Recently, I had a conversation with a friend that ended up on the topic of what it means to have a normal brain, and could I train the people who come to me to have a normal brain.
Outstanding mind among ordinary brains. Conceptual image
My short answer is an emphatic NO. The longer explanation is no, because I do not believe there is any such thing as a normal brain. Are there healthy brains? Yes. But, tell me, who has the healthy brain—an accountant or a musician? An electrical engineer or a poet? Each might have a healthy brain, or an optimally functioning brain, but none of them is normal. Not one’s electrical patterns are like the others.
Of course, It is possible to have an unhealthy brain. I think we could agree, for example, that someone who has a tumor has an unhealthy brain. It is also possible to have a damaged brain. We could probably agree that someone who’s sustained multiple concussions has a damaged brain. Still, it’s hard to decide whether a person who’s had a concussion or a tumor has a normal or abnormal brain. What does normal mean?
Two studies reported on in The Toronto Star help illustrate the point that when it comes to measuring humans, the term normal isn’t helpful.
Back in the 1920s, engineers took measurements of pilots and used the average to create cockpits for military aircraft. Then, in 1950, military engineers wondered whether sizes had changed and could account for problems with pilot crashes. So, they measured 4,063 pilots on multiple physical attributes and used the average of those measurements to come up with a guide to the size of the average pilot. Those engineers believed that better and more rigorous calculations would allow the pilots to fit better into newly improved cockpits, and fitting better would reduce crashes.
The result of all these careful measurements was to create an average pilot. In the end, though, not a single one of those 4,063 pilots met the criteria for being average. They found that if they had used the average of the measurements to create the cockpit, no one would have fit well. No one was average.
No one was average, so no one was really normal.
Around the same time, according to the same article in The Star, something similar was done by a prestigious gynecologist who took measurements from 15,000 women to come up with the proportions of a normal woman. His measurements were used to create a statue, called Norma, which allegedly represented the ideal woman. In a later contest of over 4,000 women, no one fully met the criteria for the famous ideal woman, who was simply an average of 15,000 measurements.
Using these two examples, it’s easy to understand why trying to normalize brainwave function makes little sense. Any group of brainwave measurements, averaged, does not represent normal, nor an ideal of anything. It is a statistical phenomenon that uses false precision to convince people who vary from that average that they are more or less normal.
What I use for neurofeedback is a measurement protocol that is similar to those who seek to normalize brain function, but instead of measuring 20 sites on the scalp and comparing those results with some ephemeral normal brain, the software I uses those same 20 sites to compare the brain against itself, based on research literature showing what ranges of measurements exist for optimally functioning people. It turns out that optimally functioning people do not have brainwave patterns that are the same, but when comparing their brain against itself rather than a norm, the comparisons have similar ranges.
Frankly, I’d rather be working on becoming closer to my optimal self than to anyone’s measurement of normal, and I’d rather train you to be a better version of yourself, too.
Several years ago, an acquaintance introduced me to the live bear camera at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park, Alaska. This motion-activated camera broadcasts events at the falls, which usually includes multiple bears sunning themselves and fishing for the salmon that are flinging themselves up the falls. Because the camera moves to catch activity, the camera sometimes points downstream and away from the falls, which then becomes audible but not visible.
