BrainTraining technology

January 29, 2012

The following is a response to a friend in the field who wrote asking me my opinion (always a dangerous thing) about z-score training. I thought it might be of interest to others, so I'm forwarding it below:

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 6:43 PM,wrote:

I have a question about equipment. I am wondering what your opinion is on Bmr and the Zscore training ?? The field is changing? I am using Brm 2 channel atlantis with their software. Would like more flexibilty, however even at my dealer cost, the new equipment and Thathcer software it is pretty expensive.RESPONSEThe old saying, " the more things change, the more they stay the same " comes to mind.I guess as long as I've been in the field--now 20 years--people have been trying to find a way to train automatically--to avoid the great existential question of NF: where do I put the electrodes and what do I train?. Mike Tansey, back in the day, with the magical 14 Hz training was the first of those I recall--everybody at Cz, increase 14 Hz for everything. Les Fehmi, Val Brown, ultra-low frequency training and many others have been part of that channel.

You know my basic prejudice: psychology, in its attempt to make mental health into " medicine " , has tried to apply the concept of norms, which is quite powerful in physical medicine, to brain and behavior. If it works for the pancreas, surely it will work for the brain, right? Hence the whole field of QEEG and this industry of creating databases of " normal " people (whoever they may be and however defined) and trying to measure individuals against that. Of course anyone who understands statistical process with large groups will know full well that not a single one of the " normals " was within the normal range in all of the hundreds or thousands of measures included in the Q. And the whole approach begs the question of whether an individual client WANTS to be " normal " . I much prefer another longstanding thread in NF--that of going to India or China and finding Masters with " achieved " brains and seeing what THEY look like. At least then we are training toward higher and better states, though it's equally fallacious to assume that all clients want to be Tai Chi Masters--or have their brains.

I find the Q research helpful in its ability, over the years, to identify internal brain relationships (between frequencies and sites and states) which seem to correlate with specific problems. I find the peak performance research helpful in its ability to give us an idea of what a samadhi brain might look like. But my preference is that we actually LOOK at the brain through the window of what the client wants to change. And, as the TLC attests, I don't look at it in relation to somebody's " norms " . I prefer to look for those internal patterns that exist in all brains and see which seem to be related to the client's objectives. Then I test what happens when we try training those, starting with what appear to be the most fundamental, and see what moves the client in the best direction--and train to make that stable. It does require more knowledge and more thought on the front end, but it produces what I find to be consistently solid results--at least in a world where it doesn't appear to be possible to compare approaches side-by-side.

You may recall a number of years ago when Lexicor was just beginning to feel the bite of competition as everybody and his brother started producing QEEG devices and databases. They set up a program where you could lease a Lexicor and access to their normative database, and their suggestion was that clinicians simply start training with the highest Z-score--the area furthest away from the statistical average for a specific measure of brain activity--and " normalize " that, then move on to the next highest, etc. That didn't turn out too well from what I heard of it, and I'm not sure that Lexicor is even around any more. The problem with that approach is, as Jay Gunkelman succinctly put it, if you just look for abnormal things, a crutch is VERY abnormal, but that doesn't mean training to throw it away is the best approach to helping the client. Ideally someone recognizes that the crutch is an adaptive structure and the real weakness is somewhere else. I guess Jay could look at a page of z-scores and identify which was the crutch and which was the broken leg (though he looks at a lot more than z-scores), but a lot of people can't.

So the z-score training, which I believe grew out of the excellent work being done several years ago by Kirtley Thornton and with learning disabilities--looking at coherence patterns around the brain--has been great for BrainMaster and Bob Thatcher. The Thatcher Head-Injury database has now become a normative database. Data that was gathered all at one time using QEEG was found to work fine when compared with data gathered sequentially 2 channels at a time--even, astonishingly, coherence data. Bob said it was fine, so it was. Now Brainmaster has Discovery and who knows whatall else, and the software automatically (as I understand it) does what Lexicor asked people to do manually: it trains to " normalize z-scores. Once again, for all the investment that's now required to get into it, one would hope that there was a significant difference in success rates or speed of training. I've heard anecdotal reports of this from time to time (as we have about every other kind of specialty training), but as usual, to the best of my knowledge, there's no documentation of any of it. If you accept that brains are among the most individual things in the world, you would have to clone a client and try z-score training on one clone, Q-based training on another, infra-low frequency on another, Zengar on another, etc. Repeat that with 30 or 40 clients and you might have a basis to say that one was better than another. Or, more likely, you'd end up showing that one approach worked faster/better for some brains, others for others.

But that's the nature of fashion--and mental health is a slave to fashion. I was around before ADHD was a disorder that afflicted half the population. I was training brains for more than a decade before the sudden discovery that bipolar disorder was as common as hangnails. In the early 90's doctors were so benighted and naive as to believe that a mere ONE medication would resolve a client's mental health issues (since the DSM has now subsumed nearly every known behavior into some pathology/diagnosis or another). Thank god, now they've learned that really you need 2 or 3 or more powerful psycho-active medications to allow many of our brethren to function in the world. In NF, the Othmers bring out a new line with some regularity, and, as I wrote above, there are new models of most every technology. It's part of a consumer approach to life that there's always something better (or at least newer) being introduced with lots of flash and fanfare and there's no shortage of people who buy it for that reason.

Since I've worked with a bunch of different approaches over the years, and my experience suggests that response is individual, I favor the idea of making the cost of getting an excellent training system as low as possible, so trainers don't end up with huge overheads to pay off and can charge reasonable fees and focus on the training relationship instead of the technology. BioExplorer, nIR HEG and a solid 2-channel EEG amp for $600-700 will let you do a great assessment of brain patterns and provide most any kind of training (except z-scores or Zengar or infra-low). But that's just my philosophy and approach. Somebody has to buy cars with windshield wipers on the headlights!

Pete-- Van Deusenpvdtlc@...http://www.brain-trainer.comUSA 678 224 5895

BR 47 3346 6235The Learning Curve, Inc.

January 29, 2012

Pete and friends

I have been doing Nfb for a few years now and have learned from some of the best

as well. Last year I was blessed to spend a week with a great man who is very

well respected in the Nfb community to do some research. He uses Qs and trains

to the green like many others. To my surprise and shock he was not getting the

results I get. I could give several examples here but my point is that he was

happy training a client for 30 plus sessions and getting little signs of hope

whereas I can get the same signs of regulation in a third of the time. This man

is an amazing researcher and has binders everywhere in his office with years of

Qs to demonstrate different theories he had. I was in my glory reading and

learning what he has discovered and the amazing details he uncovered in his

work. The twisted irony here is that I was able to look at the Qs and tell him

all about the client in some detail and he was amazed that I was able to do this

and with such accuracy. I wonder if people like this great doctor get so wrapped

up in training to the green and using the science rather than their common sense

or what appears logical to me that they just can't see the forest through the

trees. It was a great honor working with him and I used the opportunity to learn

more than I had imagined. It was a fantastic experience.

I have used many methods of training. I have used several ways of assessing but

I always seem to come back to what is most logical to me. Train the brain

individually for each person. I tell my interns all the time that the brain is

as unique as a fingerprint and must be trained to its own specific needs. Dr.

Thatcher provides a great data base and I use it for my research all the time

but I don't use it to train. I train to the individual not the " norm " with great

success. No matter what your form of assessment is its how you interpret and

train that makes the difference. My suggestion is to learn as much as you can

from as many people as you can and then develop your own theories of practice.

Just as Pete said, unless you get identical brains (clones) and train them all

with different theories (equipment as well) then you will never know for sure.

Sent from my iPad

January 29, 2012