What is a Bipolar Protocol

Any time you train in a channel, you are training the difference between the active and reference electrode signals. The fact is that you are training the pyramidal neurons close to the line between the active and reference sites whose axons happen to be pretty much parallel to the line. In a sense you are always training an area and not just one spot, because that’s what’s being read.

A bipolar montage, like C3/C4, is active at both ends of the training area. You can reduce the difference between them in, say, theta by increasing theta at the lower site, or decreasing it at the higher, or doing both, or moving them both down or both up. You have no way of knowing how brain activity is being changed to meet the training challenge, but sometimes bipolar montages do things that monopolar montages don’t. That’s why we use them. It’s hard to say, but we have no idea how a bipolar montage is working; we just know it sure is working!

In contrast, a monopolar montage, like C3/A1, trains to reduce or increase the difference between the two sites in whatever frequencies you choose. But you know that A1 (the left earlobe) isn’t going to change, because there’s little EEG there! So you can say you are training C3. But the reality is that you are training that same line. It’s just that there’s not much activity at one end of it.