{"id":393,"date":"2013-07-26T13:44:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/?page_id=393"},"modified":"2014-05-28T15:57:52","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T19:57:52","slug":"pumping-neurons","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/?page_id=393","title":{"rendered":"Pumping Neurons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following story was written by Jody Jaffe and appeared in the January 2006<\/strong> issue of the Washingtonian Magazine. This is the unedited version of the article.<\/strong>\u00a0 The final published version was edited by the Washingtonian staff to fit into the <\/strong>space allotted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pumping Neurons by Jody Jaffe<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last spring, when Lori S. told her 15-year old son, Jeff, to write up his Odyssey notes for English class, he ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife; first pointing it at himself, then turning it on his mother.\u00a0 \u201cIf you won\u2019t let me kill myself,\u201d he screamed, \u201cI\u2019ll kill you.\u201d
\nThen he fell to the floor and cradled his head between his hands. \u201cI can\u2019t stop it! My head, my head,\u201d he kept moaning as he rocked back and forth.<\/p>\n

Suicide threats, violent outbursts, uncontrollable behavior. This was business as usual in Lori\u2019s Northern Virginia house.\u00a0 She couldn\u2019t remember a time when her younger son had been happy. He\u2019d been going to psychotherapy since he was 11 years old. He\u2019d been on three types of medications, tried individual and group therapy. Nothing was working.
\n\u201cI know what hell looks like,\u201d says the 47-year-old mother of three. \u201cIt looks like something you can\u2019t control. It\u2019s your child. . . .\u201d She struggles to finish the sentence. \u201cThis time last year, I would have sworn to you I was going to be burying my child. He wanted out and he was planning it.\u201d
\nThen Dr. Michael Anderson, a McLean psychiatrist who was seeing Jeff, suggested he try something called neurofeedback training. It had helped his daughter with her Attention Deficit Disorder as well as many of his patients who hadn\u2019t responded to medication for a variety of other problems.
\nOn Anderson\u2019s recommendation, Lori took Jeff to Deborah Stokes, an Alexandria neurofeedback therapist. Jeff went, begrudgingly.
\n\u201cI was skeptical of it because I\u2019d tried a lot of things and nothing seemed to work,\u201d says Jeff. \u201cIt was really hard for me.\u00a0 Every day was a battle, emotional and physical.\u201d
\nAfter fifteen sessions, he noticed a difference. \u201cI wasn\u2019t as stressed out and stuff and depressed.\u201d
\nOne year and 45 sessions later, \u201cI have a normal 16-year-old,\u201d Lori says. \u201cHe has his moments, but nothing you wouldn\u2019t expect from a normal teenager. He\u2019s happy, he smiles. He\u2019s off anti-depressants for the first time since fourth grade.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s got a life ahead of him, where I didn\u2019t think he had one before.\u201d
\nJeff\u2019s story was one of many I heard while researching neurofeedback training and its tangent therapy, EEG (electroencephalography) Stimulation. A Northern Virginia boy\u2019s Tourrette\u2019s syndrome symptoms were reduced dramatically; a man with Lyme disease can now sleep through the night; a musician with debilitating headaches is not only pain free, but hears the bass notes better; several Montgomery County golfers are playing better; and 97 students at London\u2019s Royal College of Music improved their performances in exams by as much as one full grade.
\nAnd I have a story of my own, though not as dramatic as Jeff\u2019s. Now I can finally find my keys.
\nNeurofeedback training is a kind of biofeedback therapy. But instead of controlling your breathing or body temperature, as with traditional biofeedback therapy, you learn to control your brain waves.
\nIt started in the late \u201860s with cats and rocket fuel. Dr. Barry Sterman, a UCLA sleep researcher, discovered that a certain kind of brain wave \u2013 called SMR \u2013 was associated with the reduction of muscle tension in cats. He taught the cats to increase this brain wave. Right after that study, NASA commissioned him to research the toxic effects of the rocket fuel monomethyl hydrazine. Among the test cats were some who\u2019d been trained to increase their SMR waves.
