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Guest Appearance

How to Get Your Brain Back to Optimal Cognition with Dr. Andrew Hill #Clip

Access Flow Whenever You Want and Become Indistractible: http://GetMoreFlow.com Founding Director of Peak Brain Institute and Lead Neurotherapist. Dr. Hill is one of the top peak performance coaches in the country. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA’s Department of Psychology and continues to do research on attention and cognition. Research methodology includes EEG, QEEG, and ERP. He has been practicing neurofeedback since 2003. In addition to founding Peak Brain Institute, Dr. Hill is the host of the Head First Podcast with Dr. Hill and lectures at UCLA, teaching courses in psychology, neuroscience, and gerontology. RESOURCES: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewhillp... LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhil... Website: https://peakbraininstitute.com/ STEVEN KOTLER is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and Founder and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. His books include The Art of Impossible, Stealing Fire, and The Rise of Superman. His work has been translated into over 40 languages and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, The Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

Episode Summary

I sat down with Steven Kotler on the Flow Research Collective to break down a question I get constantly: when people hear the word neurofeedback, they have no idea what actually happens in the room. You can watch the original conversation for the full discussion. Here is the mechanism, start to finish.

What Is Biofeedback, and How Is Neurofeedback Different?

Biofeedback takes a body signal you normally cannot perceive, your heart rate, your skin temperature, your sympathetic-to-parasympathetic balance, and puts it in front of you so you can learn to move it. HRV biofeedback with a HeartMath device is one example. Hand-warming to abort a headache is an older one. You watch your activation level, add some breath work, and shift it.

When people say biofeedback, they usually mean the peripheral nervous system, the parts outside the skull and spine. Your heart, your skin, your autonomic tone.

Neurofeedback is biofeedback applied to the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord inside the bone. The signal lives somewhere you have almost no conscious access to. You can feel your heartbeat speed up. You cannot feel a brainwave. That single fact is why neurofeedback works the way it does, and why it feels mysterious while you are doing it. For a fuller treatment of the modality, I cover the basics in Is Neurofeedback Legitimate? A Research Overview and the underlying tool at /topics/neurofeedback.

What Brainwave Are We Actually Training for Focus?

Say you want better executive function and less distractibility. Most of us could use more of that, whether or not we carry an ADHD diagnosis.

The brainwave I reach for is SMR, sensorimotor rhythm, a low-beta rhythm around 12 to 15 Hz over the sensorimotor strip. If you have watched a cat on a windowsill tracking a bird, you have seen SMR. The body goes liquid still while the mind locks on with laser attention. Maybe the tail twitches. The body stays quiet. That mixed state matters because an animal launches into action far more efficiently from relaxation than from tension. Still body, focused mind. High SMR, low theta.

Mammals produce SMR as an inhibitory rhythm, a way of holding back motor output. When SMR tone runs low, the brain becomes more prone to seizures (Sterman & Egner, 2006). It also becomes more distractible. High SMR with low theta is the anti-ADHD profile. Push theta up and SMR down, and you get air in the brake lines. The brain moves a lot, reacts to the outside world like a squirrel chasing motion, and loses the goal. I go deeper on this rhythm in SMR Neurofeedback: Train Sleep, Focus, and Self-Control and on the broader profiling approach in Biohacking with EEG Phenotypes.

Where Did Neurofeedback Come From?

Neurofeedback was discovered by accident in the late 1960s by Dr. Barry Sterman, who was at UCLA and is still emeritus faculty there. NASA had asked him to test how dangerous methyl hydrazine, a rocket fuel vapor, was to astronauts who reported unpleasant effects from exposure. Animal research in that era was far more permissive than it is today, which is the hard part of this story.

Sterman found a clean dose-dependent curve. Minutes of exposure produced escalating symptoms: vocalizations, panting, drooling, an unsteady ataxic gait, seizure, coma, death. That pattern held for most of his cats. A subset refused to seize. While the others were falling over and showing major instability, these cats stayed stable far longer (Sterman et al., 1969).

He could not explain why one group looked so different until he remembered that those cats had been used in an earlier experiment months prior. In that study, he had rewarded them with a squirt of chicken broth whenever they produced a particular brainwave, and trained them to make more of it (Wyrwicka & Sterman, 1968). That brainwave was SMR. Training it up had made their brains resistant to destabilization.

Soon after, Sterman's lab manager, who had medication-uncontrolled epilepsy, became the first clinical case. They built her an auditory feedback machine that beeped whenever her SMR rose. Over several months her SMR climbed, her seizures dropped, and she improved markedly (Sterman & Friar, 1972). That was the start of clinical neurofeedback. We still train SMR today, now for ADHD and attention as much as for seizures.

What Does a Neurofeedback Session Actually Look Like?

Here is the concrete mechanism. We place a sensor over the part of the cortex involved in monitoring attention and measure two rhythms moment to moment: SMR and theta. Theta, in this context, behaves like a release or drift state.

