When I first began learning about neurofeedback, I attended training with different companies and different psychologists who had expertise in the field. My understanding grew, but it all finally came together and made sense for me once I met and began studying under Peter Van Deusen, owner of Brain Trainer International. His approach is practical, science-based, and open to anyone who wants to know more.
Pete’s generous approach to teaching and sharing information did not end with his in-person workshops. He offers video training and online, one-on-one sessions with his staff, and he has built an international network of providers who follow his methods. He has made himself available to brain trainers in ways that many others have not, which is one of the reasons that, although I use approaches and techniques from other pioneers in addition to Pete, I largely follow the Brain Trainer method.
I am such a believer in Brain Trainer’s practical, science-based ways of approaching brain training that, once Pete has finished putting together a new curriculum that is the culmination of three decades in the field, I will be joining just over a dozen instructors nationwide who will be teaching in-person training courses on how to do neurofeedback using the Brain Trainer approach.
In addition to all this effort in to teaching and training, Pete Van Deusen provides in-depth responses to trainer questions on a list-serve for brain trainers. He recently posted a lengthy response to a newer trainer who had questions about the mechanics of brain training in which he pointed out several key points: that the brain is a complex system and not a machine, that every brain is the result of how it has experienced the world, and that feedback affects the brain and not the mind. With his permission, I am re-posting a lightly edited version of his response to that trainer. Enjoy!
Complex, Adaptive Systems. First, we begin with the recognition that the human brain, often considered the most complex system in the universe, is not a car or a computer or an assembly line or any other “linear” cause-and-effect system. We have examples all around us of what are called “complex-adaptive” chaotic systems. How is it possible that all these “genius” academics with their Nobel prizes in economics have managed to drive the world’s economies smack into walls despite their brilliant economic models; or that all the published climate scientists who drive our policies keep predicting, based on their best models, that all coastal cities will soon be under water (for nearly 100 years now), that winters will cease to exist, etc. because of a single measure of CO2 levels in the atmosphere? The answer is simple enough. Climate and macro-economies are excellent examples of chaotic systems. They just don’t respond in the neat linear ways to theories predict. They are quantum systems.
So, what is a complex-adaptive system? In effect, it is a system made up of large numbers of players organized into large numbers of organizations which work together according to some simple principles. As Wikipedia defines it: a system in which a perfect understanding of the individual elements does NOT convey a perfect understanding of the whole. The rules seem fairly simple: such systems are strongly dependent on their original conditions; their sub-systems learn and change as a result of experience; they are stable because they are self-reinforcing, but they have the potential to change dramatically and very suddenly; and they can be changed by feedback loops.
Pathology vs Normalcy. Most of us have learned about human behavior according to a rather linear approach called the “pathology model”. In that model there is a definable normal state and, hence, what deviates from that is pathological–diagnosable. In neurofeedback, the so-called “scientific” (QEEG compared against a “normative” database) approach is implanted in this model. A person with PTSD, for example, is pathological, and we can define exactly what specific measurable micro-measures of brain activity are the cause by comparing the individual against a statistical construct made up of a bunch of individuals. This is the equivalent of Newtonian physics, with nice neat rules, vs. quantum mechanics where, for example, a particle can be in two places at the same time depending on where we are looking for it.
If you accept the concept of complex-adaptive brains over the linear approach, then the result is a mind-blower: EVERY BRAIN IS 100% NORMAL. Based on where it started (initial conditions)–perhaps in the body of a very anxious mother–and based on the experiences that are encoded in the stable energy patterns within it–the brain is the only brain it COULD be. You might even say, “a brain that developed embryonically in a bath of anxiety chemicals and which experience abuse or neglect in its most formative years (when its habitual responses were being developed) and which survived all of that into the present could only be abnormal if it were NOT anxious, hyper-vigilant, unable to trust and balanced autonomically on a razor’s edge.
But that doesn’t mean that every brain is ideally functional given the situation in which it finds itself today. The habit patterns that drive “what just happens” in its responses to experience may have little to do with the realities or possibilities of its current situation. In fact, in many cases, those habits end up actually KEEPING the brain in the very state of isolation and fear they were originally designed to protect it against.
So, we can’t go back and change the initial conditions. And we can’t even remove or expose or understand those experiences (many of which happened before there was language or experience to create a context)–though that is largely the raison d’être of psychotherapy. And feedback, the only real hope for changing these habits, has two severe limitations: First, most of it comes from the reactions of other people (that’s how the brain sees the world: I do this, I get that in return). Other people are subjective: the same action may get diametrically opposed reactions depending on with whom you try it or even when with the same person. Second, any complex-adaptive system is self-reinforcing: that is, it sees what it expects to see, and this is especially true if there is a context of meaning or emotion to the feedback. People who fear social situations experience that others don’t like them, no matter what the others actually felt or did.
It’s pretty hopeless unless you recognize a few things. First, although most clinicians are trained all about the mind–and more specifically the conscious mind–that particularly linear way of looking at things through our left hemispheres–the research for more than 3 decades has demonstrated very clearly that it is not the mind but the brain that controls how we think, feel, act and perform. In fact, it has been shown over and over that our experiential responses (the “what just happens” in our lives) is directly related to electrical/energetic patterns encoded in our brains. These are very stable. They are learned in response to experience and reinforced until they become habitual. You may think of them as “subconscious”. If you are honest with yourself, you will likely have to admit that THEY control us, not our conscious rational/logical mind. So psychotherapy, which tries to change the brain by changing the mind will always be limited to helping us learn to live with what just happens–but it cannot help us learn to live without it. The real key is to change the brain–not the mind. When those patterns in the brain are released, what “just happens” in our lives changes, and it changes automatically, and it changes for good. It becomes the new habit.
