excessive alpha in the front of the head.  Others are very low alpha levels in the back of the head, or failure to block alpha with eyes open or at task, or any of a variety of tone strategies.  If you run through the full assessment, you may find lots of slow activity frontally or on the left side underlying depression. Identify the ones being used by the brain at hand, so to speak, and train them.  If you couldn’t be bothered to see what the actual patterns were before deciding what to train, beta in the left front quadrant would be a reasonable option.

If you find significantly more beta at F4 than F3 or Fp2 than Fp1–or significantly higher alpha levels at F3 than F4 or Fp1 than Fp2–then train to resolve those reversals of what should be seen.  Those are very common patterns among people of any age who have depressive characteristics.

Certainly, breathing and blood flow improve with good posture.  But Tony Robbins also talks a lot about the message we give the brain with our posture.  I always ask a depressed person to sit as if he/she were depressed, and then sit as if feeling powerful and happy.  This includes facial energy, breathing and posture.  It is startling to watch the brain wave changes when you do this–for the trainer and the client!  As the brain gets more active and outgoing, so does the posture and facial carriage, but it also works the other way around.  Just not as lasting.

Each of the five levels of the control system I described has a homeostasis which is thrown off under certain conditions. For example, depression can be seen in SPECT scans by an overactive thalamus and Basal ganglion, an overactive cingulate, and under active prefrontal areas. Dr. Amen has documented a lot of this.  I’m aware of Amen’s work, but depression is seen in the EEG as at least half a dozen stable activation patterns in the brain’s chaotic electrical system.  Same with anxiety, etc.  However, there is a whole question of brain “style” as well, if one steps past the layer of “normality” and “pathology”.

Being that we’re talking about brains, it’s never quite as simple as it sounds in a book or online. Depression is often related to the left frontal quadrant producing slow-wave or alpha activity in excess of what appears on the right. Low energy, helpless/hopeless depression often improves quite dramatically just with HEG training activating the left front, and right temple areas are related to emotional regulation as well. The anterior cingulate, from about AFz to Cz is also related to emotional regulation. All those things can respond to HEG, but EEG is helpful in breaking up and re-forming the patterns that underlie those responses.