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Your Brain, Neurofeedback & Mental Health - Exploring Equipment & Modality Differences 🧠 | Live Q&A

Join us for an insightful Q&A session as we dive into neurofeedback, brain health, and the complexities of mental health with our expert panelists, including Dr. Andrew Hill, Jay Gunkelman, Dr. Mari Swingle, Joy Lunt, Santiago Brand, Anthony Ramos, John Mekrut, Joshua Moore, and Pete Jansons. We discussed the effectiveness of various neurofeedback modalities, the impact of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and the importance of a holistic approach to brain health. 🌟 Key Topics Covered: Differences between neurofeedback modalities like ILF, SMR, and neurofeedback devices. The role of metabolic and nutritional health in neurofeedback outcomes. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy's impact on brain function. Practical insights into working with children and engaging them in neurofeedback. Disclaimer: This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Always check with your primary care physician before making any changes to your health routine. Key Moments: Pre-Show & Technical Setup 0:00 - 2:11 Discussing the importance of staying in the StreamYard studio until recordings are complete and ensuring correct setup for the show. Introduction & Opening Remarks 2:11 - 6:41 Introduction of the panelists and light discussion on microplastics and their impact on the brain. Neurofeedback Modalities Discussion 6:41 - 13:00 Introduction to different neurofeedback modalities, including amplitude training, infralow, Z-score, and Loretta. Discussion on the public's misunderstanding of these methods. Equipment & FDA Approval in Neurofeedback 13:00 - 19:10 Examination of various neurofeedback equipment, their FDA approval status, and the difference between wellness devices and diagnostic tools. Neuroptimal vs. Other Neurofeedback Devices 19:10 - 22:55 A detailed comparison between Neuroptimal and other neurofeedback modalities, emphasizing the importance of practitioner expertise. Client Case Studies & Neurofeedback Applications 22:55 - 30:10 Panelists share client experiences with different neurofeedback devices, highlighting the importance of appropriate equipment selection. Laterality in Brain Function 30:10 - 34:05 Discussion on brain hemispheric laterality, with insights from Dr. Andrew Hill on his research and its application in neurofeedback. SMR vs. Mu Waves in Neurofeedback 34:05 - 39:03 Clarification on the differences between SMR (Sensorimotor Rhythm) and Mu waves, and their relevance in neurofeedback. Client-Centered Neurofeedback & Ethical Considerations 39:03 - 47:02 Discussion on the ethical implications of neurofeedback, client-centered approaches, and the importance of understanding client needs and metabolic health. Integrating Metabolic Health in Neurofeedback 47:02 - 53:00 Importance of considering metabolic and nutritional health in neurofeedback therapy to ensure effective outcomes. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) and Neurofeedback 53:00 - 1:04:50 Discussion on the use of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in conjunction with neurofeedback and its effects on brain health. Working with Children in Neurofeedback 1:04:50 - 1:18:03 Strategies for effectively working with children in neurofeedback, including managing hyperactivity and engagement during sessions. Final Q&A & Closing Remarks 1:18:03 - End Final questions from the audience, including discussions on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and a recap of key points from the session. Dr. Andrew Hill locations: https://peakbraininstitute.com/contact-us/locations/ Los Angeles, Orange County, St. Louis, Manhattan, London, Stockholm #Neurofeedback #MentalHealth #EEG #BrainHealth #Neuroptimal #AmplitudeTraining #SMR #MuWaves #HBOT #MetabolicHealth #ChildNeurofeedback #DrAndrewHill #JayGunkelman #DrMariSwingle #JoyLunt #AnthonyRamos #JohnMekrut #SantiagoBrand #PeteJansons

Episode Summary

Understanding Neurofeedback Modalities: Beyond the Equipment Confusion

Based on a live Q&A session with neurofeedback experts addressing the most common questions about different approaches and equipment

When someone asks "What's the difference between neuroptimal and other forms of neurofeedback?" they're actually asking two completely different questions without realizing it. This confusion happens constantly in our field, and it's time to clear it up.

The Critical Distinction: Equipment vs. Modality

Here's what most people don't understand: equipment and modality are entirely separate categories. It's like asking "What's the difference between a Ford truck and transportation?" The truck is the vehicle; transportation is what you're trying to accomplish.

In neurofeedback:

  • Equipment = NeurOptimal, BrainMaster, EEGer, Thought Technology, BioGraph
  • Modality = Traditional amplitude training, infra-low frequency, Z-score, LORETA, SMR protocols

You can run traditional amplitude training on BrainMaster equipment. You can do Z-score protocols on EEGer systems. The equipment provides the platform; the modality determines what you're actually training.

The Equipment Landscape: What You Need to Know

FDA Classifications Matter

Not all neurofeedback equipment falls under the same regulatory umbrella, and this affects who can use what:

Wellness Devices (like NeurOptimal):

  • FDA-cleared for general wellness
  • No license required to purchase or operate
  • Marketed for meditation enhancement, general brain optimization
  • Cannot be used to treat diagnosed conditions
  • Val Brown (NeurOptimal's creator) is careful about these distinctions, though not all distributors are

Medical Devices (BrainMaster, Stens, EEGer, Thought Technology):

  • Require licensed healthcare provider to purchase
  • Can be used for clinical applications
  • More expensive, more complex
  • Designed for practitioners working with specific conditions

This isn't just bureaucratic paperwork—it reflects genuinely different intended uses and capabilities.

The Training Trap

Here's a pattern I've seen hundreds of times: Someone attends their first neurofeedback training. They're completely new to the field. The trainer shows them one equipment platform—let's say EEG Spectrum (now EEGer). That person leaves thinking this is "neurofeedback."

They don't realize BrainMaster exists. Or Thought Technology. Or any other approach. They've been trained on one system, so that becomes their entire understanding of the field.

This creates practitioners who believe "the only way to treat PTSD is with [whatever system they learned]." That's simply false. Multiple modalities can address the same conditions through different mechanisms.

The Major Modalities: What Actually Differs

Traditional Amplitude Training

This is the granddaddy of neurofeedback—what Barry Sterman pioneered in the 1960s. You're training specific frequency bands (like 12-15 Hz SMR) to increase or decrease at specific electrode locations.

How it works: Real-time monitoring of electrical activity in chosen frequency ranges. When the brain produces the desired pattern, you get positive feedback (audio tone, visual reward). When it doesn't, feedback stops.

Best for: Well-established protocols like SMR for seizure disorders, sensorimotor issues, sleep problems. Strong research base going back 50+ years.

Infra-Low Frequency (ILF)

Developed by the Othmers, this targets extremely slow oscillations (0.01-0.1 Hz) that weren't even measurable until recent equipment advances.

How it works: Training the brain's slowest regulatory networks—the oscillations that coordinate large-scale brain state changes over seconds rather than milliseconds.

Best for: Complex trauma, autism spectrum, developmental issues. Particularly useful when faster frequency training hasn't worked.

Z-Score Protocols

This compares your brain activity to a normative database in real-time, training toward "normal" patterns across multiple variables simultaneously.

How it works: Instead of training pre-set targets, the system continuously compares your current brain state to age-matched norms and rewards movement toward typical patterns.

Best for: When you want to normalize multiple brain regions simultaneously rather than targeting specific protocols.

LORETA (Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography)

This estimates deep brain source activity from surface electrodes, allowing training of subcortical structures you can't directly measure with EEG.

How it works: Mathematical modeling converts surface electrical activity into estimated activity in deeper brain regions like anterior cingulate, insula, or specific Brodmann areas.

Best for: Conditions involving deep brain networks—depression, anxiety disorders, addiction where you want to target specific brain circuits rather than just surface activity.

The Research Reality Check

Here's what keeps me up at night: We don't have solid comparative data on which modalities work best for specific conditions.

The field is filled with claims like "ILF is best for autism" or "Z-score is superior for ADHD," but these assertions lack rigorous comparative studies. What we have instead are:

  • Case studies within each modality
  • Uncontrolled clinical observations
  • Marketing claims from equipment manufacturers
  • Practitioner preferences based on their training

To properly compare modalities, you'd need to take similar populations and randomly assign them to different approaches. That's expensive, time-consuming, and rare in our field.

What This Means for Practitioners

Don't Get Trapped by Your First Training

If you learned on one system, recognize that's just one approach. The field is much broader than whatever platform you started with.

