About

Most people do not know that there are 17 different methods of conducting neurofeedback. NeurOptimal is the only one that is designed to work with the brain as a non-linear dynamical system. It does not “push” the brain in any way. NeurOptimal does not diagnose or treat any disorder; rather, it works by training the brain as a whole. When a client’s brain optimizes itself, it is generally less symptomatic and higher functioning. Often, but not always, a client is better able to utilize their medication and thus a reduction in dosage may become necessary. Always consult with your physician on these matters.  

A 2010 doctoral dissertation on NeurOptimal found that within the first six sessions, most clients notice improved qualities of sleep, reduced anxiety, improvement in mood, increased self-awareness, improved coping, and a generalized sense of feeling better overall. Changes were described as occurring easily and naturally, as from within. Clients also reported the reduction of individuals’ particular issues. Most clients experienced changes that surprised them, were unexpected, or were beyond their presenting issues.

As a clinician I have observed that, after training with NeurOptimal, my clients, in general, 1) have greater distance between them and their thoughts, 2) sleep better, 3) have greater resilience, 4) don’t go as deep or as long into anxiety or depressive states, 5) feel calmer inside. They take on broader perspectives and become less rigid in their viewpoints. Young women, who normally base all their decisions on what pleases others, begin to sort out their personal desires and perspectives. They become more assertive and successful at taking care of their needs. Older men who are concrete, black-and-white thinkers, start to consider other people’s experience and begin to challenge their own perspective. When couples are in counseling and both receiving training, they become less reactive and more tolerant of each other. Issues are resolved issues faster and smoother. Teenagers become more attentive and more emotionally stable. For business owners and entrepreneurs, they increase their ability to make better decisions and follow through more consistently on their short and long-term goals. Their thinking becomes more agile, meaning the ability to see a problem from multiple viewpoints. They also improve their discernment on ways to become more efficient and effective in problem solving.

NeurOptimal is essentially a brain workout. It trains your brain to be more flexible and resilient. A brain that is more flexible adapts and responds quicker and more appropriately to changes in the environment. A brain that has more resilience is able to “bounce back” from a negative event. Those with more flexible and resilient brains report feeling happier and more peaceful. In general, it’s recommended to have 20-24 sessions to achieve optimal benefit; however, many will notice feeling much better in fewer than 10 neurofeedback training sessions.

A study conducted at the Sleep Disorders Lab at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut, the teaching hospital for Yale University, found that on average it took only 16 NeurOptimal sessions to resolve patients’ sleep issues when combined with behavioral therapy. On average the patients in the study were initially getting about 30% of the optimal amount of sleep per night and they typically took up to an hour or more to fall asleep. Many were taking sleep medications. By the end of the study, 90% of them went off their meds completely. They were all falling asleep within 15 minutes and obtaining 85-100% of their optimal amount of sleep. Lead researcher on the study was Ed O’Malley, who holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology and is one of the nation’s leading experts in sleep medicine.

How NeurOptimal Works

Neurofeedback utilizes a real-time display of the brain’s electrical activity. That information is fed back to the brain as visual or auditory information. This enables the user to modify that brainwave activ­ity. The brain is neuroplastic, which means it changes with feedback. Current neurofeedback strategies reflect 2 different but complementary directions: one driven by a focus on localization and the other by a focus on global brain function. The more com­mon approach, with its roots in the localization school of neuroscience, could be characterized as a “diagnosis and treatment” approach, in which abnormalities in brainwave frequencies at particular locations are identified, ordinarily by means of a quantitative EEG (QEEG). Researchers and clinicians have identified EEG patterns commonly associated with particular symptoms, and the neurofeedback equipment can be programmed to reward the brain for shifting its activity away from the symptom-associated patterns. For example, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children frequently is associated with slow (theta) wave to fast (beta) wave ratios greater than 3:1 along the cingulate gyrus. Neurofeedback protocol would be to reward SMR while inhibiting beta and theta at Cz.

The NeurOptimal system represents the less common approach. Developed by the Zengar Institute, it is designed to train the brain as a whole, without reference to particular locations or frequencies. Unlike classical neurofeedback approaches, in which the participant engages actively and/or consciously with the software and is rewarded for producing prescribed EEG patterns, the participant in the Zengar approach simply “lets go” and allows the brain to use the feedback—provided as brief interruptions to the music he or she is hearing—to enable its own innate capacity for self-organization.

The feedback delivered is based on the whole brain’s dynamic activity over time, not its achievement of prescribed states in prescribed locations. The fundamental assumption is that lowering the amplitude of any specific frequency (eg, 8-12 Hz in the left prefrontal cortex) will, by necessity, affect other frequen­cies in other parts of the brain in the same way that strength­ening a single muscle group will affect alignment in other parts of the body, and so it is more realistic to train the brain as a whole system rather than focus on a single location or set of frequencies. This approach recognizes that the brain has a natural tendency toward self-regulation and resilience, allowing flexible cognitive and behavioral responses to a challenging and changing environment.