\nThose were the ones who didn\u2019t have seizures after being exposed to the rocket fuel. Further research showed that humans could benefit, too.
\nSterman tested people with epilepsy who weren\u2019t responding to medication. He found a 60% reduction in seizure activity for those who were taught to increase this SMR brain wave. Researchers soon found that controlling brain waves worked for all sorts of things.
\nFor instance, those 97 musicians who are now performing better. They were part of a 2003 Imperial London College study that tested neurofeedback training and its effect on musical understanding and imagination, and communication with the audience.
\n\u201cThis is a unique use of neurofeedback,\u201d said Dr. Tobias Egner, one of the Imperial London College authors of the study. \u201cIt has been used for helping with a number of conditions such as attention deficit disorder and epilepsy, but this is the first time it has been used to improve a complex set of skills such as musical performance in healthy students.\u201d
\nJohn Gruzelier, the senoir author of the study said, \u201cThese results show that neurofeedback can have a marked effect on musical performance\u2026… While it has a role in stress reduction by reducing the level of stage fright, the magnitude and range of beneficial effects on artistic aspects of performance have wider implications than alleviating stress.\u201d
\nNeurofeedback training has been clinically available for more than 25 years. But it\u2019s only been with the exploding interest in mind-body medicine that it\u2019s started to attract mainstream attention. Advocates say it helps everything from epilepsy to a bad game of tennis, with stops along the way at headaches, insomnia, diminished memory, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder,
\nlackluster job performance, and head injury.
\nFrank H. Duffy, a Harvard University professor and pediatric neurologist wrote in the 2000 issue of the journal Clinical Encephalography that neurofeedback therapy \u201cshould play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy it would be universally accepted and widely used.\u201d<\/strong>
\nAnd its 1998 consensus report on ADHD, the NIH found \u201cthere are several promising pilot trials\u201d concerning neurotherapy. Mostly recently, an article in the January issue of Child Adolescent Pyshciatric Clinics North America, found that neurotherapy should be considered \u201cprobably efficacious\u201d for the treatment of ADHD, based on efficacy guidelines established by the International Society for Neuronal Regulation. It went on to state \u201cthat research findings
\npublished to date indicate positive clinical response in approximately 75% of patients treated in controlled group studies.\u201d[Ed note: In 2013 the The American Academy of Pediatrics \u201cEvidence-based Child and Ado\u00adles\u00adcent Psycho-social Inter\u00adven\u00adtions\u201d ele\u00advated biofeed\u00adback to \u201cLevel 1 \u2014 Best Sup\u00adport\u201d as an inter\u00adven\u00adtion for Atten\u00adtion &<\/span> Hyper\u00adac\u00adtiv\u00adity Behav\u00adiors]
\nDespite these and more studies, Anderson, the McLean psychiatrist who says neurofeedback therapy has helped 18 of the 20 patients he\u2019s recommended it to, is in the minority among his colleagues.
\n\u201cI generally have been in the closet about it (neurofeedback) with psychiatrists,\u201d Anderson says. \u201cOccasionally I\u2019ll bring it up (with other doctors) and get polite attention and then the subject quickly changes to something else. They think it\u2019s quackery. But I\u2019ve seen the research, and it\u2019s very rewarding because people are getting better.\u201d
\nMichael Sitar is a Bethesda psychologist who uses neurofeedback for 90 percent of his practice. He sees it as similar to physical therapy.
\n\u201cIf you\u2019ve got a weak muscle,\u201d Sitar says, \u201cyou work to strengthen it. If your brain is under- or over-producing, you work to fix that.\u201d Neurofeedback training is, in Sitar\u2019s words \u201cgoing to the gym to pump neurons.\u201d
\n\u201cI had a middle-aged woman who was having trouble remembering phone numbers,\u201d he says. \u201cAfter a few sessions, she finally remembered numbers.\u201d
\nConsider neurofeedback training a kind of brain gym, except there\u2019s no going for the burn. It\u2019s not only painless, but it\u2019s fun, bordering on amazing the first time you do it \u2013 which was a big draw for the kids, and adults, I spoke to who\u2019d gone through the training. You play a video game without a joystick or keyboard. You move the images around by thinking.