Match the Tool to the Job

Different modalities have different strengths:

  • Traditional amplitude: Strong research base, well-understood mechanisms
  • ILF: Useful for complex, treatment-resistant cases
  • Z-score: Good for normalizing multiple brain regions
  • LORETA: When you need to target specific deep brain circuits

Understand Your Equipment Limitations

That $20,000 clinical system isn't automatically better than simpler equipment for all applications. Sometimes the most sophisticated tool isn't what the client needs.

The Diagnosis Dilemma

Let's address the elephant in the room: neurofeedback practitioners walk a fine line around diagnosis and treatment claims.

What we can do: Look at EEG patterns and say "If this brain region shows this pattern, it often correlates with these functional difficulties."

What we can't do: Make formal DSM diagnoses based on brain patterns. The diagnostic codes insurance companies use don't include EEG patterns.

This isn't just legal hair-splitting. It reflects a fundamental difference in approach. Traditional medicine looks for pathology to treat. Neurofeedback looks for patterns to train.

The DSM serves mainly as an actuarial table for insurance purposes. Most neurofeedback practitioners find it clinically useless—we're more interested in "What's this brain doing?" than "What category does this person fit into?"

Moving Forward: What the Field Needs

Comparative research: We need head-to-head studies comparing modalities for specific conditions with similar populations.

Clearer communication: Stop mixing equipment brands with training approaches. They're different categories.

Honest limitations: Acknowledge what we know from controlled research versus clinical observation versus educated speculation.

Training diversity: New practitioners should learn about multiple approaches, not just whatever system their first trainer used.

The Bottom Line

There is no single "best" neurofeedback modality. Different approaches work through different mechanisms and may be better suited for different individuals and conditions.

The equipment you use matters less than understanding what you're trying to accomplish and choosing an appropriate modality. A skilled practitioner with simple equipment and clear goals will get better results than someone with the most expensive system who doesn't understand the underlying principles.

What matters most? Understanding your client's brain patterns, choosing an appropriate training approach, and tracking whether you're getting the changes you're targeting. Everything else is just tools and marketing.

The field of neurofeedback is rich with options. Don't let equipment confusion limit your understanding of what's possible.


Want to dive deeper into specific protocols? Check out our detailed breakdown of SMR training: SMR Neurofeedback: The Calm-Alert Brainwave That Trains Sleep, Focus, and Self-Control

