Learning Disabilities (LD)
  
Many techniques help teach someone with learning disabilities skills to compensate or work around their problems. 

Neurofeedback is different.  It is used to train the area of the brain involved in learning or performing certain skills, such as reading, math or auditory and visual processing. 

It is much easier to enhance learning skills when the brain works better.  That’s what neurofeedback training is about.  There are other training and regulation techniques that we also use in our center to enhance the brain’s capacity to learn. 

Recent research shows that learning involves coordination between multiple areas of the brain. These different areas of the brain communicate to each other at incredibly fast speeds.  When the timing between them is is off – even slightly, learning can be impaired. 

Neurofeedback has been used to train increased coordination and communication between different areas of the brain.  This improvement in timing is critical to learning.  Think about how hard it is to play tennis, golf or baseball if your timing is off.   It’s much harder to learn when the timing in the brain is off.  Brain training helps target and train those issues directly. 

Some solid research by professionals show the newest “connectivity training” seems to provide more consistent improvements in learning issues such as dyslexia, reading, math deficits, and visual and auditory processing problems.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder/obsessive thinking (OCD)
If you can’t stop your brain from thinking about certain thoughts or repeating particular behaviors over and over again, it’s called OCD. 

A great deal of research has shown there are particular areas in the front of the brain that often are implicated in this problem.  When that part of the brain runs too slow or too fast, the person is unable to switch gears, or to put on the brakes.  Literally they can’t stop thinking or doing something even when they try.

Sometimes medications help, but often they don’t.  All medications have certain side effects that can occur.

A logical solution is – why not change that part of the brain that is “stuck” so that it can turn off the constant repetition of thoughts or behaviors can stop. 

That technology now exists – using neurofeedback.  Many clients and therapists who use neurofeedback have reported very good success in reducing OCD after training their clients.  In essence, it trains the individual to “shut it off.” 

Patients report after training, they don’t really have to work at shutting down thoughts or behaviors as much.  It just doesn’t happen as much – their mind is much more quiet.  Apparently the brain is able to manage these issues in a more normal way after training. 

It’s one of the most exciting new interventions that is available for OCD.  Unfortunately, most MD’s and therapists are unfamiliar with the technology and its application to OCD.  It’s complex and takes a lot of education for professionals to adopt it.  At the Center for Brain Training, we have been studying and working with this new technology for many years. 

Comprehensive Review of OCD Options

STROKE or Traumatic brain injury
For anyone who’s had a stroke or brain injury, relatively little formal rehab is offered once about 2 years post stroke.  Typically, it may be more physical therapy or speech therapy, or even occupational therapy.  But often, the big gains are expected in the first 2 years, and very minor slow gains occur after that. 

Many people continue to improve incrementally after 18 months, but there are few formal rehab programs that make a big difference.   The health profession has accepted the idea that the greatest recovery occurs in the first 18 -24 months.  They don’t even bother offering patients other options. 

A major new intervention for strokes and TBI
If your hurt your knee, you do physical therapy on your knees.

If your hurt your brain, you should do physical therapy directly on your brain.

The technology is now there to do that – and that’s what neurofeedback provides.  It helps the individual in fact exercise the brain directly. Training targets specific parts of the brain, based on the individual profile of each client.

Let’s take speech for example. If there’s a problem with speech, speech therapy is attempting to teach the person to learn how to speak again.

Neurofeedback tends to target training specific areas of the brain that relate to speech (for example, Broca’s or Wernicke’s area).  The goal is to strengthen the area and associated areas that are responsible for speech.  Because of the amount of speech recovery that can occur with neurofeedback, some neuropsychologists feel the brain there is actual rehab occurring in the brain – and that it’s not just dealing with compensating areas. 

A case in point –a therapist presented at a conference that one of her stroke patients started opening her left hand and using it around the 10th training session.  This woman’s hand had been completely clenched and unusable since the stroke 3 years earlier.  Why would neurofeedback impact that?  The training occurred near the motor strip of the brain – which impacts the control of muscles and muscle tone.  Somehow as a result of the training, those motor circuits become reorganized – and in this patient’s case, it helped her significantly improve motor function of the left hand. 

It is not always possible to predict the level of recovery that can be achieved in the case of a stroke or TBI.  That depends on many factors.  But after hundreds of cases by therapists using neurofeedback with stroke patients, it’s clear most people can achieve significantly greater recovery than anyone expected!

Getting a picture of the brain – a brain map is often recommended for stroke and TBI patients.  The Center offers brain maps to help look at what areas of the brain should be targeted for training.  

Symptom improvement ranges from speech to movement to mood regulation to memory to control of behavior.  Headaches are often reduced.  Remember, each of these functions are regulated by the brain. 

One speech therapist who works with stroke and TBI patients added neurofeedback more than a year ago at the first hospital based program that uses it.  In an interview, she reported making more progress in improving speech with patients using neurofeedback in one year than in her previous 10 years cumulatively.  As she said, it makes a big difference to train the brain directly.

Seizures
Here’s a bold statement.  Every seizure patient should be given the chance to regulate his own brain – and not be completely reliant on seizure medication.  Medical professionals unfamiliar with neurofeedback perhaps may object. 

