My interest in EEG and neurofeedback began after I participated in a sleep study at the University of Washingon. I was fascinated with all the various sensors and electronics that the technician was hooking up to me and couldn’t stop asking questions. I got some good answers but realized I was going to have to dig in on my own to understand more about EEG waves, their measurement, meaning and interpretation.
Seriously, how could I not be consumed with interest in a discipline that brings together Fourier Transforms, signal measurement, digital signal processing, cognitive, linguistic and psychological theory and complementary health?
Early in my experience with NLP the scientist in me was driven to find methods that could validate the subjective experiences that myself and others were having. The first feedback method I explored with this goal in mind was health rate monitoring using the healthMath software. I was familiar with Robert Dilts early experiments with EEG waves, but this work was done a long time ago and I was sure technology and understanding would have changed dramatically over the years.
I was fortunate to find Peter van Deusen early on in my research on the internet. His company The Learning Curve, Inc. offers a wide range of hardware and software systems and he was very helpful guiding me to what I needed to get started. My first call to him answered all my questions and then some. I went with the QDS Focus two channel EEG amplifier and the BioExplorer software and I followed his advice to start with the “Finding Sites” training module. This system has exceeded my expectations and still serves me well.
My first experiments involved myself, family and close friends. I quickly discovered just how powerful monitoring EEG signals could be as an augmentation to hypnosis, talk therapy as well as the effectiveness of neurofeedback sessions. I also discovered the breadth of research and work being done with what some people call ADD/ADHD.
In future posts I’ll describe in more detail what I have found that works and what I’m curious to learn more about.