Full Transcript
let's see if it goes recording ah there we go it says uploading recordings please ask all guests to stay in the studio until their recordings are done uploading nice and then it says Pete Anthony joy and right now they're all uploading yep so that's why at the end we got to hit stop end stream like remember when I was in Missouri I forget to hit end stream so it just kept recording while I was in the chair so we all we all have the ability to do that okay all right that's our uh streamyard uh uh tutorial walk through tutorial is that what you had to do in your software days Pete Career Builder uh Microsoft sidewalk actually that was a brief brief Tour on the Washington campus but uh always sales always sales always sales okay what's what's in the news in the room Anthony while we're waiting for everybody and welcome whoever just joined us we have one eyeball watching us man um well I mean I did just see something past couple days that uh oh we scared him off what happened let's see well we're 10 minutes early so people are like oh yeah probably somebody that's shy anything exciting with you guys before I uh oh we got Craig Craig's eyeballs are in here Craig welcome to the show my friend this is the pre-show this is how the sausage is made baby well we had a whole bunch of ideas coming through I can't keep track of the emails I think uh I think the last stuff I sent out was really about the microplastics and I I was just reading to today that the amount of microplastics in our brain is apparently increased by 50% in the last 10 years or since 2009 so that's so you're saying that uh our neuro neuroplasticity will be picking up that wow that's pretty clever I'm gonna give you for that one it's a groer but it was preow Craig says the sausage smells wonderful oh funny there we go does anybody know Craig is he a a friend of anyone in the he's a friend of ours well we have some leftovers for Craig now's a good time um so H are you not wanting us to mention the equipment issue what equipment issue Craig knows last time uh I think Joy had brought up that she wanted to maybe discuss the different inhome treatment options or devices no no no no I do not want to discuss the that's way down the line the one thing couple of things two ideas I wanted to discuss and have and we have to plan this ahead of time because each of us is going to have to take a turn to explain the different methods so we traditional amplitude stuff we had the infr low we have the infra slow we have zcore we have Loretta we have and the public seems completely unaware of aren't they all neuro feedback well they're Wily different from each other and one of the things that keeps getting commented all the time is oh this is the best one for this and this this is the best one for so so there's not a single CL other than the marketing tools there's not a clinician that has a piece of information about which is better for what we haven't done that yet yeah we've we've suggested it but you know not an easy thing to line up like okay I'm going to work with uh somebody on the artistic Spectrum with the traditional amplitude stuff and then somebody else is going to work with a very very similar person on on the infr low frequency you know so it's not a simple thing to figure out but we do need to protect people from thinking oh the only kind of neuro feedback I can do if I have PTSD is that that's that's a false liar there the other thing is to tell people a little about just equipment in general like some of it's FDA approved some of it isn't what's the difference what how could use some of it versus others that's a different topic um you know so I think that uh the atome devices is probably the most complicated and truthfully the least factually known by most of us so well as Craig says whoever's selling the product that's that's what we got going out there used to be STS at least that that I remember you had Sten and then You' have John Anderson teaching it to you and You' get your 19 Channel and you'd go out there and sell and then Craig's got your optimal one and then there's eager which used to be EEG spect and there's brain master and there's thought technology those are the main players because I don't think NEX was nex's I don't think they're around anymore they were way way way old ones well it's my media now is Nexus no I think media B St right it's John Anderson yeah John Anderson uh it's Irwin Irwin owns uh mind media okay I guess my point is whoever's selling the stuff and whoever's doing the training that's the best product to use so that's people get confused who do I give my 20 grand to and Peter it gets a little worse because you know when I went and went and sat for my first training ever yeah I didn't know what the word Nur feedback meant I had to learn all the camp here and so that was EG Spectrum which is now eager and it never occurred to me that there was other equipment you know they they showed us that equipment and talked about it which was their right to do but I was so new and naive it I didn't know there was brain Master equipment or tens or I didn't know there's anything else so it would be nice for people to have some information and there is a difference Craig um I please correct me if I'm wrong um neuro optimal is a good example of a wellness device so FDA approved as a wellness device pardon it's FDA approved as Wellness device well that's that's my point is that a wellness device is approved by the FDA in a particular way right it is not expected to be used for diagnosable conditions that's what Val Brown puts on his website yeah um but it's great for you know if you want to meditate better if you want to clear things up a little bit more um you know and and that Val is really good about sticking to that I don't know that a lot of the representatives out there do another very important factor is that you do not have to be a licensed health care provider to purchase or to use neur optimal there are other forms of equipment that brain master um stends the Mind media uh eager thought technology you do have to have a license to purchase it and basically to operate it so or have a supervisor with that license um and those are cleared by the FDA for more diagnosable stuff although neuro feedback is not intended as as a you can't diagnose with any of them well here's like what Craig says it's all you know General Wellness that's new information to me oh it's not all it's not all General well the optimal nor optimal is General Wellness right it's a category well those really expensive ones you can use to diagnose but not the ones that that we can buy right no John come on GL me in okay Josh I'll let I'll let Joy run on this this is three minutes before the show starts so let's get it out now oh we got Dr Hill Dr Hill baby so real quick Peter here's our deal we do not diagnose and the reason we don't diagnose is because the diagnosis codes which which is what you're talking about when you say diagnose if you take insurance they have they have a list of all the things right your EEG pattern is not on any of those lists so we simply don't match the criteria that you need to make a diagnosis now we can look at the EEG and the qegs and stuff and say um if that part of your brain is messing up in this particular way then there's a good chance that the function of that area of your brain is not working so well is that a symptom you have that's that's a that's more of a pattern that we have but we would not be recognized as making a diagnosis that way John MEC how would you word that exactly what she did I'm sorry I was looking at a text message and you saw me do it Dr Hill W welcome to the panel glad we got you in thanks for joining us last week we're getting caught up on uh EEG devices and uh diagnosing treatment versus training that whole minut before show practitioner you know I have some I I definitely walk that landscape of not diagnosing every day right well I mean we if you know the uh the the backdrop to it is does any of us re do any of us feel that that the DSM is a meaningful document so no so here take insurance yes exactly that's the only use it has I think we we've had this discussion endlessly Andrew about the DSM and its silliness well it's an Actuarial Table that's exactly exactly right so Anthony all right six o'clock in Chicago seven o'clock on the east coast and Cali West Coast Washington we are at uh 4:00 so what what's going on in the technology room uh Anthony what are the big questions that have been coming up well yes we do have some questions that were you know I posted to some of the neuro feedback groups and we can just dive into it if people like we went through some of them last time um let's see here uh you know this might be a timely question and Craig maybe feel feel free to chime in I have a question here about what are the differences between neuroptimal and other modalities of no feedback uh so if anybody would like to feel that we can give it to our new our new guest um Dr Hill here to start perfect there we go sure sure Pete I'll show up no problem welcome and he's free to defer if he doesn't want to be controversial I mean I'm I'm never one to not be controversial you know sanago oh we can dump it on Santiago what was the question somebody on Facebook has asked us about uh what is the difference between neuroptimal and other forms of neuro feedback can I please mention something welcome thank you so much Start just to start um we are confusing two very different categories a modality of neuro feedback versus equipment so if we would like to separate that question out the best thing to ask is what is neuro optimal and where is it in the realm of equipment that's used for neura feedback and the second question is what modality are you using if you're using neuro optimal equipment but modality and equipment brand is two different things okay so which should the client or a perspective Ive patient which do you think they should care about first somebody says you should do neuroptimal uh where would you start them or asking what what should they be asking Joy please okay so here's my if I had the Good Fortune of learning how to play the piano at the level of a concert pianist and I walked into Carnegie Hall and they gave me the most expensive beautiful instrument in the world and I sat down I played it it sounded fantastic if I'm a concert pianist I need to be able to go to the church basement next door and the crappy old beat up piano that's there I can make that sound beautiful too the equipment is not what makes the outcome okay you can get great results on neuro optimal you can get crappy results and that's true for every brand of equipment that's out there depends on who's using it well I think the neuroptimal is also a modality and that it it actually has a protocol that it does I wouldn't say protocol but it actually is doing something that is out of the hands of the practitioner um maybe it wasn't that way at some point for all I know but the current model as it stands you actually hook up the client and you push play and it does its own thing now okay I think it's kind of always been that way okay I can only speak to what it is recently and and full full disclosure I'm in the independent review board process right now for a double blind study on neuro optimal so like I'm pretty into this so if I understand neur optimal at least the way Val Brown used to explain it um there's more similarity between amplitude training and neuro optimal in that neuro optimal is measuring things like Theta or alpha or some variation of a reward band and it's feeding back information about how well your brain is doing those things now like you said the machine is equipped to do it but the feedback still is based on how much of those various frequencies you're making right I I I would say that it seems and I'm going to say it seems it seems to be giving you orienting prompts based on um ships in the EG between gamma cortical and subcortical and so when there's a shift between these different systems and it might be between amplitudes but it also could be between these different Networks you're getting orienting prompts it's doing something like that and these orienting prompts present as skips in the sound of the EG or the the the feedback I mean skips and the sound of the feedback we got some new peeps that just showed up Jay gunkelman Dr Marie swingle uh welcome we got Dr Hill his first time on thank you uh Dr Hill and Jay and Dr Marie we just went down the rabbit hole of EG equipment and modality you can read the comments on the side here but that that's that's where we're at okay let's have a look if I if I may Pete everybody [Music] else EG EG amplifiers are go go ahead I I didn't I didn't quite hear that you on well it's started with optimal goo what what I