FAQs
Most people can benefit from neurofeedback. Even if you don’t have a diagnosis or symptoms, we can do a brain boost for any age. According to research, 90% of the population will respond to neurofeedback.
Neurofeedback is not a cure but can reduce your symptoms with many disorders by simply enabling your brain to work more efficiently. Your brain knows how to correct itself when given the proper feedback. Neurofeedback enables your brain’s neuroplasticity. If you want to improve the functioning of your brain or if you have symptoms interfering with your life, neurofeedback may help.
Many professional sports teams have their own neurofeedback provider. Neurofeedback is offered in some hospitals, treatment centers, and in schools. In some states, neurofeedback may be provided before prescription stimulants are prescribed.
How old do you have to be to benefit from neurofeedback?
Neurofeedback works with most ages because it is your brain doing the work. Neurofeedback has been conducted successfully on children from weeks old to the elderly population.
How does neurofeedback work?
Neurofeedback, also called EEG biofeedback, is a reputable and scientifically-proven technique practiced by specially-trained technicians. It provides the brain with the proper feedback to enable neuroplasticity, the brain’s natural ability to correct itself.
Your brain will do what it does every second of your life, receiving input from your senses and correlating this information to what your brain and body are doing. Your brain’s default mode is to correct itself, but it needs the proper feedback to do this so that it can communicate information to other areas of the brain.
You receive neurofeedback every second of your life. You can walk across a room and maintain balance, stay erect, put one foot in front of the other, know where the floor is, not run into things—and do all of this without thinking about it and before the decision is made conscious.
Essentially, the brain does all this by correlating what it is doing to what the feedback is. If it receives positive feedback, it reinforces the neurons that caused the response. Once you learn how to walk, you don’t consciously decide where to put each foot, how and when to transfer weight from one leg to the other – you just walk.
Another example is when a toddler is learning to walk, but falls, the brain receives the negative feedback (hitting the floor), which makes the brain recalibrate. The brain will begin to communicate with other neurons based on the feedback it receives. As the brain learns which neurons result in positive feedback (walking), then those particular neurons keep communicating with each other. These neurons will start to wire together, which we describe as pathways. This is why we describe the neurofeedback process as training the brain. It is a process for the brain to figure out which neurons produce the best results and then a process of using the same neurons before the paths are wired together.
The brain receives billions of stimuli from your senses, and the brain has its ability to make correlations between what it senses (the input) and what it is doing (the output, or messages it sends to your muscles, organs, etc.). The brain has over 86 billion neurons and trillions of constantly changing connections through chemical and electrical (potential) activity. The neurons produce energy as they fire off, called brainwaves, which relay information to different parts of our brains. Neurofeedback trains the brain to work more efficiently by enabling the neurons to communicate with other areas of the brain.
Neurofeedback alleviates and relieves symptoms, non-invasively and drug-free, with many mental and physical health conditions. It is powerful and effective.
So why isn’t my brain correcting itself?
You receive neurofeedback every second of your life. Your brain receives input from your senses and correlates this information to what your brain and body are doing. If the brain receives positive feedback, it reinforces the neurons that caused the response. Neurofeedback provides the brain with proper feedback to enable the brain the correct itself.
Your brain’s default mode is to work as efficiently as it can, but emotional or physical trauma, injury, poor diet, lack of and too much sleep, etc. can dysregulate your brain and change the brain’s structure and function. When this happens, the brain processes inaccurate information and the brain builds unhealthy pathways.
Without external feedback the brain can’t see that it needs to be corrected.
What happens in a session?
During your assessment, we discuss symptoms that you want to improve (sorry – can’t make you taller…).
I then place four sensors (mini microphones) on your head to listen and monitor your brainwave activity while you watch a movie or play a video game in a comfortable (reclining) chair.
The activity measured by the sensors provide feedback to the brain by changing the screen that you are watching, increasing or decreasing the sound, movie flickering on the screen (it looks like a glitch with a DVD), or with a stuffed dog vibrating. This feedback provides visual, auditory, and tactile feedback.
And that’s it! Your brain will correlate that it is causing the negative feedback on the screen, know what part of the brain it is, and will begin to connect with other neurons. By receiving this feedback, your brain will increase the activity in that part of the brain to improve the feedback on the screen. The feedback is simply showing the brain what it is doing. Just like learning a new task, your brain will continue to try different neurons until it receives positive feedback, and this builds a new pathway.
Your appointment is about 45 min; actual neurofeedback is 30 minutes. It is that easy for you. You will need to come twice a week, for about 20-30 sessions on average.
It is time for you to take back control of your life, call today so that I can sit down with you and explain how I may help you be better.
I have seen clients with symptoms of:
Addictions
Anger
Anxiety
ADHD / ADD(Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder)
Autism
Chronic Fatigue
Depression
Emotional dysregulation
Mental health issues
Migraines
Mood disorders
Pain
Peak brain or sports performance
Stroke
Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
Tourettes/Tics
And more!