Neurofeedback training is exercise for your brain. With neurofeedback training, you go to the training center, rather than to the gym, and exercise the neural pathways to build up your ability to regulate your brain waves and switch from one brain state to another. Like all exercise, neurofeedback training must be done frequently over an extended period of time have an impact. Research indicates that the impact is much greater if the training is done at least twice a week.
The procedure is quite simple. Sensors are placed on the scalp, held in place with a special gel or with a headband. Wires from the sensors conduct tiny electrical currents from the client's head to an amplifier that boosts the signal and passes it on to a computer that registers the different frequencies and amplitudes of the brain waves produced in the area of the brain being monitored.
The brain wave patterns show what a person's brain is doing; for example, whether a person is paying attention or daydreaming or worrying. In an EEG, the brain wave is shown as a wavy line that combines all of frequencies. For neurofeedback training, the computer filters the waves into standard groups of frequencies, like slow Theta waves or fast Beta wave bands. Theta waves predominate when we are drowsy and distracted; Beta waves are more characteristic of alert, focused attention, concentration and problem-solving. Alpha waves predominate when we are in a clam alert inward focused state. It is the state that people try to cultivate through meditation practices. It is an inherently healing state the allows a person's brain to let go of habitual neural patterns, recent the mind and begin to create new, more functional neural patterns.
At the Dogwood Center neurofeedback is used primarily to enhance a person's ability to produce strong Alpha waves throughout their whole brain. Using a sophisticated brain training procedure, call Alpha Synchrony, we use neurofeedback training to help people learn to: