Some people think of athletes, movie stars, or musicians as celebrities.  To me, that’s not quite right. Scientists, writers, and innovators fall into the category of celebrity for me.  Today, I had the opportunity to listen to someone I think of as a bit of a celebrity. She is journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa, and her work on neuroscience truly impresses me, in large part because it’s geared toward helping a general audience understand a complex topic.  For those who aren’t familiar with her writing, my two favorites are The Angel and the Assassin and Childhood Disrupted.

Her talk today was on trauma and the brain. She explained, as she does in The Angel and the Assassin, that trauma sets the stage for what the conversation between the brain and the body will be, and that cells in the brain called microglia are actually immune cells and part of our body’s immune response.  They are in constant conversation with the rest of the body.

Jackson Nakazawa reminded us that chronic emotional stress signals our immune cells the same way an environmental assault triggers the immune system. This is fine for a short-term response, but over time, it creates inflammation in the body. Inflammation, in turn, can lead to depression and auto-immune diseases. This creates changes in the architecture of the brain.

She also noted that the social isolation and chronic fear state that many have experienced since the coronavirus pandemic began is a form of trauma and is harmful for brain health.

What I appreciated is that this seminar didn’t end with an explanation of what she sees as the problem of how trauma creates physical health challenges in the form of inflammation. She said that there are at least 20 different approaches to helping calm the nervous system and send messages to the brain that the body is safe.

At the top of that list of 20 is:  neurofeedback!

Not just because I liked that answer so well, but also because I have so much respect for her investigative work on neurons and brain health, I have signed up for a seminar with her to learn more about what she has found regarding the dance between the brain and the rest of the immune system. If the seminar is anything like this open chat was, I will be bringing wonderful new insights into both my work in neurofeedback and hypnosis.

I appreciate the opportunity to learn about practical, solution-focused approaches to well-being, and I’m pretty excited to share time with my kind of celebrity, too.

If you want to learn more about how neurofeedback may be a solution for calming your body and mind, give me a call. As of the time I’m writing this in early March, I’m pretty full, but depending on your scheduling flexibility, I may be able to fit you in.

A study just published on February 18th in the Bulletin of the National Research Centre has found that neurofeedback training helped decrease something called the theta/beta ratio in a group of children with autism.  Theta and beta are both names of electrical frequencies in the brain, and multiple previous studies have shown that a high theta/beta ratio is associated with difficulty focusing. Decreasing the theta/beta ratio means that the individual is better able to focus and attend to tasks.

This work is small but promising for individuals of all ages who have an autism diagnosis and want brain training to optimize their functioning.

You can read an abstract of the study here and a full description of the study here.