Exploring Symptoms, Problems, and Goals Despite the fact that conducting neurofeedback training in accordance with the brain map, TQ8, is the best way to help you reach your goals, there IS information about specific symptoms and situations, and how they relate to brain habits, that can inform your choices. Choose from the many topics in the left-hand panel of this page to take you to answers to your questions.

I always start this kind of client with training how to do RSA breathing to move her into parasympathetic mode, using something like EmWave (a product from HeartMath) to provide her feedback in the direction of heart-rate variability training, and HEG for a session or two while you are getting a training plan for the EEG. Chances are that a person with adrenal fatigue has had so much cortisol in her temporals for so long that they look like Swiss […]

In the 1990s, Tom Budzynski studied effects of aging on the brain. He showed that one of the clearest brain findings related to cognitive issues was slowing of the peak alpha frequency in the rear of the head. He also demonstrated that training to increase the peak–what he called brain-brightening–had positive effects on semantic memory–the ability to recall that word you want, which is one of the most common complaints in older adults. Another pattern that has been shown is […]

Whether the sensitivity is a cause or result of limited ability to control the interface between the internal and external worlds, I have no idea. Most likely, in a complex-adaptive brain, it plays both parts in a feedback loop: the high sensitivity demands too much of the filtering system, causing it to fail, and the failure of filtering results in too much traffic which increases excitation. Early on I recognized the relationship between allergies/asthma and hyper-immune responses. Environmental phenomena that […]

Peak Performance There is a valid point about “peak performance” training that says that ALL neurofeedback is just that.  Unless you happen upon a perfect brain, whatever that might look like, everyone, even high performers, have issues of anxiety or low energy or obsessiveness or lapses of attention of impulsive behavior or whatever.  If you start by looking at the client’s brain and determining what is KEEPING him from performing even better, then training that, you will often make your […]

Assuming that you are not seeing explosive, often apparently unprovoked rages, which would suggest temporal lobe epilepsy, with anger outbursts, there are several things I would usually look for: 1. Hot right side:  beta and high-beta levels about 14% and 10%–often significantly higher–and often reversed L/R anywhere from F to P. 2. Anomalies at F8: this emotional regulation area may show high levels of slow, unblocked alpha or, occasionally, even beta/high-beta.  Sometimes a very hot area here connects with a […]

General anesthesia will affect the brain, slowing it down significantly–and also usually over a period of time as well.

There are many things that could relate to anxiety and irritability, including high fastwave coherence in the front and central areas, excessive beta and/or high beta on the right hemisphere, reversals of beta left/right or front/back, a hot cingulate, or alpha problems.  Training SMR will nearly always have a fairly immediate symptom-relief effect, but it won’t have a longer-term result with other problems that underlie the symptoms. I’ve been playing around with anxiety problems for quite a while.   There […]

Essentially the way to change autonomic activation is to teach the client to breathe and still the mind. I prefer RSA breathing, which focuses on exhaling very slowly and counting the seconds mentally, trying to completely empty the lungs in 7 seconds. Then let the air come back in and continue counting, usually for 3 seconds. That has several effects: 1. It eventually (over several breaths) improves the turnover of O2 and CO2 in the lungs, especially oxygenating the bottom […]

Asthma is very often related to stress responses in an individual, so any of a half-dozen different brain activation patterns can be connected to it. Certainly, the temporal lobes and the anterior cingulate area are good places to look for several of those, but they are not the only places. The assessment is designed to give you information about many of the different potential patterns that have been correlated with behavioral issues a client may want to change.