As your SMR happens to rise and your theta happens to drop, the software feeds the brain a reward. The Pac-Man eats more dots, the puzzle pieces start filling in, the spaceship flies cleaner, a tone sounds. Good job, brain. A couple of seconds later your SMR slips and your theta climbs back up. The Pac-Man stalls, the tone goes quiet, and the brain notices: I was getting information, where did it go? Then it drifts back in the right direction and the reward resumes.

The trick is that every few seconds we move the goalposts. Over a thirty-minute session, the brain receives small bursts of applause for every run or trend in the direction we want, lower theta and higher SMR.

The mind cannot feel its own brainwaves, which is why the process stays mysterious even to the person sitting in the chair. If moving your arm always moved the game, you would figure out the rule immediately. Here the game responds only when theta or beta moves, so the conscious mind never catches the contingency. The brain likes the information and adapts toward it, treating it as a puzzle to solve rather than an obvious lever. This is operant conditioning, the same shaping Skinner used with pigeons, applied to a rhythm that already exists in your head. The learning is subcortical and involuntary. The reward is information, and the brain goes after it.

How Fast Does Neurofeedback Work, and How Do You Know?

After three or four sessions, often later the same day or the next, the brain starts reaching for the state on its own. It wants the information again: low theta, high SMR. The person reports feeling calm. I get frantic calls from parents saying their kid took the trash out the first time they asked, which never happens, and it felt weird. Subtle behavioral effects show up where the regulation improved.

The process runs like personal training for the brain. We start with an assessment, usually a QEEG brain map, pick goals, and begin working the targeted resources in this involuntary exercise format. Then you report back. How was your sleep, your stress, your attention, your drinking, your trauma response? You get effects you can name, which keeps the process mysterious in mechanism but not blind in outcome.

As you run different protocols, you learn what each one does for you. Beta on one side of the head tends to produce more self-control. Beta on the other side tends to produce more alertness. If you come in and tell me you felt charged up and could focus all night but could not fall asleep, I switch the protocol and ask how the next one felt. You say you could focus and still fall asleep. Good. That is your workout. We repeat it, and the state gets more stable each time you produce it.

This is involuntary exercise on your own brainwaves, shaped a few Hz at a time. The related applications are covered in Does Neurofeedback Work for ADHD? and the anxiety evidence in Neurofeedback for Anxiety: What the Research Shows.

Putting It Together

Neurofeedback measures a brain rhythm you cannot consciously perceive, rewards it the instant it moves in the direction you want, and lets operant conditioning do the training while your conscious mind stays out of the way. The SMR work that started by accident in Sterman's lab in the 1960s is the same work we do now for focus, sleep, and self-regulation. If distractibility is your target, start with an assessment, identify whether your SMR-to-theta balance is the issue, and train from there.