The brain is a complex and highly inte­grated system. The Zengar system takes into account the brain is nonlin­ear, dynamic, and self-organizing. Its software detects phase state changes, the precur­sors to phase transitions. Alerted by feedback that a phase transition is imminent, the brain is able either to reorganize to return to its prior phase (as when the mind refocuses on a task after wandering) or to transit to a new phase (as in the movement from wakefulness to sleep). Neither phase is pre­ferred, or sought, or avoided by the software. Because there is no diagnosis required for this form of neurofeedback, and no specific protocol is developed on the basis of that diagnosis, this approach is considered to be training the brain in flexibility and resilience rather than treating particular symptoms. As a result, the Zengar system is not a controlled medical device and, therefore, the devel­opers have not sought FDA approval.

NeurOptimal does not treat conditions. When I first read this, I worried if it could be used clinically to remediate symptoms of mental disorder. It takes a bit of a paradigm shift to consider that NeurOptimal does not focus on symptoms, but rather the source of the symptoms. When the brain learns to be present, respond appropriately to the challenge of the moment, and recover quickly back to the present, then there are no symptoms.

NeurOptimal neurofeedback is a nonlinear, dynamical process. There really is no specific sequence or time frame in which people change. Each person takes whatever time and whatever number of sessions for neurofeedback to be useful for him or her. NeurOptimal works. If it is not working then there are extrinsic constraints that are interfering. This will be addressed in another paper.

NeurOptimal will not avert feelings resulting from real problems such a death in the family, a sudden loss of a job, break up of an intimate relationship, severe financial strain, or getting evicted. However, after 20-24 NeurOptimal trainings, one should be able to deal with the stress more effectively and recover from it faster.

NeurOptimal works in a non-linear dynamical way, which means that your progress will not go in a straight line. In other words, don’t expect each week for each problem to steadily get better and better. For most people, changes will be experienced as seamless, occurring easily and naturally, as from within. Many of your presenting issues will seem to be of your distant past and you may falsely assume neurofeedback has made no impact. That’s why I ask you to fill out questionnaires the first day.

If you truly are not making progress by the 12th session, we will need to look for extrinsic constraints. That means issues outside of neurofeedback that are impeding success. This occurs 25% of the time. We will assess what that constraint might be.

What People Experience with NeurOptimal

Often people ask me what others have experienced after having several sessions of NeurOptimal. Here are only a few of many reports.

“I’m feeling really good. I haven’t had any mood swings at all since we started. Things do feel a bit more manageable. I don’t feel like I’m having anxiety as much. I feel more mellow. I’m able to deal with stress a little easier.” Woman in her 30’s after 5 sessions.

“NeurOptimal is definitely helping. My sleep has gotten better. Even when things are scary, I’ve been able to move forward anyway. I’m a lot calmer. I am happier, have less social anxiety, am more talkative, have fewer headaches, and have more self-awareness.” Woman in her 40’s after 8 sessions.

“My stress level has gone way down. I used to be a doormat and take on a lot of responsibility, but now I’m not doing that. I’m taking better care of myself by saying ‘no’ more frequently and not stressing about it afterwards. I’m worrying less about what people think about me. My husband is noticing the change, and says it’s about time.” Woman in her 60’s after 13 sessions.

“I’m able to remain a lot calmer. When my wife talks about her work stress, I don’t get caught up in it like before. NeurOptimal has had a positive effect on the way I home school my children. I’m more relaxed and less reactive to my kids when it’s not going the way I think it should be going. Instead of looking at it as their problem, I can look at it as I’m the trainer in this equation and what I’m doing is just not working. Then I look back at how authoritarian I was raised and how much that’s still in me.Those emotions come up at times and I want to act on them, but I don’t. It’s changing everything. It’s changing my ability to think before I act, to witness what’s going on, to think about it differently, and to look at what actions will cause different outcomes. Plus, I’m way less attached to results than ever.” Man in his 40’s after 15 sessions.

“I can’t stress this enough. I was on disability for a reason. I couldn’t write a schedule without indecision, checking and rechecking, so much that I would give up on it. I could not organize my day. Choices were difficult. All of that is gone. People used to see me as a doormat. Now, I just speak up and they think it’s confrontational. I am writing six hours a day on my thesis. Before NeurOptimal, I wrote zero hours per day. I had spent 11 years trying to write my thesis and could only complete one chapter. I was unable to even write my outline as I obsessed on details. Recently, I just sat down and did it without any anxiety. It was easy and took 15 minutes. I have no depression or anxiety anymore.” Man in his 40’s after 12 sessions.

