REBALANCING BRAINWAVES

Neurofeedback used for behavior and learning disorders

By Anne Merle
From Health & Family
Pioneer Press

Disarmingly articulate and friendly, 12-year-old Sophia shows no sign that her early years were a struggle. She scoots her chair close to the desk like any other adolescent ready to play a computer game. But this computer is in the Winnetka office of clinical psychologist Marilyn DeBoer, and a few differences quickly become apparent.

First, the keyboard is pushed aside. Then electrodes are placed on Sophia's scalp and attached to the computer. She is going to play this game with her brain, literally, because the "game" is part of therapeutic work called neurofeedback.

Neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback that teaches patients to change faulty brain wave patterns at the root of behavior, learning or mood problems, like Sophia's.

As recently as a year ago, this beautiful, bright youngster was prone to verbal and physical outbursts of anger. Her parents, Aya and Brad Borcher of Evanston , say that from an early age she had trouble with missed social signals and quick frustration which led to aggressiveness on the playground.

Frustrations with school work caused her to become "so angry she would shut down and be unable to think straight in the classroom," says her mother.

Sophia, who remembers that when she got home, she "blew up," throwing things, hitting and yelling.

Her parents worked patiently with, her but finally sought help. "The clincher was her unhappiness. Life is not meant to be this much of a struggle, we told her," said Aya Borcher. Their doctor took the traditional treatment route, and prescribed medication.

By Sophia's own description medication "added more things that didn't work for me." Borcher describes it as "taking away a Sophie-ness about her, it dulled her spirit." And she wasn't doing the work, learning to take control, which her parents felt was important. So the family sought an alternative, and decided to visit Dr. DeBoer.

DeBoer believes in a holistic approach to mental health. She offers traditional therapies, works with family dynamics and considers the impact of nutrition, food sensitivities and allergies on her patients. A noninvasive therapy, neurofeedback was a natural addition to her practice. "I've seen it greatly help patients improve concentration, self control, organizational and learning skills," she says.

So how does it work?

DeBoer explains that biofeedback uses instruments to measure physiological responses, such as heart rate or blood pressure, then feeds this information back to the patient who can learn to consciously control the problem. In neurofeedback, it's the brain wave patterns that are monitored.

"Our brains produce electrical impulses," she explains, which can be read by an electroencephalograph or EEG. "We all have brain wave frequencies that range from slow to fast," says DeBoer. These correlate to specific states of awareness.

Slow theta waves ( four to seven per second) "result in a state we'd call spacey," and are seen during daydreaming and in ADD patients. "At high frequencies, we would feel anxious. An ideal calm and alert state is about 12-15 per second," says the psychologist. For learning, working and staying focused, the beta state is a frequency of 15-18 waves per second.

According to DeBoer, when these frequencies are out of balance they produce the kind of psychological disorders that bring people in for help. "With neurofeedback, we train the brain to rebalance," she explained, to maintain desired states such as relaxation or alert focus.

Once a patient is connected to the computer, his brain wave activity shows up on the monitor as an active graph or chart. A patient who, for example, needs to develop focus and concentration, uses his mind to "increase the middle frequencies and bring down the ends," said DeBoer.

A reward such as a beep sounds when beta activity increases or theta activity decreases. For Sophia, and even younger children, the visual display is a game or cartoon and the reward is game-based.

The patient becomes familiar with how the desired level of consciousness "feels," and through practice, learns to change and maintain that level of brain wave activity voluntarily.

Neurofeedback is a good fit for Sophia. After a few sessions, she was off her medication and feeling great. Describing the exercise-like nature of her practice sessions as "mental yoga," she says she is now better able to make decisions and solve her own problems, choosing alternatives to lashing out when frustrated.

She laughs and chats freely about the many loves in her life — competitive swimming, soccer and dancing, her twin sister, Grace, and their new puppy. Clearly she's a young person who enjoys her life.