Interpreting Assessments

Please remember, TQ8 is neither a diagnostic nor a research tool, though it could be used for either. Diagnoses don’t provide much guidance in figuring out how to train the brain to change desired behaviors, and it’s useless to start an assessment with a diagnosis already in mind. The TQ8 is meant to be a practical way of identifying trainable issues in the electrical pattern of the brain. I don’t guess anyone knows whether the problem causes the pattern, or vice-versa, or neither. They often seem to co-exist, and training the patterns will often result in changes in the desired direction.

The brain-trainer system is based on the belief that subcortical drive issues (like anxiety) trump cognitive issues. Would you not expect a very anxious person to have difficulty focusing? There is too much competing mental chatter going on. So the training plan developed using the TQ always focuses on more basic, subcortical issues first and moves up to the cognitive ones, because if you train cognitive issues first, the results don’t “stick”.

The process involves going through the activation patterns starting from Tone issues (seen on the Heads page) and ENDING with the cognitive issues. The reason why I stress the process of looking at the EEG in the order I do is that we can easily imagine a situation where a client with emotional drive issues might have a difficult time paying attention, processing cognitively, etc. If we just train the cognitive issues without dealing with the emotional drive that underlies it, it is likely that our results will be transitory at best.

It is very common to see people who, as children, perhaps were given the “hyper” label grow up without the signs of hyperactivity. The Filtering category focuses on the impulsive, distractible, emotionally labile person who has difficulty falling asleep. Whether or not this lack of ability to control the interface between the outside and inside world results in a level of activity that bothers others, the problems are the same. People with Filtering problems as children generally grow up to be people with anxiety problems as they become adults. The Filtering and Processing groups often have a great deal of overlap, so the fact that one may perhaps see a scooped EEG pattern in one area and downhill patterns in the others is not unusual.

The whole idea of testing the protocols is to find out which one(s) provide the desired effects for a client and focus on those. If you try a protocol and get effects other than those desired, then you tick that one off the list and go ahead with those that get the desired effects.

Descriptive, Not Normative

I prefer that you don’t use the word “norms” when talking about the TQ. The process of norming a database is a complex and rigorous one, and I have great respect for the folks who go through that process. There are already a few assessments out there which claim to be normed for (I assume) marketing purposes but are not. Going out and grabbing a bunch of assessments (and then selecting which ones you think qualify) without any of the screening and statistical techniques that turn data into a normative database is not the same as truly calculating norms. That’s certainly beyond me–if I were interested in it.

As I have said a number of times, the TQ philosophically stays away from the concept of norms, because I don’t think most people are interested in becoming “normal” (assuming there is such a thing). So the TQ uses data descriptively. You can say that a client has a brain that is dominated by slow activity, but you shouldn’t necessarily say that the brain activity is TOO slow or “abnormally” slow. If the client uses slow brain activity (e.g. a poet, therapist, creative person, inventor, etc.), then training to reduce that activity just because it doesn’t fit a “norm” is a bad idea in my mind.

The TQ does include some rough guidelines (some with more research basis than others) to allow us to turn numbers blue (lower than expected) or red (higher than expected). Again these are for descriptive purposes. A trainer, looking at the report page or the analyze page can pretty quickly get an idea just from the colors whether a brain is dominated by slow or fast activity or seems to be roughly in the expected range. How that fits with what the client wants to change is the key to developing an appropriate training plan.

Diagnosing

Be very careful (I know you spent a lot of time and money learning to diagnose) coming up with a label and looking for support for it in the assessment. If you can do so, forget the labels and look at the EEG with fresh eyes. You can always slap the label on later, if there is really any benefit to doing so.

The Concept of Whole Brain Training

Take a look at our video: Whole-Brain Training

I’ve found notes I wrote back as long ago as 2008 talking about the concept of brain circuit training, but only in the past few years, with a base of a few dozen trainers who had taken my courses and were under my supervision in Brazil, did I have a reasonable base for testing it out. The idea as you heard it in the courses years ago was based on the Othmers’ earlier versions of the “sweet spot.” In short, you try a bunch of stuff until the client says “Aha!” and then you keep doing that. The problem was always–with protocols as with magical frequencies–many clients never said AHA. In fact, they didn’t notice much difference no matter what we did.

The approach to training plans changed somewhat a while back, when I began producing plans that included 2-3 different trainings for each session. There might be trainings that worked the same thing (e.g. synchrony) at multiple sites; or they might train the same sites to do multiple things (e.g. synchrony, symmetry, activation). These were based on what patterns appeared in the assessment. But I still suggested going through the plan once and then picking what “worked best” and focusing on that in later trainings.

I had the experience of spending some time online with a trainer who was having absolutely spectacular results with literally every one of her clients (verified by the psychiatrist and neurologist in her practice who worked with her on the clients). She kept telling me it was the plans I was providing for her, but I told her that she was doing something different. As we talked, she told me she was doing exactly what I had taught her–and proceeded to describe the opposite of what I had told her! I know my Portuguese isn’t ideal, but I don’t think it’s that bad!

Here’s what she was doing: She was NOT trying to pick the best training after one cycle through the options. She just kept cycling through. She was NOT dropping a training if a client didn’t like it or had a bad reaction to it. She would discuss with the client what about the training had bothered them…and then repeat it five sessions later.

I’ve learned most everything I know from the people I’ve trained (clients and other trainers), so I paid attention to her and suggested on braintrainer (and on my Brazilian group TLCpro) that people try using the plan that way. The results were, to say the least, gratifying. It made sense. Everything in the plan was there because it was a clear pattern in the brain related to the client’s training goals. Why not keep training ALL of them instead of picking just one? It was also common that a client would really like a training the first time they did it…and then have no response at all the next time. Training through the cycle, we cleared certain issues in the first round or two that freed up the brain to experiment with changing other patterns in later sessions. It was very much the same idea as circuit training using multiple modalities (e.g. stretching, weight training, aerobics) and working different areas with different exercises in a circuit.

I guess I like the fact that I’m still learning, and I hope I keep implementing what I learn into the latest version of brain-trainer.