“What I notice is that I have a general sense of happiness and well-being. I used to let little things bother me a lot. It was one of my main problems. When I had things that were bothering me I would just try not think about them. Of course, they kept on popping up over and over. Now, I take a logical approach to it. I figure out what’s bothering me and figure out a way to fix it. I come up with a solution rather than shoving it under the rug and avoiding it. That’s been a big change and it’s removed a lot of stress for me. I really had a problem with that. I’m sleeping really well. At work, I’m able to remember things easily and multitask really well. I’m getting rave reviews from my boss. Another big change is that I’m not worrying about what other people think of me anymore. I realize life is too short to worry about things like that. Who cares what other people think about you anyway? What matters is what you think about yourself and what loved ones think of you. That’s what really matters.” Man in his 30’s after 12 sessions.

“Neuroptimal absolutely help me with the bar exam. When I first came in I was in rough shape. My mind was full of fears. I had failed the bar exam the first time and I was so worried I’d never pass. After the first NeurOptimal session it felt like a ton of bricks fell off of me. I realized no matter what, I could do this. It shifted me so much that I thought if I don’t pass at this time, I’ll pass it next time. After a few more sessions, I noticed it makes the negative thoughts less powerful so that you can see them and examine them more objectively. It was like the thoughts were further away so I could take them apart more reasonably. After 7 NeurOptimal sessions, I took the bar exam again. What was different this time was I could hold on to the reasoning and facts that first appeared to me in the question. In other words, I did not get lost in the meanings of the wrong answers. I stayed highly focused. I passed. I really believe it was the NeurOptimal training that made the difference.” Man in his 30’s after 14 sessions.

“When conflict comes up I really seem to have the best ability ever in my life to be able to stay centered and calm. It’s allowed me to be highly effective. As an example, my divorce has been lingering for 3 years, mostly due to my inactivity. I spontaneously called a new lawyer, liked the lawyer, spent an hour on the phone, made good progress, came up with a plan, and that’s enormous. Getting closure on my divorce has been the biggest hurdle in my life right now. Basically, I think the gizmo works. I don’t understand it completely but it seems to be helping me to not take things personally. I don’t feel I have some lacking to defend. If somebody were to say something to me in a way I would have taken offense that would bother me for a day or two in the past, I now look at it as maybe that’s kind of sad or maybe that person was having a bad day. It could be a coincidence, but to me, I see an effect. I think it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.” Man in his 50’s after 8 sessions.

“I was having a difficult time with my divorce. It had gotten me down and I was spending all my time alone. NeurOptimal helped me pull out of that funk. I noticed a change after the 3rd session. Like, when talking to my mother, I usually get irritated at her. This time I didn’t care as much how she reacted. I’ve always been a shy person and that began to change too. At work, even though I didn’t have much to say I didn’t feel as reluctant to say something. When I did say something I was more relaxed. I’m putting myself out there more, like saying ‘hi’ to random people more. I reached out to old friends and feel reconnected to them. I finally feel comfortable talking about myself and what’s going on. I care less what people will think if I tell them of my divorce. My insomnia has gone away and I’m sleeping much better. I’m more positive about the future. I feel happy and more confident about things.” Woman 30’s after 8 sessions.

“It feels like this is helping me definitely. The fog has cleared. I’m able to make decisions in such a better way. I feel like I have clarity that I haven’t had for years really. My husband and I have been talking about our long-term goals like five-year goals and ten-year goals. I’ve never wanted to talk about it because I was so buried in my fog. I feel I can take on those challenges now. I don’t have that constant mild depression anymore. Before, I was always under stress and didn’t recognize it. Now I do. At home I’m able to control my emotions better and deal with what’s happening. When the kids are pushing my buttons I step away from it, or just breathe through it and ask myself how do I want to handle it. I’m thinking more before I act. I had a little crisis situation come up recently. NeurOptimal has helped to keep me thinking rationally, logically, and clearheaded. All my life, I’ve had a monkey mind that made me worry what was going to happen here or there, what do I need to be doing, lots of thoughts that needed to be processed. I had a feeling of anxiety about everything. But now, I feel confident that I can handle everything and things can be processed. I’m just going with it and accepting every day for what it is. So I haven’t been feeling anxious. I just feel more centered, which is nice. If I wasn’t doing this I’m sure I’d be a complete mess with the stress I’m under. I can always tell when I’m overstressed and anxious. My skin feels like its crawling off my body. NeurOptimal keeps me from having my skin crawl off my body.” Woman in her 40’s after 10 sessions

Does everyone have these powerful, life changing responses? No, not really. Like all neurofeedback, there are high responders, medium responders, and non responders. However, of all the systems I have used since 2001, and that includes 8, NeurOptimal offers the smoothest, gentlest, and consistently the most effective one I have used. What you have read above is representative of about 50% of all clients who come to see me. About 25% gain more modest benefits, but are satisfied with the outcome. About 25% will show no gain.