\n\u201cWhat the client is looking at on the computer screen is their brain wave activity translated into a video game,\u201d says Deborah Stokes, the Alexandria neurotherapist, who uses both neurofeedback training and EEG stimulation in her practice.
\nNeurofeedback training is completely noninvasive. The closest anyone comes to you during treatment is to stick electrodes on your head and neck with a white paste. These electrodes read the electrical output of your brain\u2019s neurons, which form patterns called brain waves. Generally speaking, the slow waves \u2013 delta, theta, and alpha \u2013 are associated with daydreaming, sleep or distraction. They\u2019re fine if you\u2019re meditating or meandering through the woods, but can be debilitating if you\u2019re trying to finish a task or concentrate. You need the Beta and SMR waves to get things done. But if
\nyou have too many of those, you could become agitated. It all comes down to balance, says Stokes.
\nA treatment session goes like this: You sit in front of a computer screen, with the electrodes pasted to your head and neck reading your brain waves and translating them into a video game for you to play. In my case it was three rockets chasing an asteroid.
\nTreatment takes anywhere from 20 to 100 sessions. Over its course, the therapist ratchets up the difficulty of the game. That forces your brain to work harder, much like your quadriceps would have to work harder if you added more weight to the quad press.
\n\u201cNeurofeedback works because it mirrors the client\u2019s own brain activity back to them in the form of a video game,\u201d says Stokes. \u201cThe client is asked to change a part of the video game; for instance, to make one rocket ship go faster and one slower. This enables the client to decrease brainwave amplitudes that may be too strong and increase others that are too weak. Flexing the brainwaves is like weight lifting and seems to have an overall strengthening effect on mental and emotional processes such as mood, anxiety and cognitive processing.\u201d
\nWhile you\u2019re playing the video game, the therapist monitors another screen, adjusting the game to make it harder or easier for you to move things around, depending on which brain wave she\u2019s trying to adjust.
\n\u201cMake it go faster,\u201d Stokes said to me when I tried it.
\n\u201cHow?\u201d I said.
\n\u201cOnly adults ask that question,\u201d she said. \u201cKids can figure it out.\u201d
\nI channeled my thoughts to the rocket ships and suddenly they were going faster. When my mind wandered, they slunk backward. I channeled my concentration again, and they zoomed forward. When I was finished, I was relaxed and I remembered the feeling of zooming myself into concentration. But my life didn\u2019t change dramatically. I went home and promptly lost my keys.
\nNeurofeedback training is nicknamed brain gym for a reason. You can\u2019t go to the gym, do one set of leg lifts and expect thin thighs. It took Jeff 15 sessions to notice a difference.
\n…..
\nFor both therapies, the first step is to get what\u2019s called a brain map. It\u2019s just like going to the cardiologist for an
\nelectrocardiogram (EKG), except the electrodes are stuck to your head instead of your chest. Like an EKG, the EEG
\nmachine reads electrical output. The therapist can see how your brain is \u2013 or is not \u2013working and determine which waves need to be suppressed or increased. A well-functioning, uninjured brain works with all the waves playing together in concert, according to Angelo Bolea, an Annapolis psychologist who uses neurofeedback training. Imagine an orchestra in which the string instruments drown out the wind section or the percussion is the only thing you can hear. That\u2019s a brain out of whack. Depending on your brain\u2019s discord, the consequences range from simple forgetfulness, to cloudy thinking, to headaches, to depression to autism. Brain injury can be caused by anything from a difficult delivery, to a chronic infection, to chemotherapy, to a plain old whack on the head. Pair an injured brain with genetic tendencies and you\u2019ve got a very troubled kid. Like Jeff,
\nthe Virginia teen who, according to his mother, had been making suicide threats since he was three years old. He\u2019s got mental health issues on both sides of his family, his mother says; plus, when he was four, he ran his bike into a parked car, leaving an egg-shaped bump on his forehead.