About Feedback. Assuming you get and believe all that, one of the crucial tasks of a brain-trainer is to recognize that WE ARE TRAINING THE BRAIN, NOT THE MIND. But how can we train the brain? Only way to change a complex-adaptive system is through feedback. But feedback is produced by subjective sources and it is understood by a self-reinforcing entity.
Enter neurofeedback. Its very name tells us that it provides feedback not to the mind but to the brain. And the feedback is produced without emotional characteristic, purely objectively and not subject to “understanding”. In fact, one of the greatest challenges of a great trainer is to refuse to enter into the client’s (and often her own as well) desire to “explain” and “understand” the feedback. My clients hate it when I do this, but eventually it works. I tell them right up front, “I’m not training your conscious mind. In fact your number one job is to keep your thinking mind OUT of the process.” So when they ask me what the feedback means, or how do I tell if I’m doing well or how do I understand the feedback, I ask them this simple question: “Who’s asking this?” They soon realize that it’s their conscious mind asking, and that I’m not going to even try to answer them. I tell them that brain-training provides a perfect mirror in which their brain can see itself reflected and hence can try new things. The only thing that can mess it up is if their conscious mind keeps jumping between the brain and the mirror and trying to explain or guide or understand.
When we first developed this approach in the middle 1990s with a software called WaveWare, it was in response to the recognition that when we had anxious or obsessive clients, and the feedback gave them points or any kind of evaluatable experience, they would immediately begin thinking and trying and judging. They moved (in a nice self-reinforcing way) in the direction where they were most comfortable and hence in exactly the opposite direction from what the training was attempting to help them learn. So, we set up the feedback as music. For example, if I am asking the brain to make less 23-38 Hz activity, then I assign a note on the musical scale to each level of amplitude being produced by that brain. I might have the note increase in pitch as the amplitude goes up. I might have the volume get louder the worse the brain is doing and have it get softer as it moves in the right direction.
Your conscious mind can’t make any sense of it, because you aren’t a brain–or at least you aren’t your own brain. But your brain is always looking at whatever inputs are arriving and seeking relationships between them and what it has just done. So the brain begins to notice that when it is more activated in a certain area, it effects the music in one way and when it is less activated it affects it in another way. Of course the anxious client will ask me, what’s supposed to happen? Is the music supposed to go up or go down? And I tell them, “it’s just music. listen to it.” But what should happen? There’s no “should” in music, I tell them. Shut up and close your eyes and listen to the music.
Of course, they don’t believe me. If I were really smart, I’d be as anxious as they are. And I can see that fast-wave activity staying high or going up as they try desperately to figure it out, or grumble (usually silently) about what a jerk I am, but eventually they usually give up and when they do, the fast activity starts to go down and the brain learns that it can release a long-held habit and the world doesn’t fall apart. In fact, it might even feel better.
Feedback is very powerful if you don’t try to understand or explain it. But there are two types of feedback, each of which has specific benefits. There is continuous feedback and contingent feedback.
The music is continuous feedback. It is never “off”, so the client can’t judge it. Rather it gives information continuously by changing pitch and volume, so the brain learns from it. The chimes (or the video, which plays/pauses depending on how well the brain is meeting its targets) are contingent feedback. They give direction. The brain learns from the music that there is a relationship between what it does and the sound–it writes and plays its music, and the music it plays is its own feedback. But it doesn’t necessarily know which direction we’d like it to try. The chimes only play during the “best” 10% or 25%, when the brain is surpassing our targets for it. So I tell the client, “listen to the music. Sometimes you’ll hear the chimes play, and just know that’s VERY good. But don’t TRY to make them play, because you can’t. Just listen for them so you notice when they play.” Now the brain knows the direction it can go to best test a new way of operating. And, if the eyes are open and there is a silent fractal video playing, the video runs or pauses (contingently) when the brain is (or is not) meeting the challenge. All without the conscious mind having to “help” it.
The hardest and most crucial technical task for the trainer in running a session is to set the targets. Make them too easy and the client scores all the time and the brain learns nothing. Make them too hard, and the client rarely scores, gets frustrated and the brain learns nothing. When you have multiple thresholds, it becomes even more complicated. If you have one threshold set to 80% success, the brain should get feedback about 80% of the time. Two separate thresholds of 80% each are a different story. One may be passing part of its 80% while the other is in the 20% of not-passing, and vice-versa. Worst case scenario, your client may only get feedback (.8 X .8=) 64% of the time. The more targets you have, the greater the chance that the client may be passing (for example) 3 of them but not all 4 and get no feedback.
This commentary was intended for a professional practitioner, so please don’t feel overwhelmed if some of what Pete Van Deusen said about neurofeedback felt too complex for those of you who are simply trying to decide whether neurofeedback is right for you. My intention in sharing it was to give you a sense of the thinking behind why and how the Brain Trainer system works. If Pete’s commentary triggers questions for you, please feel free to email or call me. I’d be happy to answer.