Amanda does Neurofeedback: Part 1 of 8

Videos of my 2nd experience with Neurofeedback. There are a few annotations, too.

When I was living in Key West in spring of 2008, my mother introduced me to a hypnotherapist named Monica, who I ended up seeing a few times a week. She's a very interesting person, so when I went back to Key West to visit, I decided to meet up with her again.

We went out to dinner, and she told me she had recently acquired a Neurofeedback system, which intrigued me greatly. I had heard of neurofeedback before, in the book "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" by Jeff Warren (youtube search: "The head trip - a tour through your mind" for a cool vid about it). In the book he describes how Neurofeedback is basically brain training, and it is supposed to work wonders for kids with ADD. I don't remember much of it, but it seemed like a cool concept (though possibly verging on the edge of pseudoscience).
Anyway, I don't really care much about my ADD but the idea of "training" your brain seems really awesome, whether or not I get any major benefits from it. Plus, I love science. I am a very curious person, and if you watch these videos you will see that - as I do not stop asking questions.

After dinner, we went back to Monica's house and I tried out the neurofeedback system and was amazed by it, though I don't know if I made any "progress". I decided I had to come back and record some of it, and these videos are the result. I guess you don't really have to watch them in order, also there a few minutes between the end of one video and the start of the next.
Anyway, I know these videos aren't the coolest but they help to explain more clearly what the process is like (it's kind of hard to put into words) and I like them because you can kind of see how my state (whether i'm talking, quiet, listening to Monica talk, talking about something calmly, talking excitedly, etc.) is having an affect on the brainwaves. This is more of the EEG portion than the training portion of the software, I think it just takes a long time to fully understand the "game" aspect.
PLEASE NOTE that I am not a doctor or clinician, and I am far far far from being an expert on this. I only barely understand it, because it's pretty complex - and confusing - stuff.
But anyway, I hope you enjoy the "movies" and learn something. If you get a chance to try Neurofeedback, GO FOR IT! Even if you're a total skeptic, it's still fun to do.
Also, sorry that I'm annoying in these videos. I just get so excited over Science!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• neurofeedback
• neuro
• neural
• feedback
• brain
• waves
• eeg
• spectra
• cygnet
• software
• therapy
• test
• new
• age
• psychological
• psychology
• experiment
• the
• head
• trip
• adventures
• on
• wheel
• of
• consciousness
• jeff
• warren
• temporal
• cranial
• biofeedback
• add
• adhd
• attention
• deficit
• hyperactivity
• disorder
• pseudoscience

[paisleyyama]

So which do you think is more effective for behavior, hypnosis or neurofeedback?

[skweeds]

@paisleyyama I didn't do enough of either to notice a substantial difference, but personally I don't think I really "got much" out of hypnotism - I guess it's just one of those "your mileage may vary" type things, and no matter how open minded I am to it it just doesn't affect me. Neurofeedback I can't genuinely testify for, but it certainly seems like a better prospect to me, in that its very essence is quantifiable. Good luck!

[paisleyyama]

@skweeds Thanks for the reply. After this one I watched another video on a study on hypnosis & the results showed the outcome is only short term. For ex., smokers were given hypnosis & right afterwards they had no desire to smoke but in a follow up interview 6 wk. later most were all back to smoking & it also seems very limited. For ex. ppl wanting to lose wt, the hypnosis was used to stop eating chocolate but that was all.  It couldn`t be used on all wt. related foods & behaviors.