CityView Magazine

42 | January/February 2017 of our brain constantly. If we want to go to sleep, we don't want fast brain waves." We've all experienced the fast brain waves at the wrong time, like when we're tucked into bed but we're edgy and we're ruminating and we're worried about things. Yes, those are fast brain waves, and good brain waves to have, but at the right time. If we're taking a timed math test, that's when we want those fast brain waves. We want to process information quickly. Hume continues, "At any given moment, our brain will change the speed of the brain waves depending on the task at hand. With Attention Deficit, there's usually too much of the sleepy brainwaves that are in the prefrontal cortex. at's the 'executive center' of the brain where decision making goes on. So what I'm helping to do is to turn down the volume of the sleepy brain waves and turn up the volume of the faster brain waves." How does Hume do this? She doesn't. e client does. Hume sets certain limits and restrictions—thresholds—through a game format. When the client stays within the thresholds (when a client can keep their "sleepy brain waves" below their set threshold, for example, and their "faster, focused brain waves" above another threshold) the game will go their way. e train will go. e plane will fly. e movie will continue to play. "Neurofeedback is a process called operant conditioning. It's a psychological term. Our brains are always driven to reward. We love the praise, the accolades, and since the brain is wired for reward, operant conditioning says if you give the brain enough reward, it will begin to go in that direction. It's re-training. It's building new neurological pathways." Photos by Matthew Wonderly Electroencephalography (EEG) measures the electrical patterns at the surface of the head which reflects cortical activity. These patterns are commonly referred to as "brainwaves." Quantitative EEG (qEEG) is the analysis of these patterns, which is sometimes called "Brain Mapping." QEEG is a procedure that analyses your EEG activity from a multi-electrode recording. This multi-channel EEG data is processed with various algorithms, statistically analysed, and then compared to a normative database (comparing the brainwaves to a group of children/adults of similar age who are considered 'neurotypical'). This data is then converted into color maps of brain functioning called "brain maps."

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