would say it's it's also important to consider that two things to that are important to consider number one is more than the equipment itself is the pathway for training and education and learning that a quote unquote traditional neurofit practitioner takes versus that of the neuro optimal practitioners I I had a recent um anecdote that I want to share with with somebody about last year sometime early last year a lady contacts me after I do a webinar about trauma and she contacts me and she tells me uh I use neuroptimal I'm I'm a client I'm a trauma patient and somebody's using neur optimal and I said look I don't know much about neur optimal this is what I understand it is and it isn't and she lost it and she she starts going oh you're the traditional neuro feedback people you're so arrogant you're so close-minded and this and that and that was the end of it then a couple of weeks ago she contacts me again and she goes do you know somebody who does traditional neuro feedback a provider in my area and I said but I thought you were doing NE optimal and she says well you know neuroptimal people don't understand the science and I had a really bad experience and she said when I was doing my session I had a flashback and my therapist uh freaked out and she had to call 911 and she said neuro optimal can be done by anybody literally anybody because my quote unquote therapist is a cosm a cosmetologist not a psychologist not a mental health counselor not a psychiatrist not a neurologist cosmetologist now I don't have anything against cosmetologist but it's since we're going down this rabbit Hol you guys say it's important that we understand it's not only the equipment it's also the pathway that we have to take to to get certified mean how many of us have been doing this for a long time and you know we've we've all been through the trenches it hasn't been easy talk about this so I think that's also an important another important point to consider when it comes to manufacturers and providers and the different places providing the education for neuro feedback and biof feedback out there yeah I mean I'm I'm going to jump in I can stay on this soap box for hours but I mean it's a real Bane I think to our profession you know we have a major major issue that the general public cannot differentiate between qualified people but increasingly also professionals um and it's a big issue I mean you know Santiago was saying there nothing against cosmetologist nobody has anything against a cosmetologist as long as they're doing cosmetology um you know the the brain is one of the most sensitive uh yes it's a very resilient instrument but it's extremely sensitive instrument and this is why there's so much power working with it but I also like to know say always power goes both ways and you have to know how to observe the power uh analyze the power in order not just to use it efficaciously but safely you know that first Do no harm my major issue also with the neuroptimal folks is their anti- research um you know they they discourage uh research um I don't know how many chats or feeds I've been on where they've actually you know their slogan almost is you don't need to know what you're doing you don't have to know what you're doing in order to use this piece of equipment on your client's brain like let's just pause here you know uh in terms of you know what the communication is and just like you Santiago I have so many stories um very very similar of individuals that that had a bad um uh treatment air quotes a bad experience with neuroptimal um I wish we could invite limda Thompson on perhaps who has a reference floating out there in terms of a third a third a third uh with neuroptimal um that essentially a third of the individuals feel better a third of the individuals feel worse and a third of the individuals don't feel any change whatsoever you know anybody with math 101 can say 60 66666 per of individuals U don't have a positive experience with their op um you know that's that's the highend of placebo right uh anybody else want to jump on the Soap Box on and on and on and on Dr Hill Dr Hill welcome to the welcome to the crowded dinner table and if you don't stick your fork out first you don't eat so welcome what do you it's giving Very Brady Bunch Vibes that's all what what what is going on uh I mean you have tons of viewers you have you have tons of uh clinicians out there what are you guys doing and what are you sending to clients uh you know in the mail to do it at home or do you do it at home yeah most of like 80% of my clients do it from home uh we have six offices in the US but most are are uh most of our clients are are homebased and if you're near one of our offices you might do your brain Maps your qegs locally but otherwise uh it's just a lot more accessible we have coaches on virtually seven days a week doing Live support help and that really gets the educational piece out of the way and we're doing um for training we're using eager you know we're we're I'm an old school eager user I was trained by Larry H ber and you know people like Seaburn so I have this sort of you know old school Regulatory and the opur method before it was infr low that that arousal model that that Jay talked about last week and then I got trained in laterality so I do this weird hybrid laterality meets arousal approach but we send people eager and we use prosumer level amps like pocket or neuro bit and we do brain mapping virtually as well we send home equipment we send them a uh usually cionic systems those little Camp tiny amps those are great if you guys haven't used the cognic C they're cool they're the size of deck of cards they're a Bluetooth amp you plug a quick cap or easy cap into them they cost about six grand so they're the lowest end of the qeg they have built-in impedance free software for acquisition so it really fits a lot of business use cases a lot of the hopefully somebody is getting something out of this who's not just a consumer because who wants to buy QE gamps if you're not a professional but um I like him in terms of a nice mix of old school Tech relatively lower cost and reliable I you know we we we run the brain maps for the with the client and they're sitting there you know squirting gel through their cap or their parent is and we're like a little more gel on this one no no no next one over and then have them sit there and do recordings watching for jaw attention and falling asleep and all the stuff and since they're doing it from home we give them a three-day window with the equipment and the next day we check the quality and maybe asked for a re-record if they were you know falling asleep or something that means they can do fun things like a caffeine map or an Aderall map or a cannabis map or a sleep deprived map or whatever their thing is they can start to investigate and so we try to create this relationship with data that goes the other direction from Clinical where we're like hey let's teach you how your brain works let's not worry about the diagnostic labels like Joy was saying that the mapping is not perfect but let's talk about the resources of your brain and by doing a couple of brain maps in a contrast condition like I tell somebody they they need to not have caffeine in their system to get a clean brain map and as you guys know the next thing you hear is a groan from most people oh really yeah but if you're that you know if it's that important to you maybe we should map you with caffeine as well and I can show you what it's doing to speeds and amplitudes and performance and that creates this relationship even from home that I feel is actually a lot more involved then clients might be in some people's offices where they go in and get trained and just have stuff done to them so anyways that's my soap box is there such thing as a dry sensor cap yeah sure I don't like them at all at all I've spent tell me how you feel tens of thousands of dollars buying them and and being frustrated um no the the real the real reason is and this will make sense to any of us on this chat who use qeg who use EEG when doing e EG you must match your characteristics to the EEG that you're familiar with to make judgments be that a qeg or an Erp reference scheme or a montage you have filtering characteristics amplifier characteristic you got to match otherwise you cannot judge dry caps use Faraday cages around every single electrode and change the intra electrode communication it can't do the stuff we're used to doing it doesn't look the same and I don't care how much the qeg database manufacturers play with the amplifier characteristics to hide this but below about three Hertz they're all useless all those devices just drop away you just don't get any lowend at all and part of it is you're not getting shared information across electrodes your coherence is all over the place for the same reason so no uh dry caps are the bane of my existence historically to tomorrow's show we do talk about Faraday cages Dr marce wingle is putting one in in her office or a quasi is that what you Dr Marie well we're not there yet I mean I'm I'm thinking of building not not not the the full cage but essentially getting the the curtains um we're we're in downtown Vancouver uh we've got all of the the huge um buildings and the um the towers uh by us and we're noticing interference um now I mean not to pound my chest too much I can kind of read between it um and shout out to to anybody who's interested in looking at this with me um the the biggest interference I see is the difference in the recording between the left and the right fontal lobe and I am incredibly curious as to why I mean I have all kinds of theories um but um yeah I'm just curious if anybody else is finding that when you get your interference where are you noticing it do you do you um have people sit in the same orientation when you're recording data all the time uh the the one room that I'm going to put this in yes yeah aha so what what that question about laterality says to me is you're identifying a point source of interference somewhere in your environment ah no okay let me let me in this office in a different sorry in a in a previous office it wasn't you you could switch people around you're see this phenomen the answer but I um I I resolved that one before so okay no it's uh you know I don't mind sharing that that I'm U I'm beyond curious as to what's happening now for all of us on this panel we kind of know you know when amplitude is higher on the left versus the right and and different brand it says a lot about um you know different states and traits of people uh but the one that I'm just really Cur it's like all of the the right side the amplitude is higher when when we get that interference so I should look at my European client I have a lot of European 50 HZ I hate 50 htz 60 HZ is bad but 50 HZ oh my God uh you don't have to Ground 50 htz to avoid killing people you do have to Ground 50 Herz because it's lethal but 50 me and so all over Europe and the UK no nothing's grounded and so it's really hard to get a qeg in Sweden in Denmark in the UK so I have tons of data with noise in it from the outside world I should look at that and see what I see older buildings in the US uh without grounding can end up having the same thing the the old two you know two wires uh and they a lot of those have a three prong plug plate on them now but they still are just hot and cold so um uh and and that that's a a common source within an office that's times identified but if you contact your power company they'll come out and test your circuits but you can get a little plugin uh that you stick into the circuit and it'll tell you exactly what's going on with the circuitry too so Anthony you've been quiet how are the storms there buddy hey yeah sorry I got kicked uh due to my own electrical interference it sounds like uh for a minute thereat but um you know while we're on the topic of the laterality I I heard Dr Hill say in the chat last time that and I know Jay said that you worked in a a laterality lab and I think you mentioned Dr Hill that you found that you had was it something like like two language centers and and oh yeah and no math Center yeah I'm I'm profoundly discal and was just super frustrated growing up not knowing why and then one of the things we did in Dr zidel Iran zel's lab now Iran was um he was the grad student at Caltech for ogan and Sperry who did all the split brain research and that's how he got into that and then at UCLA he had this this uh hemispheric laterality so we did attention testing in each hemisphere separately in both split brain and in attack brain and you can you can separately test attention in each hemisphere in a normal brain yeah their dichotic listening work was fabulous you know and taoscopy presentation and you know bilateral