The literature, which lacks any negative study of substance, suggests that EEG biofeedback therapy should play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy, it would be universally accepted and widely used.
— Frank Duffy, MD, Neurologist, Head of the Neuroimaging Department and of Neuroimaging Research at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School Professor
The millions of neurons in your brain are always firing, even when you are asleep. As they fire and communicate with each other they create rhythmic electrical impulses that are known as brain waves. Through a qEEG, also known as a brain map, we can measure your brain’s electrical activity. This allows us to look more closely at your brain wave patterns and we can gather important information about how your brain is functioning. We can see, for example, if your brain might be making too much or too little of a particular brain wave, and we also look to see if different parts of your brain are able to communicate with other areas of your brain in an efficient manner. Ultimately we can look for brain wave patterns that are often associated with symptoms of anxiety, depression, cognitive inflexibility, learning issues and even early developmental trauma and PTSD.
While most providers use a 19-channel brain map, we use a 32-channel brain map that gives us more specific information about your brain’s functioning. In other words, we measure your brain activity in 32 rather than 19 sites on your head. The raw data from your qEEG is then analyzed through a number of different databases, giving us information on your brain wave pattern activity, and on overall brain coherence and efficiency. This tells us how your brain cells are communicating with each other and where there might be areas for improvement.
We use current research to inform how we utilize the information gathered from your brainmap. Often we work closely with Dr. Rob Coben using his 4-channel coherence training, developing a training protocol that is individualized to your brain’s specific patterns and your needs. This type of training has been shown to be highly effective in helping individuals struggling with cognitive concerns and deficits as well as for patients with depression, anxiety, traumatic brain injury and early developmental trauma.
Through our individualized neurofeedback training, we can then help you to retrain your brain. This helps teach your brain’s neurons to fire in different patterns and in a more flexible manner, often resulting in an alleviation of symptoms and an overall more regulated way of being in the world.