\nNeurofeedback training and EEG Stimulation, sometimes in conjunction with each other, are used to treat the same
\nailments, basically anything that involves a poorly functioning brain.
\n\u201cNeurofeedback therapy is the only thing I know of that brings executive functioning back on line,\u201d says Anderson, the psychiatrist who treated Jeff. By executive functioning, he means prioritizing, sequencing, and shifting thoughts, the necessary tools to navigate through school, work, and life.
\nAnderson introduced neurofeedback training into his practice about five years ago after a psychologist friend told him about it. \u201cI thought it was a little weird,\u201d he says. Then he read the bible of neurofeedback therapy, \u201cA Symphony in the Brain,\u201d by Jim Robbins, went to a neurofeedback conference and became a believer.
\n\u201cI went there and it all made sense,\u201d Anderson says. \u201cThis was not hocus pocus. There was very comprehensive research that overwhelmingly demonstrated the effectiveness of neurofeedback therapy. I thought, this is science. This is not made-up crystal stuff.\u201d
\nAs a result, he sent his teenaged daughter to Stokes, the Alexandria neurofeedback therapist who later treated Jeff, and to Esty, the Chevy Chase neurotherapist who uses EEG Stimulation. The results, he says, were remarkable.
\n\u201cShe said it was like her brain suddenly woke up,\u201d Anderson says.
\nI know the feeling. When the therapists I interviewed for this story would tick-off the symptoms of brain injury \u2013 fatigue, memory loss, dizziness, intolerance to cold, sensitivity to bright light and noise, — I\u2019d say, \u201cGot that, got that, got that.\u201d\u00a0 It turned out I was among the walking wounded.
\nAs an infant, I fell off the changing table, head first. It later became the family joke whenever I did something weird. No one ever made the connection between the fall and my restlessness and disruptive behavior in school. That was 40 years ago when the letters ADHD were just a jumble of capital letters.
\n\u201cIn my perfect world,\u201d said Esty, \u201cthe minute a child shows attention disorder or disruptive behavior in a school, he or she would get neurofeedback therapy.\u201d
\nMy head injuries didn\u2019t stop with my early fall. As an equestrian, I\u2019ve had four significant knocks to the head, one requiring 10 stitches and another rendering me amnesic for a half hour. There have been several others that, at the time, didn\u2019t seem serious enough to seek medical attention. But that\u2019s the insidious thing about head injury. Most people don\u2019t even know they\u2019re injured.
\nEsty compares the brain to a huge computer. Imagine, she said, if someone took a little hammer and knocked off a few connections here and a few connections there. The programs would run, but some would have a few small errors, slowing down the processing time. The more hits from the hammer, the slower the processing. The destruction of any connection, she said, creates a short circuit that has to be bypassed, and as a result, compensatory programs have to be developed, further slowing down processing time. That\u2019s your brain after each injury.
\nIt doesn\u2019t take much. A 5-mile-an-hour fender bender can send your brain smashing against your skull and ruin your life.\u00a0 By any standards, I\u2019d had enough blows to the head to cause some kind of damage. So I decided to try EEG stimulation.
\nThe only thing I had to lose was my:
\n1. Extreme forgetfulness. This went way beyond the occasional, \u201cHon, have you seen my keys?\u201d
\n2. Extreme fatigue. I thought it was old age setting in.
\n3. Inertia. It\u2019s very difficult for me to start things.
\n4. Chronic neck and head aches. I thought everyone in our stressed-out world ached at the point where the head meets
\nthe neck.
\n5. Sensitivity to bright light. It also causes ocular migraines for me.
\n6. Extreme sensitivity to noise and cold.
\n7. Forgetting words\/general fog. I thought it went with the accumulating decades.
\n8. Money. This therapy is not covered by insurance. The initial consult for the brain map cost $450. Each session is
\n$90.
