You reach out to the nearest neurofeedback franchise only to find yourself sitting in a chair, facing a computer screen. Soon your clinical technician will arrive and stick some electrodes to your scalp with the help of a vicious goop that takes days to wash out of your hair. Wires from the sensors are being connected to a computer programmed to respond to the activity of your brain.
What are you supposed to do now? Well, you must relax and keep your mind calm. If you brain behaves as desired, you will perceive soothing sounds and get to see visual treats such as a flowering field or exploding stars.If not, you will get to see silence, wilting flora, and dark.
Welcome to neurofeedback therapy, which is a kind of biofeedback for the brain. Practitioners say that such a biofeedback helps to treat a host of neurological ills including ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression. During repeated sessions of neurofeedback, patients are encouraged to alter their own brain waves through practice.
While the procedure comes with a host of benefits, the same has received controversies from the world. It is also expensive and time-consuming. An average course of this treatment encapsulates some 30 sessions and these sessions can cost around $3000 or more, which everyone cannot afford.
Also, your health insurance might not be useful because not every health insurer will pay you for it Despite all odds, the therapy is gaining popularity and even practitioners are starting with neurofeedback franchise as they see improvements in their patient’s day by day.
Not only the therapists and practitioners, the therapy is also gaining attention from the mainstream researchers including the former sceptics. Some of the major attractions and claims of the technique are mentioned here.
The primary attraction of the technique is the hope that it can help patients avoid drugs, which often have side effects. Instead of relying on heavy dose medicines, patients practice routines that seem more like exercising a muscle. When a person tries to read his own brain waves, he himself struggles to alter it and improvise as he comes for more and more sessions.
The patient understands the working of his own brain cells and they way these cells communicate with each other. It happens through a constant storm of electrical impulses. The patterns are shown on EEG. Practitioners say people have problems when their brain wave frequencies aren’t suited for the task at hand, or when parts of the brain aren’t communicating adequately with other parts.
The neurofeedback therapy helps in dealing with these brain waves.
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