What is Neurofeedback

We are able to go about our day because our brain talks to itself with highly complex waves of energy. These internal dialogues allow us to pay attention and focus on what is going on in our world, to remember what it is we want to know or need to do, to go to and stay asleep, and to color our life with emotional actions and reactions.

Medical professionals have known about these electrical conversations for over 60 years. Using a device called the electroencephalogram (EEG), Neurologists (medical doctors that diagnose and treat diseases of the brain and nervous system) record the brain waves of many of his or her patients, looking for distortions in the brain wave patterning to help diagnose seizures and manage epilepsy, and to help diagnose or rule out a brain tumor, blood clot, or stroke in those with such symptoms as black outs, headaches, or unusual behavior.

A few years ago, computer technology advanced to a point in which a brain wave analysis system could be created to break down the complexity of the brain wave patterning. As research evolved, the Quantitative EEG began to reveal that there is much more to brain waves than the detection of brain disease: The technology also helps us determine where and in what way the brain is efficiently doing and not doing its job.

It wasn’t long before biofeedback researchers figured out that when the power of the Quantitative EEG is combined with traditional biofeedback technology, the brain could be led to enhance its own performance. Electrodes placed on the scalp pick up the electrical energy the brain is producing; the brain wave signals are sent to the special computer, which amplifies the signals and rapidly divides the complexity of the brain wave frequencies into small groups of energy; The Neurotherapist/Neurofeedback Trainer (a therapist/trainer specially trained in brain wave training) selects a frequency group known to be important for focus, strategy, or memory, and returns the information back to the brain as audio tones. As the brain “listens” to the computer-generated audio information, it analyzes the tones, just as it does with all incoming information. Noting the one-to-one relationship between the incoming tones and frequencies it is using to perform the task, the brain begins to experiment by increasing or decreasing the energy of the cells responsible for producing that particular frequency. Finding that increasing the firing of specific cells improves its performance and decreasing it makes it worse (or vice versa), the brain begins to activate (or deactivate) cells to enhance and maintain the new level of performance.
The brain, in other words, uses the computer generated tones to do what it was designed to do by nature: Use information coming in from the outside world to learn or teach itself something. In this instance, the “something” it learns is that increasing (or decreasing) certain frequencies helps it focus better, to understand incoming information more quickly and accurately, and to execute complex tasks in an easier, more efficient way.

There is a fundamental difference between traditional instrumented biofeedback and the more recently developed Neurofeedback. Biofeedback helps us learn to take conscious control of our internal terrain for better management of stress and stress-related health problems. With Neurofeedback, however, it is not “us” that learns the new behavior: It is our brain. Just as “we” learned to walk and ride a bike, all “we” need do is go through the motions. (In this case, sit with electrodes on our head and play a video game or watch a video.) Our brain quickly and easily learns what it needs to do to learn and perform complex tasks in a more efficient way.