response control and stuff like that so uh yeah a lot of laterality in the in the mix there and uh and it really informs my neuro feedback I have a very different way of going after the left and right and even when I talk to my mentors in the space I'm like I do like wait you're doing what I hear that and I realize it's because of Shifting how I think about left and right hemispheres mostly so John MEC come on West Coast you had a whole bunch of ideas come on I I wanted to go back I wanted to go back and conflate something that Santiago and Mari said about you know who should be doing this and and and what's their credentialing what what is the what is their ability to actually deliver our this service and cosmetology is an obvious one and and again I have every respect for cosmetologists but to the same point is a chiropractor somebody who should be able to deliver this if they haven't done the the basics of understanding raw EEG and how it works and you know etc etc etc just because they have a medical license you know Mari and I've been around this road a couple of times but I I think this is the point is you're looking for a provider out there in the world and you're going to get to oh this guy's a doctor he's an MD he should do that's that's not necessarily meaning know anything about EEG and and how to deler and how to provide it for for your best effect so you know we can criticize the cosmetologist for taking it on but I would also criticize the MD chiropractor you know name a medical discipline who doesn't have the proper training and expertise in delivering this service that that that was all I just wanted to conflate those two things because I love the cosmetology complimentary confidence complimentary confidence we can repeat that over and over again yeah what we've got a hot question in front of us right now about Sturman SMR and Mew are they the same or different and uh the this this has been confused and conf confounded conflated in in ways that's hard to imagine people that don't differentiate them uh some with big big names but they're not the same your Alpha frequency matures up to your adult frequency uh your SMR is not related to that frequency it's mature as a sleep spindle when you're a year old it's already tuned you know and uh Mew on the other hand is associated with Alpha and it will speed up with appropriate age maturation it's not the same frequency as Alpha it's commonly a half a cycle to a cycle a second faster than the pz alpha prominence but not always um it's a rare circumstance but mu can be slower than the than the parietal Alpha it doesn't load into any significant one group or another although it's most common in the autism spectrum Mew is most common in the autism spectrum so the the fact that it loads there a bit uh doesn't really persuade me um uh the M seen about 70% of the time in autism about half the time in add and and affective disorders and about 15% of the time in normal individuals um and dis proportionately in in Elite athletes so um uh uh Santiago actually I think coined the term a positive dissociation for the athletes use of the the Mew uh to to uh to to to dissociate and get into their internal Zone um anyway uh Mew and SMR not the same SMR is also called Sigma in EEG terms which is the Sleep spindle 12 to 14 Hertz classical definition Sturman reported SMR from 11 to 19 with a group average at 13 just like sleep spindles can vary it's not all 12 to 14 like you see in the textbooks so Santiago what do you got to say Singapore yeah yes yes I well yeah I I find that the that the m as Jay says is what I like to call a positive dissociation for people or Peak performers and it's uh and and to add the to the answer that Jay's providing you have to be careful when you're looking at me with somebody it's easy for for the practitioner to jump to conclusions with the c the mu um if you see it in the EG for instance somebody might just um very impulsively say oh it's autism but you have to Pro further and ask more questions because you know uh it could be somebody who Peak Performance it's somebody it could be somebody who's on the Spectrum but they're high functioning and their Peak Performance I mean we know there's athletes out there and big performers who have traits in the spectrum they may be ADHD also and when we look at brain data like like Dr Hill was saying we have to Beyond looking at a label or a diagnosis is let's understand how these morphologies and how these brain width patterns relate to how you behave and how you think and how you act that goes beyond the diagnosis I also dislike labeling people and whenever I do a qeg for somebody and I'm feeding back to that I will tell them you are not going to hear me label you and I know you're going to push for a diagnosis but I'm not going to give it to you I'm going to tell you how this is affecting your emotions your focus your attention your sleep and how we can make it better so you can function better you can feel like a more like a normal person like a neurotypical person and then you can be happier and you can be just a better version of yourself Santiago how do you feel about leaving that athlete potentially with that mute or you know potentially it's it's adaptable it's adapted for their athletic career but as far as I know whatever the diagnosis it does represent frontal lobe disconnection I believe I've heard Jay say and so is that something that you're you're comfortable will a patient uh persisting in a patient are not treating uh outside of their athletic career per se is that going to exert an effect I guess I'm ask it's a mirror Nur that's a very good question and I think it could I mean a mirror Nur it's not the entire frontal lobe not working it's it's a specific connectivity between the the frontal lobe and the motor strip uh where your mirror neuron when you're engaged with the outside world uh with respect to language and math your left M neuron is going to be active if you disengage all of that it might go to a resting state like closing your eyes makes Alpha uh so the muw is just a resting state for the frontal lobes uh engagement it's not uh it's not necessarily A pathology it's a it's a it's a lack of Engagement and that's not always bad I mean there's times when you need to be able to disengage in order to focus on something and uh and there is this Mew Rhythm phenomena where if you imagine motion or if you move the hand in the contralateral area you extinguish the Mew that's healthy if you don't extinguish on motor imagery or motor movement that's potentially not regulatory or it's excessive so I think it's actually hard to see M A lot of people are like that's me I'm like you can't really see Mew in the Raw signal that easily it's really hard to see in most people like visually but when it's excessive it should abolish I wouldn't worry about it yeah if I could jump in here and broaden the conversation a little bit I think one of the um issues in in medicine psychology Psychiatry etc etc is you know we get so caught up in in in diagnosis or at this point you know sometimes in terms of what we see in the EEG um but if the person isn't symptomatic or it's working for them and you don't have any um external um you know a spouse a child a teacher there's nobody within the environment that's saying this is quote unquote a problem I think we have a responsibility to talk about the difference between a liability um and something that has expressed itself or something um that I don't know whether we want to call it typical or not typical but if it's if you that old classic phrase if it ain't broke don't fix it um so yeah I just want to throw that out to everybody I mean I've seen things and if the client says hey I'm doing okay uh you know a classic one in there is you know a lot of um High beta or or gamma you know and or or or beta in the front and the person is you know just dogmatically driven it's working for them and nobody else is complaining um so what are everybody else thoughts about that well they sometimes are complaining but they don't necessarily associate it to their success you know I live out in the Northwest there's lots of highle tech companies I've worked with a lot of CF CEOs like a lot of them and every now and then I'll get somebody who has like a fast slow phenotype and they are self-made billionaire and they say I have anxiety I need to work on stuff with my family this has happened many many times that's why I can tell this story okay and it's like we can probably fix your anxiety but I'm not sure you're going to keep your position and they always say yes they think about it they have to think about it and yeah they actually do retire they do wow because they then they lose their job because they calm downed choice right informed Choice that's all Joshua I'm very I am very heartened by what you just said why that that's that no there are people making choices around uh their life is worth more than their success in their career that's a beautiful sentence thank you very much I needed to hear that today self-made billionaires are not the most balanced people in the world and they have the freedom of of not being successful in the future at that point too harder when somebody who's grinding with trauma or ADHD or drinking too much you might need the intervention just to like deal and to to then be successful you know so yeah yeah we're at the halfway point what I'd like to say is disclaimer please check with your primary care physician first this show is for entertainment purposes and informational only everybody is different this is what our six or seven show uh people and this is like an Irish dinner table and whoever can talk to loudest is the rightest and if anybody on the panel wants to get something across uh my wife Irish we're all right you can send me a a private message and the people that show up uh on YouTube they're the ones that drive the content we just start with something so if anybody like tbu who I just figured out was a mom not a dad a couple shows ago has a question about heavy metals I never heard of Alum alumium I'm sure Jay has Jay you want to take this one it may be an attempt at aluminum but the what what what we basically have is a question about people that have heavy metal toxicity that may be going through a detox uh uh uh very controversial but kelation is one of the things that people do to remove heavy metals and it actually mobilizes the metals temporarily as they're being eliminated so quite often the process ends up making the brain um more exposed uh during the detox so uh you're going to see some dramatic changes uh in brain function during that process the question should you be doing n feedback during it um you you if you're doing your nerve feedback during it you can expect some interesting sessions uh but it's not necessarily a reason to not continue to try to control your brain activity uh but you again you you mobilize stuff that's been uh stored in your bones for instance and now it's in your blood and it's circulating so uh there there's ways to detox but it's quite often a temporary increased exposure so um ex expect uh interesting sessions if you're doing the neuro feedback one more thing I like to break in and Anthony take it over my idea what I think or actually was idea whatever we talk about in the show Dr Marie and Jay and I get together on Thursdays which everybody is welcome if you want to send an email it's uh 10: am Central Time 8: am Pacific time to delve into more details because we got nine of us now and if we want to get into more everybody's welcome to come on isn't it how you worded it Jay something like that if I recall all right you say we're getting too boring now you want to SP it up yeah know it allows us to delve deep and pullup material share data scen um and it you know it's a a u it's a friendly small crowd instead of a friendly big crowd but is still friendly if I could add a big clinical aspect to the answer to that question yeah um in my practice or last 30 some years I've seen this um hobo I'm I'm not pronouncing that right for I'm sure um early in the years when I was working with autistic children um I had probably about a 5% failure rate and I worked so hard to figure out why that group failed and without exception there was some metabolic problem heavy metals are in my book a metabolic problem and in a very general kind way to look at it if you metabolically don't support the activity of your brain your neuro feedback is not going to be as effective as it could be so if I had a choice and I knew that somebody had a very distinct picture of heavy metals I would be telling them to go do the cation because it's all expensive yeah and to Jay's point you might have some really interesting neuro feedback sessions that may or may not be the goal you're trying to