Getting To Know Brain Rewiring With John Mekrut of The Balanced Brain (Part 1) 

When clients first come to see us, they are puzzled that our training involves watching movies on a monitor.

Neurofeedback training is based on the idea that the brain is capable of learning and adapting, and that by providing it with feedback about its own activity, it can learn to regulate itself more effectively. This is similar to the way in which we learn any new skill or behavior, by receiving feedback about our performance and adjusting our behavior accordingly.

I am careful to explain that it is not the movie that is doing the training but that the brain is observing the fluctuations in screen size (it gets bigger and smaller), volume (the sound gets softer and louder and brightness (the screen gets dimmer and brighter).

Your brain is connected to a computer by sensors which are reading, in real time, the small changes in electrical activity your brain produces and when activity is too much or too little, the computer program changes some or all those elements of the movie you’re watching.

I also carefully explain that is not the therapist who is manipulating the screen but your own brain! We are there to decide on the location for training, the training parameters and to monitor to success of the session.

The goal of the training is for the brain, the subconscious part, to learn how to control its activity so that it remains within the desired range, which can help improve symptoms related to various conditions, such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, and chronic pain.

What you witness are those very fluctuations, some of them useful, some not. That is the essence of neurofeedback, allowing the brain to observe its own changes and modulate them accordingly.

The good news is that is a very willing participant in the process since that is what it does every day, all day, take in information about the environment, evaluate its usefulness and adjust its behavior. It learns, it’s designed that way.

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