References

  1. Wyrwicka (1968). Instrumental conditioning of sensorimotor cortex EEG spindles in the waking cat. doi:10.1016/0031-9384(68)90139-x
  2. Sterman (1972). Suppression of seizures in an epileptic following sensorimotor EEG feedback training. doi:10.1016/0013-4694(72)90028-4
Full Transcript
when i mention neurofeedback around people who are not that familiar with it they often struggle to understand sort of how it actually happens as well so i would love also a breakdown and maybe an example of what it actually looks like to do neurofeedback training as well biofeedback is a form of modifying the body essentially by taking things that are not normally appreciable like your heartbeat your body temperature and making them under your voluntary awareness so you can then learn to like change them and this is something like hrv biofeedback like the heart math devices or old school stuff like hand warming to drop headaches is biofeedback you can look at your activation level and stress level and some breath work and change that as a way of doing some biofeedback but generally when we say the word biofeedback what we mean is peripheral nervous system control things that are outside the skeletal system you know the controlling your heart maybe your skin your parasympathetic to sympathetic activation is biofeedback in the body neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback that has some unique properties by definition it's just stuff that's on the central nervous system so stuff inside the bone you know the skull in the spine that's the cns and because it's the cns you're not really aware of it the same way you are in the peripheral body so neurofeedback is measuring the brain usually and training it to change but the process of change becomes involuntary operant conditioning or or involuntary shaping so this is how it actually works and i'll give you a concrete example let's say you wanted better executive function you wanted to control your distractibility better which we all you know many of us want to do some of us have adhd some of us don't but many of us could benefit from some resource building in the distractibility way there's a brainwave called smr sensory motor rhythm which is a low beta brain wave and if any of you have seen a cat lying on a windowsill watching a bird you've seen smr it's this liquid still body and laser-like focus that cat seeing a prey animal outside maybe it's the tail is twitching but the body is just still mostly because you can leap onto an and you can you can leap into action from relaxation much much better than from tension so that mixed state of still body and focused mind is a high smr state and mammals most animals make smr as a way to inhibit if you will or stop things from happening if you have poor smr tone your brain tends to make seizures and neurofeedback was discovered by mistake in the late 60s by dr barry sturman so dr barry sturman was at ucla in the in the 50s and 60s and uh he's still an emeritus faculty he's still occasionally doing lectures but he was exposing cats to rocket fuel vapors on requests of nasa to figure out how dangerous this stuff was this methyl hydrazine because the astronauts were not enjoying breathing in vapors when they were exposed to it so there was a research study and on the 60s we had much more lacks animal research so this is the part of the story it's hard but dr sturman found that minutes exposed to the vapor would create increased symptoms where they would had vocalizations they would pant they would drool become unsteady in their gates and ataxic have seizure then coma then death it was a perfect dose-dependent curve where minutes equaled symptoms more so more and more symptoms for 24 of the 32 cats he had in his little subject pool eight of them super cats refused to have seizures while the other cats were falling over and having major problems at about 40 50 minutes in the other cats were showing mild instability events in the brain two and a half hours exposed couldn't figure out why one group of cats seemed very different than the others and then he remembered that these cats had been used in a prior experiment six months before to see if he could get them to raise this brain wave the cats make a lot of whenever he squirted chicken broth into their mouth to applaud it happening he could they raised it great back in the subject pool well this brainwave makes your brain resistant to being destabilized it turns out and later on he stumbled across this by mistake and then his lab manager was in medication uncontrolled epileptic they built her an auditory feedback machine beeped whenever her smr went up and over the next few months they trained her smr up and she was on huge meds and having lots of seizures and they eventually went off all her meds remained seizure free for a year so this was the start of the field of neurofeedback clinically so to speak in the late 60s and we still train this smr frequency and now we often train it for things like adhd as well as seizures but the cat and windowsill still body and laser-like focus is the opposite of adhd literally high smr low theta is anti-adhd state when it reverses high theta means like air in the brake lines and low smr support inhibitory tone you're moving a lot distractible your brain's like squirrel you know it's very outside world reactive and it's not focused on the goal so literally that calm cat is the opposite of an adhd state if you stick a wire in the part of the brain which is involved with monitoring if you're paying attention and measure smr and measure theta which is a release state in some ways as they change moment to moment as your smr happens to go up and the smr sorry the theta happens to go down you supply the brain and say yeah good job brain and make a little game on the screen move so your pacman eats some more dots or your puzzle pieces start to fill in or your spaceship starts to fly better and a couple seconds later your brain moves in the wrong direction for the workout your smr goes down your theta goes back up and the software slows down the pac-man stalls the beeps go away and the brain's like hey i was watching stuff i don't like no stuff where's the stuff and then a couple seconds later happens to move in the right direction and the software resumes good job brain good job brain nope good job good job good job nope again and again and the big trick here is every few seconds we move the goal posts so over half an hour sitting there your brain gets little bursts of applause for runs or trends it engages in of reducing its theta and raising its smr and the mind can't feel its brain waves that's why it's so mysterious and no one knows how it works if you know as they do it because the mind can't tell that the computer game was happening only when a certain if you always moved your arm and the game always moved you'd know what it was doing but it's moving whenever your theta moves it moves or something or beta moves it moves so your brain however likes the information and has no idea it's not a real thing in the world like a musical instrument or a car you're trying to drive and you're changing the rules so it's trying to adapt a little bit as you go in that half an hour session and usually after about three sessions or four sessions later on that day or the next day your brain reaches for the state and says hey wait i want information what low theta high smr and the person goes oh i feel calm and if you ask your kid to take the trash out when that happens they get up and do it and i get frantic calls my kid took the trash out i asked once it was weird or whatever you know like you get to get weird subtle effects showing up and the process of getting the change in neurofeedback becomes one like personal training where you sort of look at your brain on an assessment pick some goals start gently working the resources out in this involuntary exercise way but then you report the next day or later that day how was your sleep how was your stress how was your attention how was your drinking how's your trauma and you get effects so it's mysterious but not a blind process for you and after you know as you try different things you feel different things you know beta on this side produces more self-control beta on this side produces more alertness so if you come in and say oh i was super charged up and i could focus all night but i couldn't fall asleep i might do some you know different beta wave for you and say how was that oh it was great i could focus and i could fall asleep okay great that's your workout there let's do that a few times and then it builds up and becomes more stable as you experience it again so it's involuntary exercise on brain waves using operant conditioning or shaping like skinner's pigeons you know i promise this is not pavlov's dog i will not make you drool but we take things that already exist you know brain waves we shape them a little bit like pavlov did with his pigeons if what you've heard on flow research collective radio has been helpful please consider doing us a solid and leaving us a review on apple podcast spotify or wherever you are listening to this reviews help us connect to a wider audience so we can get these peak performance principles out to more people [Music]
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