reach so if I had a choice and we did all that testing ahead of time I would think that the Frugal way to do this would be take care of these metabolic issues and then start your nerve feedback your brain will be getting what it needs yeah I'm 100% with joy there too also you know in terms of knowing what's doing what you know so if you get quote unquote an interesting session um you know what is your what is your feedback on that I mean many of us when we get an interesting session we change what we're doing but if that quote unquote interesting session was because the body was trying to purge itself or as as um Jay said the medals have traveled to a different region of the body where we get a different effect yeah I I think it's just wise to do these sequentially yeah to jump on what Joy was saying and I I agree wholeheartedly the metabolic component is vital it's it's at our at our office here we have a health coach for that reason she's trained in amino acid therapy and a function she's a Institute for functional medicine certified coach etc etc she's bringing to the party what below your neck is going on your brain is only gonna work as good as the available nutrients that it receives hopefully you get it from your diet if you need a supplementation please do so Andrew I need to give you a shout out too for your comment on the professionals group I had a a perspective client come to me with a very serious medical condition and I got some very nice commentary from Jay uh and Joshua thank you but Andrew you very specifically said he you might suggest Ceda Coline as a as a supplement and I went I hadn't even thought about it you know but this is the kind of thinking that I think should inform most practitioners in our field that it's not just the neuro feedback there's so much more that we can all offer to our clients that aren't even our skill sets if you need to find somebody who you know when a client comes to you and you perceive or you have an intake that reveals this we do a a very serious neutral nutritional evaluation for incoming clients and once it's revealed what their problems might be if they need to go to see a doctor please send them to the doctor to go do that get to a nutritionist a dietitian who if it's not your skill set bring those people into your practice and make it part of how you deliver your services you a your success rate Joy knows is going go up period it's you're going to have more success with your clients they will thank you they will hopefully be appreciative a lot of people no my diet's fine do a test find out know know what you're bringing to this party thank you Joy for bringing that up I appreciate it and thank you Andrew specifically and Jay and Joshua thank you for your comments on my client on my perspective you know Santiago typ in I think yeah go Santiago sorry before we move on um i' like to say John that that I think that every client who comes for neuro feedback should go through some kind of medical assessment and there was a point back when I was doing clinical work there was a point in my career in which I would not work with a client who would not go do functional medicine testing I would not work with them and the reason is that for about 80% of those people they would have some kind of metabolic uh condition or maybe disbiosis where their microbiota was messed up due to their poor nutrition they had heavy metals so it's very important that we use these resources and then I mean we cannot force the client of course we can opt not to work with the client like it did but it's in the client's best interest to to do this I you know I had a once I saw a seven-year-old with severe Theta at FZ very oppositionally defined and I said well told the parents let's go see this functional medicine doctor some testing wouldn't hurt they were very open-minded and the doctor comes back and tells me this seven-year-old has the the microbiome of an 80 year old person that's how poor this kids eating was because through carbs and starchy fruits and sugars it was destroyed microbiome and who would have thought so they were appreciative of the fact that we did this now I would probably take a slight different approach when it comes to it because I had a lady once was 52 years old came back came with in the EG she had very uh the peak Alpha frequency in the back was slower than normal I think it was like eight Herz or something and I sent her to the functional medicine doctor she has heavy metals and as as she's doing the collations I'm doing the neuro feedback so what I think it's important to do also is that for that case or any case in particular to work with the client's window of Tolerance and you know can they tolerate the neuro feedback while they're undergoing the medical treatment is that working for them fine do it if it isn't wait for the medical treatment to work a little more and then Kickstart the the neuro feedback I always think there's a little bit you can do to support the process but it's very important to keep in mind that you have to work with the client's window of tolerance as Jay says the real expert is the client and we have to work with what they tell us are you tolerating this I feel fine let's keep going let's try and push a little harder let's make the training just a little bit more demanding see if your brain can take it if it's taking it fine if not we can you know we can dial it back and then go from there but I think it's it should be part of every practitioner's office to have this holistic approach go see your doctor get tested uh see see what's going on with your metabolism do you have neuroinflammatory markers you have heavy metals a lot of people go through their lives and data it doesn't work and to through joy and marce point is sometimes we failed because we didn't have that information if we knew back then what we know now it would be a different bulging for everybody think you know the E sometimes can point at a a toxic or metabolic problem uh a very low voltage slow EEG is classical for toxic or metabolic and if you've got a kid who's normally supposed to have hundreds and hundreds of microl of hour and you have none in it's low voltage and slow they need to be evaluated medically and uh Ron swattin sent a a kids data through and and uh they they thought he had reactive attachment he was badly behaving he was an adopted kid uh rad you know sounds plausible so but the EG was low voltage slow and he he contacted me back and said well how do we treat I said no no no you got to do some more testing find out what what's the pathology here and uh the the routine followup basically the child had no thyroid function he was adopted from near Chernobyl and he the radiation damage to his thyroid had him hypothyroid no metabolic support for brain function how the hell is he going to behave you know uh he was lucky he wasn't dead you know uh you've got to have some metabolism so uh quick simple metabolic boost with with medication and the kids Behavior are snap too so um you know that the sometimes the EG does uh directly point to the fact that you have to do a medical followup it's uh a low voltage slow is a toxic metabolic flag so you know if you see that you if you don't do a follow-up you're operating beneath the standard practice I just make the Assumption on coming in that my CL my di my client's diet is probably worse than they think if you look at just the raw statistics coming out it was like 70% of the American diet is ultra processed food that should give you a clue so whatever they say to you oh yeah no we eat pretty well you know we eat green vegetables you know they give you some story please get tested don't be surprised if you're neuro feedback practitioner asks you to get some gun testing done it's it's in your best interest maybe it's going to come out great good for you probably not online I've actually seen some interesting baked goods shown online uh that were made by uh Andrew Hill oh uh and he posted images of the various baked goods that he would make but but not just not just like regular flour or something and he that was already always very interesting recipes and uh and baked goods but um uh they sounded like uh like healthy uh baked goods as opposed to the kind I would necessarily buy over the counter with sugar on it you know let me introduce you all to a concept that I've been teaching my clients harm reduction through snobbery you you instantly understand what I'm talking about about be a gourmet not a Gourmand make the ritual of your preparation part of the process I've got Saro right now in the other room waiting to be turn stretched and turned after this uh but you can really control the ingredients control the quality and the ritual the savoring the process becomes one where you're not reaching for the reward in the same place and therefore the disregulation of Highly rewarding things is managed the mindfulness of d i about the uh the pendulum swing here though is uh we also see some overly uh restricted diets in the name of Health that conversely there can be massive malnutrition um in in in certain uh I would say fashional components of veganism and vegetarianism uh where they're they're they're going after the fashion as opposed to the true balance what the body really really really really need so especially uh I'm going to be a bit aist here um when you're when there is uh a youth or an adolescent that is making this um Choice within a family uh that is not vegan or vegetarian do look for malnutrition in that individual um again nothing against vegans or vegetarians but you got to do it right or you're going to feel wrong same thing's true for the other end of the nutritional restriction I work with an awful lot of the quote unquote biohackers the high level people who are squeezing the juice out of life trying to throw techniques at everything and a lot of them end up going carnivore or keto or super super super low carb super high protein which can work to some extent but it has two big issues that I think impact our work one is you get people that aren't good yet at doing this stuff have really high counterregulatory hormones their cortisol goes up pretty strongly as they start dropping carbs and fasting and doing you all that stuff and that can really screw with sleep regulation and get in the way of interpreting what's happening from your feedback but the other really important thing that I don't think is really well uh understood in the keto landscape and the sort of biohacker landscape let alone ours is you tend to waste huge amounts of minerals when you go low carb just dramatic and you cannot hold on to magnesium and calcium and potassium without some carb to some extent in your system so if you're wasting massive electrolytes yeah your brain is really impacted by that your nerve function is really impacted by that so I I don't do gut testing by default you know not not everyone like like like John does but I do think that you know there's a handful of people oh you're a elite athlete biohacker who has no body fat and never touches a carb yeah what are your electrolytes like you know it's it's invariably yeah exactly they're dehydrated they have all these other phenomena that that you can tell the body just regulating that muscle cramps and you know constipation sanago you got that in Singapore you guys just see pasta over there Santiago what was your question you were trying to get something out oh yes thank you so I have a question that I think it's important for because it applies for the newcomers the new the the prospective neuro feedback clinicians of the future and then also clients the the somebody asked me this question yesterday I thought I would ask it today because I think it's it's quite relevant it is um low cortical potentials ilf amplitude neuro feedback 19 Channel Loretta which biof feed sorry which neuro feedback modality is the best and is there a EEG profile that can help us determine if one of this is more suitable for a client than other that's an easy that that's all now no and no I agree no and no depends nothing's better I mean I can I mean just like many people on this channel I've I've used all kinds of software you can give me a horrible piano in a church basement I'm not a Pianist but metaphorically I can make it sit up and beg and uh you know somebody who's not good at something it matters a lot more a new therapist a new provider in this field getting really good tools to do impedance checking and have good education around them and know give you a path to continue learning is much more important than which tool set as a as a provider but as an individual you know does it matter if he use kettle bells or a barbell or resistance bands or yoga No it matters some good side that's a little different in in the uh it's a little different