\nI\u2019ve now had two brain maps \u2013 one by Stokes and the other by Esty. Both were revelatory. I was almost tempted to call my ex-husband and say, \u201cSee, I wasn\u2019t losing all those library books on purpose like you thought.\u201d
\nNo wonder I was tired all the time and it took me forever to get things done, assuming they ever got done. My theta, delta, and alpha waves had invaded my waking hours, bullying my beta and SMR waves practically off the map. Delta and theta are supposed to be high during sleep or rest. Beta and SMR are the ones the get things done. Back to the orchestra metaphor: My drums were banging so loud, my violinists packed up and went home. My conductor had thrown up his baton in despair and stomped off years ago.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re going through life underwater,\u201d said Esty. \u201cIt\u2019s like the heat\u2019s on in the house, but it\u2019s all escaping through the roof.\u201d
\nShe attached two electrodes to a location she made me swear I would not reveal (this is where the art meets the science) and hit me with the picowatt of power. I felt nothing.
\nFor three days, I felt nothing. Still losing things, still inert, still procrastinating about everything. Then on Sunday, I found myself cleaning my car. I\u2019d been thinking about doing that for about a year. After that, I moved all the houseplants back inside for the winter. I\u2019d been thinking about doing that for more than a month, leaving the poor things to shiver in the cold wind. Then there was my grungy saddle, bridle, boots, chaps, and anything else leather I could find that hadn\u2019t been cleaned in months. I chewed through my entire list of chores that had been rolling around in my head. And come 3
\np.m., when I\u2019m usually ready for a nap, I was searching for more things to do.
\n\u201cWow,\u201d was all my husband could say. \u201cYou got to keep this brain stuff up.\u201d
\nAfter my second treatment, I noticed I stopped losing my keys, which is a minor miracle in my house. Then, when I lectured to my journalism class at Georgetown, I found every word I was looking for. Prior to that, I\u2019d be in the middle of a sentence and forget the word for something as rudimentary as \u201cdeadline.\u201d
\nThe results after the third session weren\u2019t as dramatic, but as I discussed my progress with Esty, I realized I now had a new norm. That\u2019s why the changes weren\u2019t as obvious. It\u2019s now normal for me not to lose my keys, which saves me anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour each day. As I talked more, I realized a truly dramatic shift had happened. There was a new step in my thought process. I\u2019ll stay with the key example:
\nBefore EEG Stimulation, I\u2019d stop the car, take out the keys and not be aware of what I was doing. I\u2019d walk in the house and, without thinking about it, put the keys down someplace. Then when I went to look for them, I couldn\u2019t remember anything after stopping the car, let alone where I\u2019d put the keys.
\nNow, after I stop the car, I\u2019m fully aware of what I\u2019m doing with the keys. Fully aware are the operative words. This may sound like a big so-what to anyone who doesn\u2019t have this problem. But it was life changing for me. Because this new step doesn\u2019t stop with the keys. This awareness effects every aspect of my life. Try climbing a ladder every day with a rung missing and see how exhausting that gets. That\u2019s what it was like for me every day.
\nI still haven\u2019t lost my keys and I\u2019m more productive than I\u2019ve been in years. Will it last? Esty said yes. But if I start to slip, I know where I\u2019m heading. Back to the brain zapper machine.
\nAs for Jeff, things just keep getting better for him. In the past, schoolwork always ignited a hellacious fight. Writing, in particular, was difficult for him. This past semester, he got an A in English for the first time in his life. And he wrote this poem:
\nGone
\nThe boy you hate is finally gone.
\nHe has gone to experience what life never offered
\nComfort, love, pleasure without pain and a stress free environment.
\nWithout a rustle of leaves
\nOr a flutter of wings
\nHe is gone forever.
\nHe is forgotten in the blink of an eye,
\nNever to be thought of again,
\nFor he is gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following story was written by Jody Jaffe and appeared in the January 2006 issue of the Washingtonian Magazine. This is the unedited version of the article.\u00a0 The final published version was edited by the Washingtonian staff to fit into … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":14,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-393","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/393\/revisions\/483"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.centerforneurofitness.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}