high frontal theta questions

[Guest guest]

While playing with my EEG device I have come upon what looks to me an

unusual theta activity on my frontal and central sites. I have recorded

there very long and almost never stopping bursts of theta brainwaves

centered at 6.2 Hz (with the classical bell-shaped distribution). This

activity is much higher than anything else on these sites (beta, alpha & c)

and doesn't change much with eyes open/closed.

I know high theta frontally and centrally is related to attentional/focusing

problems and I wonder if it's the case (as I suspect).

I wonder if it's also the case to have some biofeedback sessions to

train down these theta bursts. I have already tried two or three sessions

with some success (amplitude and occurence of bursts reduce by 40-50%) but I

don't know if it's advisable or not ot continue. The " strategy " I adopt in

the training is a form of concentration that involves the " will of not

moving " and to stay " freezed " but relaxed at the same time. Unfortunately

once I terminate the session the effect doesn't last and the old theta

activity resumes. Is it this possible to get a long-term effect from

training? And also, will attention/focusing improve?

Another question: do you know if there exist a place on internet where to

have access to EEG recordings of normal healthy adults to make a compare? (I

know there is something called " normative database " ... but don't know how to

access its data)

Any answer is really appreciated,

- Antonino Porcino

iz8bly@...

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/21/2004 6:37:21 AM US Eastern Standard Time, pvdtlc@... writes:

I guess this probably qualifies as a bit of a rant, but I hope it is

helpful.

Pete,

Very nicely written! Rant anytime~

Lise'

Lise' D. DeLong, Ph.D., CPCRT

NeuroCognitive Specialist

3100 Meridian Park, Suite # 160

Greenwood, IN 46142

www.DrLDeLong.com

DrLDeLong@...

(317) 258-7444

(317) 889-7069 Fax

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 8/21/2004 6:37:21 AM US Eastern Standard Time, pvdtlc@... writes:

I guess this probably qualifies as a bit of a rant, but I hope it is

helpful.

Pete,

Very nicely written! Rant anytime~

Lise'

Lise' D. DeLong, Ph.D., CPCRT

NeuroCognitive Specialist

3100 Meridian Park, Suite # 160

Greenwood, IN 46142

www.DrLDeLong.com

DrLDeLong@...

(317) 258-7444

(317) 889-7069 Fax

[Guest guest]

Nino,

It's interesting that you never mention what you hope to change with your

training. Do you have difficulty with attention and focus? Are there

issues with your mood or ability to control behavior or learning? Any

physiological issues with sleep or pain? Or are you just poking around,

looking for something that looks " wrong " in your brain to try to train that?

Have you done an overall assessment to see the patterns of activation (Jane

made some good points about those in the last day or so), or are you just

looking at individual sites and frequencies?

It costs a lot of money to put together hundreds of EEG's, selecting and

screening the people, gathering information about age, etc., measuring with

extreme accuracy under very controlled conditions, loading and compiling the

data etc. I'm not aware of anyone who has spent all that time and energy to

create a database who just puts it up on the internet or anywhere else so

anyone can freely access it. Usually you have to buy the right to query the

database by sending a specific EEG to it for comparison purposes. You can

go to someone who has access to such a database (recognizing that the

results, if you happen to compare your brain against three different ones

will NOT be the same) and have your brain held up against it/them. Then

you'll know all the places where your brain activity is not " normal " if

that's really what you want to know. But neither of these options is free,

or even cheap.

Let me suggest an alternative, if you are intrigued by the idea of the

" normal " brain--and if that is what you want to have for yourself. Just go

out and find some " normal " people of your own age. You'll have to decide for

yourself what makes a person normal, how you can tell they are normal, etc.

Ask if you can hook them up and measure their brains. That's an interesting

exercise, because it will make you more sensitive to the question of who

decided which brains should go into the normative databases and how they

were selected. You can leave out any artists, who certainly aren't normal.

And, of course, people who have been high achievers in almost any area are,

by definition, not " normal " ; they are extraordinary. But you should be able

to find normal people working in normal jobs, living in normal homes with

normal families and feeling neither very happy nor very sad nor very

worried, most of the time. Perhaps their brains are the ones that " someone "

decided were " normal " enough to go into a normative database and perhaps

they are a target worthy of aiming at. Make sure only to look at their

brains one time. As you know from your own experience of looking at your

own brain, the activity changes during the day and from day to day and

depending on how well you slept, what and how recently and how much you

ate, whether you are feeling stressed or very relaxed, etc. Hopefully, when

you develop your own normative database, you'll be able to control for all

these factors so the normal brains can be seen when they are most normal.

