Overview of the Brain’s Electricity

This section explores what electrical frequencies are, plus neurofeedback terminology that is related to frequencies.

About the Brain’s Electricity

Each brain develops what we could call stable activation patterns–basically energy habits.  Using the right hemisphere to do left hemisphere tasks, establishing very sensitive warning systems, locking functions together instead of letting them flow are examples of these. I believe that these energy strategies were adopted by the brain at some time of high stress often that went on for some time. They were survival strategies, and they worked. But because any chaotic energy system like the electrical brain tends to stabilize around specific patterns, the brain continues to use those strategies long after the need for them has passed, and even long after it is clear that they are counter-productive in today’s life.

Brain Electricity

Brains produce both AC and DC signals. Those at frequencies above 1 Hz (a Hertz is a positive/negative pulse, or the waveform we see that goes up above the baseline then down below it, one per second) are AC (alternating current). Anything slower than one per second is DC or direct current. Those slower pulses, or slow cortical potentials, are produced by the brain stem and are the source of Event-Related Potentials (ERP’s).

What is exciting about them, as has been shown by some solid European research over the past several years, is that by training DC, we can actually train the brainstem, which is, among other things, the “on/off” switch for arousal and consciousness. The reticular formation, a set of nuclei that runs up the center of the brain stem, literally controls arousal.

When we train, we are training bio-electric activity, which is closely connected with neurotransmitter activity.  There are excitatory neurotransmitters, which tell the next brain cell in a network to fire, and inhibitory neurotransmitters, which tell the next cell NOT to fire.  The neurotransmitters don’t necessarily tell brain cells to fire at a different rate.

When we use a windowed squash, for example, we do provide ceilings on much of the frequency band to nudge the brain toward lower amplitudes in those frequencies.  But we leave open another area, so any neurons firing in that band are free to rise if they choose.  Sometimes amplitudes in the windows rise, sometimes they fall less than the amplitudes in the squashed areas (changing their importance in the brain’s activation patterns).  Sometimes they just fall with the other frequencies.  Sometimes the brain refuses to accept the training challenge and nothing happens.