Newsletter from Victoria Ibric, MD Ph.D

Author: Victoria Ibric, MD Ph.D

Since 1993, after taking the Neurofeedback course with Siegfried and Sue
Othmer, I became the co-director of the EEG Biofeedback section at the
Biofeedback Institute of Los Angeles, under Dr. Marjorie Toomim’s supervision.
My initial work was with Neurocybernetics (NC) and I reported many successful
outcomes using this instrument. After four years of working in the
Neurofeedback field, I purchased my first ROSHI instrument, developed by
Charles Davis of ROSHI Corp. Now, in my practice, I use both Neurocybernetics
and ROSHI instruments.

I have found the Neurocybernetics system to be very useful for the intake
and for the training of certain patients who are encouraged by rewards and
who are able to stay alert with training. When the NC training reaches a
plateau or the patient becomes frustrated, I switch them to ROSHI. (NC is
hard work for the brain in deficit; and may be very easy and not as effective
with the over-achiever. Over-efforting, which is a frequent problem, can be
tiring and frequently frustrating for a client.) NC training is done with
eyes open. When eyes close due to sleepiness without prompting, training
becomes less efficient. Continue reading “Newsletter from Victoria Ibric, MD Ph.D”

AAPB Conference Report, Installment #3

In this final installment of the report on the AAPB Conference, I just wanted to catch people up on my impressions of what is happening to the technology. In the exhibit hall it became apparent that we are on the threshold of another generation of software from a number of vendors. I had spent the first day of our attendance at the conference being taught about the new version of Biograph software from Thought Technology. The new software promises to be a lot more versatile than the current generation. This flexibility is exciting to those of us who are thinking up things to do with neurofeedback, but of course it can also be intimidating and bewildering to the end user. The answer is that the new program is really a platform on which user-level programs are constructed. In Thought Tech lingo these are called scripts. I have been talking with Thought Tech people about a number of display options and specific discriminants for training that can be incorporated into a script.

The general thrust will be to incorporate more and more intelligence into the feedback calculation, involving a variety of decision-making that does not have to be under the immediate command of the therapist. We should not burden the practitioner with all of the particulars of a feedback design. Any features that can be automated should be handled in that way. This is particularly true for the inhibits, which can be EEG-responsive in a straight-forward algorithmic fashion. Here we can bring all kinds of sophistication to bear on the question of whether the EEG is moving toward or away from a state of optimal regulation. As new criteria are devised and accepted, they can simply be inserted as additional weighting functions or decision points, all of which function in background as far as the clinician is concerned. What remains for the clinician is to fine-tune choices with respect to the rewards. But as the overall training incorporates more and more measures, the relative impact of the rewards will of necessity decline. The training will therefore become much more manageable and less tippy for the clinician. Continue reading “AAPB Conference Report, Installment #3”

Brain Wave Synchrony Training for Individuals and Couples

Author: Susan Shor Fehmi, M.S.W.

In recent years the subject of coherence and synchrony has come to the
forefront in neurofeedback circles, leaving people confused about the
difference between the two and wondering whether it is good or bad to have
coherent or synchronous brain waves. As many of you know, Les Fehmi has
been talking about the value of on-off phase synchrony training coupled with
Open Focus training for almost thirty years. This is a training protocol
that makes up a sizeable portion of our Princeton Biofeedback Centre
practice.

Coherence applies to brain waves that maintain a consistent relationship
with each other. Phase synchrony applies to a particular kind of
coherence, one in which brain waves of a specific frequency peak and trough
at the same time. When they peak and trough perfectly in time they are said
to be phase synchronous. Brain synchrony can be trained locally at one site,
or globally over the whole head. Continue reading “Brain Wave Synchrony Training for Individuals and Couples”

Alternatives for Special Kids Conference, Irvine

Author: Darien C. Small

We are going to be participating in the upcoming Conference in Irvine, Alternatives for Special Kids, May 8-11. Darien Small, the organizer, was motivated to launch the first of these annual conferences last year in Boston because of his own experience as the father of a child with special needs. After the modest start, this year Darien is bringing together a large variety of resources for these children under one roof, with a wide spectrum of speakers. It should be a nice hothouse environment for them all. Sue and I are both giving presentations, and we will be participating in a number of workshops throughout the period. There will also be an exhibit area, where we will feature not only conventional neurofeedback but also Roshi II and HEG. We will of course also be promoting the practitioner network.

Darien’s most remarkable achievement has been the procurement of funding support for his conference. He is therefore able to offer scholarships for attendance. These scholarships may be particularly appropriate for those clinicians who are in dual roles both as neurofeedback practitioners and as parents of special-needs kids. We encourage attendance by any practitioner who is working with this population. Families are welcome at this conference. About 60% of attendees are expected to be families, and 40% professionals. Families bring their special needs kids, and these get to acquaint themselves as well with the available technologies. Attending families are typically well connected with support networks at home, having been commissioned as scouts to take the message back. So attendance may also be a way for you to build your practice. Continue reading “Alternatives for Special Kids Conference, Irvine”

Report on AAPB (continued)

James S. Gordon, MD was an invited speaker at the AAPB to talk about Mind-Body Medicine and the Future of Health Care. Dr. Gordon is the Founder and Director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC (www.cmbm.org) and is a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He made the obvious point that mind-body medicine should be at the heart of what we do, particularly for the increasingly common chronic conditions; and that the drug/surgery mainline medicine approach should be reserved for the more critical, acute medical issues. He referred to this as the “Self-Care” Model, consisting of a combination of complementary and alternative medicine approaches and psychosocial interventions. Of course he was preaching to the choir, and along the way he was very supportive of the role biofeedback could play in this endeavor of changing the medical model. Nevertheless, I felt that his view of biofeedback was the traditional, more limited one (read relaxation training), and he was probably unacquainted with the inroads that we have made through neurofeedback in addressing even classical medical and psychiatric categories.

Gordon referred to the often-quoted study in The New England Journal of Medicine that showed some 42% of Americans were already using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in that timeframe (1997). In certain cases, the penetration is much greater. Some 69% of cancer victims resort to CAM, and similar numbers apply to HIV and chronic pain patients. So CAM is not just tending the worried well. Continue reading “Report on AAPB (continued)”

Report on AAPB

There’s nothing like starting off a conference by giving an eight-hour lecture, and expending all one’s energy up front. It was only on the morning of the lecture that I discovered the AAPB literature had featured mine as an introductory workshop rather than an intermediate/advanced one. I had intended this as an intensive presentation of our model to those who were already doing neurofeedback and weren’t about to sit still for our introductory course. The AAPB promotional material must have carried the day, as the room was full of neurofeedback novices.

What to do? I quickly changed over to my Introductory course, but the appetite had been whetted by all the viewgraphs that I had handed out on protocols. People wanted that covered as well. So it was quite a ride for attendees as we waded through lots of material.

The overall tenor of the conference revealed a continuing migration from the starchiness of old. The crowd was also smaller, and more friendly. Conference planners arranged for the meetings to take place in smaller rooms, so the audience did not get lost as it once did in the cavernous halls of the Cincinnati Conference Center. And the podiums were not so frightfully elevated that one felt intimidated by the speakers. Continue reading “Report on AAPB”