But health professionals who have used it – including several thousand RN’s, psychologists, and MDs -- recognize the power of using brain training to help the individual become more stable. Increased stability is reported to correlate with decreased seizures.  Often, therapists report that the MD helps reduce seizure meds after they see the increased stability of a client. 

Seizures are primarily a brain that loses its stability.  Because there are 18 good studies showing the effectiveness of neurofeedback in reducing seizures, everyone should be given the chance to train.  They aren’t – because they aren’t told about it by the health profession who are primarily unaware of it.  It’s still considered new, though it’s been a around a while.

Dramatic reduction in seizures
A case recently in our center involves a woman with uncontrolled seizures over the last 12 years.  She’s being seen by a top neurologist at the University of Miami and was on a lot of medications. That resulted in ongoing side effects for her. 

After training with neurofeedback and helping counsel her on some other life changes, she has been seizure free for 3 months.  This is pretty much unheard of in neurology.  She twice reduced her medications while eliminating (so far) her seizures.  All occurred after she started training with neurofeedback. 

Virtually no neurologists are familiar with this technology and they don’t even tell patients about its existence. The key reason is low reimbursement.  In the early 1990’s, biofeedback reimbursements were cut by 75% by Medicare and other insurance providers.  Most MDs dropped most biofeedback at that time.  They’ve never become unaware of the advances in the field since, which are significant. . 

Since most MD’s aren’t aware of neurofeedback, they assume it must not be significant. 

In fact, it’s an amazing innovation for seizure patients.  But changing MDs minds are hard. . 

If you know a seizure patient who is interested in neurofeedback, we strongly suggest you read the research yourself (which is very impressive).  Or, come for a free consult so we can talk about your specific situation and answer questions. 

Give any seizure patient the chance to try neurofeedback. If it works, it’s impact can be quite life changing for a seizure patient. 

Another case example: An MD friend of ours in Massachusetts saw a 7 year old girl who was on lots of medication for seizures.  It was still uncontrolled.  They had recorded up to 100 seizures a day for this girl, who was seeing one of the top Pediatric neurologists in Boston/Harvard.  After 3 months of neurofeedback training (including 5 days a week using home equipment under supervision) she became seizure free.  Within 4 more months there were able to reduce her medications a great deal.  This little girl and her mom got her life back.  The Pediatric neurologist was impressed, but never referred any other patients for treatment. 

It is the nature of medicine to focus on what you know.  MDs know medications.  That’s what they use.  They don’t know or understand neurofeedback, and are not drawn to do so. 

History of reducing seizures with neurofeedback.
Neurofeedback was discovered during an experiment with cats.  Initially the cats did neurofeedback to show they could train their brain (they could).

In a later experiment, the cats whose  brains were trained had greatly reduced seizures after they were exposed to a chemical vs. normal cats with no brain training. 

Shortly after that, some labs starting training people who had seizures.  There have been over 18 studies that show that seizures are often reduced by brain training.

Migraines
If you know a migrainer who is well controlled on medications and who doesn’t have major side effects from medications, he or she is not usually a candidate for neurofeedback.  In our experience, they are happy with having migraines under control and they won’t consider changing what they are doing. 

If you know someone still having migraines– of if you know someone struggling with side effects of medications, than they should seriously consider the Center for Brain Training. 

Not only can neurofeedback be very helpful for reducing migraines, but at the center we help patients look at any number of factors and interventions that may be contributing to headaches.  We take a comprehensive approach based on extensive experience and research.  We find that a combination approach – using approaches that typically are not even discussed by MDs with their patients, can be highly effective.  .

There are hundreds of cases that have been reported of migrainers who trained with neurofeedback that reduced the number and intensity of migraines they had.  Often health professionals report that medications have been reduced or at times eliminated. 

A case example.  We worked with a retired chiropractor that had suffered from migraines for 30 years.  Late one day, just as he was getting started with neurofeedback he got a severe migraine.  We happened to talk with him and were able to see work him in to see him right then.  He was in excruciating pain and was considering going to the hospital. He reported that when this level of migraine occurs, there is no way to stop it for many hours or longer. 

We were able to train him for 25 minutes using neurofeedback.  During that time, we made some changes to adjust the training till he noted some improvement in pain.  We then continued with the last training settings.  By the end of 25 minutes he said his pain went from a 10 to a 2 (scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst).  After we stopped he reported soon the pain had gone down to a level 1.  He was amazed. He said he could not believe it was possible to stop a headache like that in such a short time – and for it simply to be virtually gone.  He did not re-experience the migraine again in the next week.

This is not an isolated incidence. It is common to be able to stop a severe migraine in progress – with people who say it takes hours to calm down even with medications. 

But that’s not the goal of neurofeedback and training. The goal is to reduce – on an ongoing basis the number and intensity of migraines.  Many clinicians around the US have reported that they often see that neurofeedback training does help clients learn to be much more stable and reduce the number of headaches and intensity of headaches. 

We encourage you to talk with us at the Center for Brain Training ... to discuss individual situations and answer questions about how our program could be helpful.