landscape but good education and a good Mentor you know yeah but you can do anything with any tools if you're if you're skilled in those tools you know I don't use ilf or infr slow that much I mean never these days but I probably could because I understand the brain I would still do a qeg but I could probably apply other techniques and I can certainly use other software than eager to do neura feedback because I know how neura feedback works and that's the issue that I have with some of these TurnKey one- siiz fit system with prean things is they work great for potentially up to two-thirds of people they don't cause side effects and that's of course a normal distribution so it suggests the software is doing something that is sort of an average phenomenon you know can protocol but what happens if it doesn't work ner feedback is not hard to do it's hard to know what to do next it's really easy to do Nerf feedback it's really hard to know what to do next so if the software is doing that for you or your way of learning to do it is to dependent on magic boxes that's when I think people get in the most trouble is so there is no device you can buy that is better and that will do the work for you in terms of Designing their feedback I think yeah and I think inherent in the question that for a consumer let's say the question did John freeze we're waiting for John WiFi well I I can probably speak for John because we talk about this a fair amount um Santiago that was and and Andrew thank you so much that was a fantastic answer for a clinician side of it um what I see on social media all the time is people who have had successful interactions with neuro feedback for Ain whatever they'll go oh you have to find somebody who does infr low frequency because if you have PTSD that's the only kind of Nur feedback that'll work for you okay we as a field have absolutely no idea now many I I've been together with lots of other very high level clinicians and the and the conversation is wouldn't it be great if somehow we could do some research and discover is autism better addressed with infr slow is PTSD better addressed with traditional stuff is this better addressed with Loretta I would be the first person who would refer out of my practice if I knew that somebody could get better results using a different method of neur feedback that don't provide but right now that information doesn't exist so well you know I'm can I just interrupt a little bit here with a bit a bit of a counter perspective you know for those of us who have been this in this for a long time I mean I can rattle off all the types of equipment you know that we use we have a a pleora of of types of equipment and you know having you know our practice has been around close to 30 years now so you know we have a lot of the to and a lot of the equipment um and we do find that there are definitely certain profiles where we we do match up certain pieces of equipment simply because we can see more um and other pieces of equipment quite frankly that are less expensive for the client we don't need all of that extra information um so but so I I think on the on the one hand sometimes the equipment does matter but I think all of us here would agree if you get over attacked to a piece of equipment I I think that you're showing your own limitations um unless you have a really like Andrew was saying that something works really well for him for for remote of course that makes sense um can I throw that out do do people feel the same I relate to that y one example I have is I use EEG and H I don't use them necessarily for every person but there are people for whom oh that complaint oh yeah let me add a I or photob modulation and I it's not it's not a good fit for everyone for every goal and that's where I bring other tools in but I wouldn't really care if you lock me on a room and made me do a feedback with eager or brain master or some thought technology Infinity systems or you know a handful of others that roughly okay do some feedback so um yeah hea Heather's asking I also think it's that we need to sorry I think it's important to differentiate equip from equipment I mean there's equipment and then there's equipment yes you know to I agree you know wait what does that mean yeah I mean because because we have this invasion of wearables and and again you know things that are promoted as neuro feedback that are not neuro feedback and both consumers and clinicians are buying these options because they're cheap and they promise to give you everything you need you know I had once an experience a fellow psychologist approaches me a sport psychologist approaches me and he says he's very excited says Santiago I just bought this neuro feedback equipment for $350 and is the most wonderful thing in the world and then he takes it out of the bag and it was one of these wearable toys that you find on Amazon that was clearly neuro gaming and I said look can you show me does it give you values on amplitude and frequency is it showing you coherence and it was like I was speaking Japanese to him he's like what do you mean I said well that's it's exactly my point you're not buying a neuro feedback uh piece of equipment you're buying neuro gaming and I said something that in hindsight I shouldn't have because he was quite offended but what I said is look you can if you if you want to be the life of the party take this to B mzas and kinas and sweet 16s and and people are going to love it but this is not neuro feedback and obviously he was very offended by that so I shouldn't have said that any hindsight but I just wanted to get the point across that we also need to be careful about this because again there are users and clinicians who are buying this and practicing and they're promoting as neuro feedback they're promoting as as as mental health devices some of them are even speaking about treating and curing and that's a very delicate Point yeah yeah something in the middle because it's not a medical device but it is distributed to clinicians only and it is clinician monitored Clin and regulated the middle yeah I can can somebody answer Heather's question because this the show is for the the YouTubers asking questions anybody have any experience of mind lft I I did some beta testing with them like 10 years ago that's how I met Jay a long time ago he probably doesn't I don't know if Jay would remember me or not back then but um I HED um mind lift in the early development help with the interface and development we did a small case study with them a long time ago and it's basically Muse headset that they hack to put in a little single sensor from the charging port so it actually has a floating sensor that can put on the head and it's just essentially like a mindfulness e device that they turned into a neuro feedback one channel system and it can only do one channel um and it they only distribute to therapists um and I think that's like 128 sampling like it's pretty simple um and uh it has some hard limits um but it does seem to work for one channel and it's a dry sensor Andrew no it's not it's not a Dr it has both it's wet it's wet sem semi dry is the right term I thought past we're getting towards the end of the show and I Jay I know you got a hard stop you've been going since 6: am I get it and kind of how this works is well how I think it'll work we got the Brady Bunch going on right now and we're relying on me to private chat to get your the panelist questions in and I'm looking to see you know what talibo is putting in here Jay you leave it's you know when you got to leave and whoever wants to stay I'll keep this thing open as long as there's somebody left that knows what they're talking about I'm just a video editor here so if somebody wants to go go if you want to stay stay we have more people coming on later so you know keep it going do the old Irish goodbye just split out the uh the back door all right uh Hey BB F just in yes Surgeon General says that parents are stressed continue when did this develop when did this start wow there's a news Splash that's a that's a study that got [Laughter] funded the universal and then what do you do about that yeah yes well I I don't know I I I wrote on this years and years and years ago and you know sadly it's very predict I think there are a couple of things that are really critical and I think communities really have to engage in all of this you know parenting isn't just parenting anymore the what we are asking of parents and and you know how we judge parents in terms of not being a good parent what parents are expected to provide for their children whether it's soccer practices uh ballet lessons hockey all of these extracurricular activities that are not provided free within the neighborhood that aren't involved in school anymore um the the pressure on parents a lot of the joy is is gone out of parenting it's just providing providing providing um the other is you know children do not live in the same catchment areas you know so in terms of just letting kids out on the street to to play you know peer groups live live too far apart so kids are either quote unquote Alone um or they're being you know driven to all these activities parents don't have any family true family time that isn't completely directed towards the kids the other one we talk about a lot are the devices you know in terms of how jacked up the kids are on the devices this hyper hyper arousal so they're just like zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom are absolutely bored with that out you know the what we are asking of parents now I I think has been unparalleled in history just the expectations of parenting are absolutely outrageous um and I'm not even talking about what parents have to do apart from parenting um you know I I think we're in a crisis we've lost our community parent um you know we we've lost all kinds of sense of community that just doesn't cost outrageous amounts of time and money again I can go on and on and on somebody jump in h how do you talk to kids anymore can you say [Music] anything of course you have to do a dance in a 30 second video I think yeah yeah yeah 30 that long you know my my practice in Chicago was almost all kids and the first thing I will tell people is if you enjoy working with children work with children if you don't enjoy it don't try it I it's just they'll drive you crazy but you know what I tell people all right I do due diligence I make sure I'm up on all the Marvel movies I know a lot about Pokemon I know about dungeon dragons I know a lot about the stuff that they will talk about right and I coach people during their session children who come to me even as young as four already know that they're probably stupid and they're not as good as the other kids and there's something wrong with them and I have the absolute Miracle of being able to go I don't think so man I'm looking at your brain it's on a treasure hunt it's adventuresome I give your brain a lot of credit for all the work it's doing it's fabulous look at all the learning it's doing watch that purple box move every time it moves it's you doing that right we have the potential of giving them credit confidence self self esteem and rewiring their brains at the same time and so it's all ends up true but um I've worked with kids as young as two very successfully uh and the thing that's nice about that now that I've been doing this for what 32 years or something some of them are doing time travel while I'm not aging but they're graduating from college I I don't know how they do that I I don't think it's feedback related but um and they're great yeah their lives have turned out great they're happy their parents are happy it is so rewarding they're they're in and out like revolving doors I love working with kids from seven to nine you know pre I would say six the ADHD component sometimes it's quote unquote just being a kid seven to nine you know something's up U but again they're in and out like a revolving door it's funny I just reached out on my desk and you know look at all right I have all of these tiny little um toys you know because you know a lot of the add kids they they fiddle and of course they want to play with the wires and things so they're just these things I love little Rats of course the scientist and me but anything that a child can just literally twirl a little bit and it doesn't how can we get how can we get fortnite connected to Those sensors we would just cure the world no no no no no no no okay Peter I deal with I deal with this all the time okay because I refuse to use the DVDs in my practice I don't think they're as great feedback I think they're smoy and slow feedback and so what I use Andrew is familiar with this I use all the old games right they're not games they're feedback screens yeah but I am not here to entertain these