Of course, if you understand statistics, you will know that NONE of the

" normal " people in the normative database has a " normal " brain. The normal

brain is a statistical construction made up of means and standard

deviations. So for every person whose frontal theta, for example, is

" normal " , there will be a bunch whose frontal theta is too high--and another

bunch who are too low. I don't know that I've ever heard of, much less

seen, a QEEG of a person who had no Z-scores (measures of the number of

standard deviations away from the mean in a particular measure) greater than

1 (which, if the brains are normally distributed, would mean that all brain

activity was in the central 67 percent of the normal population). So

" normal " may not be a very easy target to aim at, even if that is all you

want from your brain. And how YOU would change (assuming that is your goal)

as a result of trying to change one small measure out of the hundreds in a

QEEG is not an easy thing to say. Brains aren't made up of hundreds of neat

individual elements like QEEG's are. They are inter-connected in very

complex ways, so you don't just train down frontal theta and have everything

else stay unchanged.

All of this to the side, though, it's worth being aware that theta around

6-7 Hz is often produced in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.

This hippocampal theta shows up when the brain is putting information into

or taking information out of memory. This is especially true on the frontal

midline, so depending where you were measuring, you may simply be seeing

your memory at work. More troublesome theta in the frontal lobes is usually

found in the lower end of the frequency band (2-5 Hz), and it increases when

the brain is trying to do a task, when it should be decreasing. And it is

the relationship of theta to alpha and beta speeds more than the absolute

amplitude of any one of them that is much more useful in determining if

there is a problem worth training to achieve a specific

behavioral/mood/performance outcome. If the relationship between alpha and

theta is well below 1:1 with eyes closed, or if theta divided by beta is

well above 2, then that may be worth training.

However, you also need to be aware that, depending on what hardware and

software you happen to be using, the theta you see may be more or less

accurately reported. There may actually be a high level of it--or there may

not be anywhere near as much as you think you see. Of course this would

have an impact on your ability to compare your brain with normative

databases, depending on what equipment was used to gather their

measurements.

Try training it, if you wish, and if you think there are things in your

personal experience that it might help to change. Try a few sessions and

see if you notice any changes, positive or negative. Don't expect them to

last for very long in the beginning--and don't necessarily expect that

you'll see your spectral display change very significantly. If you do have

persistent frontal theta that is problematic, what you will learn to do is

to hold it down when you are focusing--not necessarily to get rid of it

altogether. So focus on measuring the things you really want to change:

whatever performance, mood or behavior issues you have defined. If they are

changing, that is presumably why you bought the equipment in the first

place.

I guess this probably qualifies as a bit of a rant, but I hope it is

helpful.

Pete

Van Deusen

BrainTrainer ()

16246 SW 92nd Ave, Miami, FL 33157

305/321-1595

high frontal theta questions

> While playing with my EEG device I have come upon what looks to me an

> unusual theta activity on my frontal and central sites. I have recorded

> there very long and almost never stopping bursts of theta brainwaves

> centered at 6.2 Hz (with the classical bell-shaped distribution). This

> activity is much higher than anything else on these sites (beta, alpha & c)

> and doesn't change much with eyes open/closed.

>

> I know high theta frontally and centrally is related to

attentional/focusing

> problems and I wonder if it's the case (as I suspect).

>

> I wonder if it's also the case to have some biofeedback sessions to

> train down these theta bursts. I have already tried two or three sessions

> with some success (amplitude and occurence of bursts reduce by 40-50%) but

I

> don't know if it's advisable or not ot continue. The " strategy " I adopt in

> the training is a form of concentration that involves the " will of not

> moving " and to stay " freezed " but relaxed at the same time. Unfortunately

> once I terminate the session the effect doesn't last and the old theta

> activity resumes. Is it this possible to get a long-term effect from

> training? And also, will attention/focusing improve?

>

> Another question: do you know if there exist a place on internet where to

> have access to EEG recordings of normal healthy adults to make a compare?

(I

> know there is something called " normative database " ... but don't know how

to

> access its data)

>

> Any answer is really appreciated,

>

> - Antonino Porcino

> iz8bly@...

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>