TSSSTTTT…. BARRABABA … BIRRRR… EBISCO…. MANGO… PARADOX…. BARABABABBARA… TSSSTTT..HAAAAAA….These are the kind of sounds/words I would uncontrollably utter (often yell) when I’m sleepy for the last three years. They’re called tics (I’m hesitant to call it Tourette’s because Tourette’s rarely starts in adulthood). This can be quite annoying, especially to the people around me. It’s been a stumbling block in the way of traveling with other people. I’ve been trying to get rid of it for quite a while.
I finally found the solution. Neurofeedback. I’ve been taking sessions for a month and I would say that about 95% of the symptoms are gone. It is no longer an issue for me. The effect is quite astounding. Family members close to me are impressed by the change. I’m still taking sessions for other problems; primarily hypersomnia and insomnia (yes, I have both) and attention issues. I think there was an improvement but it’s less clear than the tics. I would say the sleepiness improved by around 50% but it’s harder to track/observe.
Neurofeedback is used for all sorts of cases like ADHD, autism, chronic pain, depression and emotional regulation.
So… how does it work?
Here’s my simplified version:
“In regular life”, our brain waves have an optimal frequency range. Going above or below this range is associated with symptoms (I say associated because I don’t know if the evidence is strong enough for a causation statement . The device measures your brain waves as you are watching a video game. The term video game might be misleading a bit since it implies that you have some conscious control of what happens. You don’t. What’s on the screen is simply a visualization of what’s happening subconsciously in the brain. The “game” I usually choose involves 5 cheetahs racing against one other. I’m assigned one of those cheetahs. If my cheetah is fast (winning), that means that my brain waves are within the range. If my cheetah is slow (losing), then the brainwaves are either higher or lower than the range. When I see that this is happening, I associate the “within the range” state with winning. As a result, the brain trains itself to regulate its wave frequencies to this optimal range. Operant conditioning is the technical term for the psychology geeks amongst you. This self-training carries on after the sessions.
How did I come across Neurofeedback?
I’m having a hard time remembering when was the first time I came across the term neurofeedback. I was probably doing some personal research for my health issues. I searched for the terms biofeedback/neurofeedback in my whatsapp and email. The earliest I got was an email that had for a CBT for Insomnia by Charles Morin at a conference I attended in 2013 in Marrakech (European Association of Behaviour and Cognitive therapy in 2013) but I don’t think I started looking into it at that time. I asked quite a bit about neurofeedback/biofeedback centers in the last three years and I actually tried it at two other centers before. One was very successful and the other wasn’t.
Why is it a hidden gem?
I consider neurofeedback a hidden gem. For me at least, It’s been quite effective in a short period of time, requires little effort, had very little side effects and is within my financial means. It surprises me that something like this is not more well known.
Here are a few potential reasons on why that is the case based on the people I talked to about it, including Wa’d Abu Zurayk , the occupational therapist conducting the neurofeedback on me.
# 1: There’s a misconception that it involves sending electricity to the brain, which sounds risky.
#2: There’s a need for more high authority medical figures to recommend it.
#3: There’s a regulatory challenge. If the country doesn’t already have neurofeedback centers, then it might be difficult to get it registered. Regulatory bodies can find it easier to shut down anything they do not understand, rather than putting an effort into understanding it.
I’m reading the book “A symphony in the brain: The Evolution of New Brain Wave Biofeedback”, (FYI, I got this from Wa’ed. The center has a library, where clients can borrow brainy books for free ). In the preface to the revised and expanded edition the author Jim Robbins laments that an earth-shattering explosion in the popularity of the technology has not occurred. There’s an 8-year difference between the first edition and the revised edition I’m reading (2000 to 2008). I haven’t investigated the current situation in America or Europe but it’s still useful to see why it didn’t go mainstream at that time. Here are a few other speculations based on the preface:
#4: It is associated with the new age movement. That association is “undeserved” according to the author.
#5”: You can’t easily use it to generate gigantic amounts of money like the pharmacological model.
#6: Biases. “Prejudices remain. Since this book first came out, Dr. Barry Sterman, whose pioneering research at UCLA on neurofeedback is unimpeachable, and who has published more than 150 papers in top journals, has applied for numerous grants to continue research. ‘But the National Institutes of Health will not give us grants,” he said. We’ve written solid grants but the minute you use the term neurofeedback certain people’s minds snap shut. Sometimes I feel like Galileo.” (xiii)
#7: Shortage of double blind controlled randomized trials. The author writes “It’s never been a problem for me that neurofeedback doesn’t, according to critics, have enough double-blind controlled randomized studies to show it works. There are plenty of treatments used by mainstream medicine that have no such studies. Instead, what concerns me now is what precisely neurofeedback is to the nervous system. It is powerful, often beyond belief…”
This was written in 2008 so I have a lot to catch up with in regards to the development of neurofeedback but I wanted to share with you what I have found up till now. Perhaps in the next edition, we’ll examine if the author’s prediction came true “I predict that it will not take another decade for the reset of the world to catch up. Neurofeedback is simply too powerful.” (xii)
This is part of “Rabbit Holes and Hidden Gems” Newsletter
Paradoxically Paradoxical 