children with neuro feedback I am here to teach their brain something and therefore I need very simple visuals on the screen with a very clear reward sound and nothing else you want to bring fortnite in and I'm challenged and all of a sudden I have to compete with video games absolutely positively no way that's not what they're in my office for Joy we're gonna play ping pong on the this absolutely 100% uh what we find actually some of the programs with the more entertaining screens you get amazing data on the session nothing holds okay a child is not coming to your clinic for Neurotherapy because they have trouble focusing on a video game they're coming to you because they can't focus on the boring stuff on school and I like to say they need to learn to sustain the mundane so same as joy every single screen we have is tediously boring now I'm sitting there encouraging them okay um but again we find that you know all jokes aside uh when the screens are not by themselves um engaging we find that the the data that you get in session um holds and in fact the they're able to sustain attention for what they need to do to accomplish in their in their school lives their Scholastic lives so yeah I on that in nursing I Dr Hill Dr Hill you got 80% of your business remote what what do you have to say about that well I I just on the point of DVDs and games um I noticed this I noticed that when I had to use movies because the kids wouldn't sit still or wise or the person insisted the effects were not as powerful yeah and I dug around for a while in my theory on this there's at least two papers that have shown that social engagement impairs implicit learning and if you load up Social queuing and social information you cannot do the unaware pattern matching implicit learning stuff and that is what neuro feedback requires is implicit learning frontal Lo engagement Maybe what's that some frontal lob engagement maybe with another person present well I'm just saying watching a movie has a so people you're seeing characters you're W you care you're invested it's you know I also tell people they can do their homework but they can't talk on Facebook for the same reason yeah um so I I think that the um I I do not believe Nur feedback is effortful requires expectation there's some research that you know the old classic learning theory would say that it does I do not believe that I think cat's had expectations on you know chicken broth um but I I I do think that the games you do are the ones that matter so in my home you know I have over a hundred people training from home right now and uh they often come back to the simple two-dimensional flat eager games once they get over looking through other games but I do a certain component of kid who their parent will only be able to get them to train when we can have dragons on the screen or race cars hitting zombies so we use the zukor games as add-ons for eager and they're fairly expensive like I don't think they're necessary in fact I'm I I'm concerned that too much going on the screen might actually as mar mar was saying reduce the you know more natural engagement because it's driving up intensity but I will say that you know having zukor's air uh as an available thing to add in can sometimes make the difference between a kid putting up with training for another month and not and you know I'm over it oh yeah would you like to race cars and hit zombies wait what I I can I can do that yeah yeah you can hit some zombies make them explode they explode into groceries it's really cool wait what hey check this out Heather's using Minecraft yeah how interesting well and I have a question for Heather she said she has found it to be very helpful with the appropriate um audience when you say it's helpful Heather does that mean that you're getting them to sit in the chair come back for sessions or does it mean the results of your neura feedback are better yes yes to which you know what one of the one of the components that we always have is a lot of us work with a very hyperactive kid group right and so um you know my nursing world uh we're accustomed to using the words restraints um psychology doesn't like those and a lot of the other mental health people don't like those words okay turns out I have my people sitting in basically like a lazy boy chair and when I get somebody child who really cannot sit still not will not because that we handle differently but they cannot sit still I have a it is a child siiz breakfast tray that fits perfectly inside the arms of the chair and over their lap which gives them a surface if they want to color or put some Legos together so their hands are busy but guess what it pins them to the chair they sit still because there's no other choice but they don't don't recognize that they're recognizing oh this is cool I can I can use this for that um I think that that's up to us as the clinicians find a creative way to provide the situation that best allows the training to happen any of us that work with kids have all all these little subtle tricks so thanks for sharing one joy we all have them yeah I wonder if you're creating SMR Joy because that that that deep pressure might create SMR you might be indirectly doubling up on SMR you train it in the brain and you create some pressure and Stillness in the body Allah Temple grandin's cow Crusher you got some double SMR going now right yeah I think sterman actually found that Apes that are restrained produce SMR waves as Welling swaddling produces SMR yeah that's incredible that's what the research has shown right it's like well with the little ones like The Itsy-Bitsy ones I mean frequently we have them sitting on the parents lap I mean yeah and the parent is holding the electrode um but yeah all you know all of the above we do get these secondary benefits well okay so another silly little clinical trick okay um when I put electrodes on children uh you know I started with an eight-year-old autistic boy who man we were lucky if that electric was on for three seconds before he ripped it off again so I decided I needed a little more time so when I put electrode on I put the electrode on and then I run the wire back someplace and I put another gabo goo and I put the wire through the goo and at least it buys me three extra seconds before the electrode comes off and I can fix it this has saved many a session it's like I'm double anchoring the electrod works great yeah headbands all kinds of things question from Tabo a frequent uh listener here they wanted to know does hyperbaric oxygen therapy help neuro feedback don't know if any panelists are familiar with it I do a lot actually of hydrobar mixed with uh EEG in in a couple of the Cities we're in in London in La we have uh partner centers we send people to for for Dives um yes it can help a lot hyperbar by itself is kind of weak te sauce on the brain it can do something but it's rare that it does a lot just on its own um Hyperbaric when added to other interventions is rather magical sometimes and I find Hyperbaric can double the impact of EEG neuro feedback when done properly same way you can with photobiomodulation the same way you can with HG they all can work towards supporting that metabolic uh phenomena and for some people it really matters now one caveat one warning dive last do not do Hyperbaric Dives before any other intervention always dive last in a single day don't do anything after it because anything you do will hit super oxygenated tissue that's not used to having oxygen you know for some context on that if you do and by the way soft Chambers there may be some skin and wound healing benefits but don't bother with soft Chambers no matter what the biohackers say hard Chambers where it's at 1.8 two atmospheres two atmospheres is nice for the brain um pure oxygen hard chamber 90-minute Dives 5 10 15 20 of those things if you feel depleted get a glutathione top off or other antioxidant top off do not exceed your antioxidant capacity in a chamber it's not an enjoyable feeling to feel depleted don't push through it so with all of that the you can see it in qeg somebody has postco brain fog massive amounts of Delta they do one dive and two and for two or three hours the Delta's gone and at two atmospheres of pressure breathing in pure O2 your plasma not your red blood cells but your plasma reaches five to 600% of oxygen saturation compared to sea level that is so much signal it's healing it's anti-inflammatory it's also signaling from for tissues that aren't used to having oxygen and if you throw the need the the demand for change on the brain after that you get it sometimes and then the energy wears out and the person cramps up basically or they have a very bizarre experience training their brain so dive last it can accelerate stuff in a day but don't do it before other from Hela please okay uh somebody turned up the lights last call uh does anybody have any questions to uh come come in or Anthony looks like you're you're you got something you're itching well no I was just uh Curious uh I heard mention of the oxygen reducing Delta there and I was wondering if that because I think TBO may have interest specifically in autism would this be an appropriate treatment or no um I would say you're much like more likely get somewhere with h mixed with EEG training the HG can do focal biof feedback on vascular Dynamics and it tends to create a big boost in social function in my experience and and I use uh HG with autism because when someone's sitting here screaming and doing this you can throw an H hat on and tie it to this is the one time I use movies sometimes is the nonverbal kids who will sit still for that one movie um but for EG training for but the the blood flow sensor you can move during it so h i find to be a cheaper and much more impactful tool for autism spectrum complaints and I would maybe get into things like photob modulation before I would bother doing uh hbot unless somebody has Cal pausy type phenomena birth trauma driven phenomena poisonings drownings sometimes autism is not pure sometimes it's autistic looking but there's a metabolic or an injury or developmental trajectory going ay component to it and to to rology then maybe but otherwise I wouldn't rush to hbot for spectrum stuff that's awesome thank John how about you you got anything left in in the tank no I'm about to go home okay so thank you all thank you all this was fun yeah every time we say we're about to go then then you know it spikes the question comes up I know yeah that was great that was great stuff on the hpot thanks Andrew what what I would like to do to you know doc Dr Hill send send me a link with all your locations because this is the neuron noodle Network and people email me all the time hey do you know somebody good here do you know somebody good there I like to put everybody's information in the description so you know 80% of your stuff is at home I like to have that information Dr Hill John on the west coast uh Joy old school Chicago used to be yeah we had a pretty hard uh heavy California representation today I think four of us in the west coast definitely West Coast leaning oh I can't wait till November don't get me going it's where it's all happening dude all right Craig last look at Craig sneaking one in we we I would like to make a comment about Craig that's not what we're talking about Craig sorry it's it's great question and it's great information but that isn't our purpose got to get that Dr kazian on is to make neural feedback understandable educated to the public so that they can get some of their questions answered find out what's it about how is it useful when we start getting into neuroinflammation and microle and all this stuff we completely lose the public audience so well this is this is a neurop party and it's a bunch of nerds showing up at the bar and who knows what nerds are going to ask what so uh Craig I resemble that question I resemble that question hey hey y'all I appreciate it and if anybody wants to get into more tomorrow with Jay and Dr Marie just you know Reach Out appreciate your time and we'll figure out how to do this going forward I don't know maybe we'll do two shifts of this you know who knows but uh I I thought this was a lot of fun and I hopefully it's more inviting for people that ask questions uh in an anonymous uh sort of way so and hopefully Google will find us exactly we'll try our best not to mangle your name p we misgendered her for God's sakes well I I get Dr Marie's name wrong every single week so that's okay that's the Chicago dialect all right Anthony R Dr Hill Hill John mck and joy Thank You For Joy hunt thank you for showing up again see yall next week tell all your friends stop by have have a zema all right bye everybody all right bye guys later leave your screens going I'm g hit end stream now hit