My teenage son started Neurofeedback with Melissa Sklar in October of 2017 because of issues he was having with anxiety, depression, Asperger’s, and suicidal thoughts. He was having significant issues with functioning at school, and several doctors and psychologists were recommending that we try Neurofeedback to help deal with his various issues. My son has had various other interventions over his entire life that have each in their own way helped somewhat, including occupational therapy, high-dose supplementation, gluten-free diet, B-12 shots, psychotherapy, etc. But when he contracted Lyme disease about six years ago, everything changed. Almost immediately he started having suicidal thoughts, and talking about suicide has continued on and off over those 6 years (as we have not been able to kill the Lyme bacteria).

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So reads the feature article in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 29. Unfortunately, he does not know about Infra-Low Frequency (ILF) Neurofeedback, because if he did, he would realize at once that this is what he has been looking for. As a software guy, he realizes that the brain is the singular entity in the universe that writes its own software—the software that supports its own function. This is a long-term bootstrapping operation. And since brain function is not gifted equally to everyone, it follows that some brains are better at writing their own software over the course of development than others. Are we compelled to live with that situation, as we have been doing forever, or can that process be aided?

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At the fall meeting of the Northeast Regional Biofeedback Society (NRBS), Roger deBeus will report on the status of a ‘multi-site double-blind randomized clinical trial of neurofeedback for ADHD,’ a study that was actually funded by the NIH. We look forward to seeing the results. The study involves quite a cast of characters: Eugene Arnold, psychiatrist and authority on ADHD who has been in emeritus status for years already at Ohio State University; Keith Conners, author of the Conners CPT and one of the original critics who hounded Dan Chartier early on for doing neurofeedback; Larry Hirshberg, who tried to use our old protocols in a study of PTSD; Vince Monastra, who undertook the largest-ever study of NF for ADHD; Joel Lubar, and of course Roger deBeus, who conducted an earlier attempt at a blinded study (one that is not fondly remembered).

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This little gem of a documentary is worming its way into the hearts of people in Hollywood with the impetus of an Academy Award nomination in the category of short documentaries. It has superb competition, but that’s all to the good. Some hard-hitting stories are being told this year.

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One of the gems in Bill Walton’s repertoire as basketball commentator was to refer to a defender as “scrambling the brainwaves” of his opponent, trying to throw him off his game for an instant by engaging his emotional self. The scrambling, if it occurred at all, would be brief and leave no lingering trace. No harm done. More persistent forms of ‘scrambling of the brainwaves’ is slowly entering the conversation in mental health and even in medicine in general.

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