Neurotherapy involves helping people learn how to modify their brain wave activity, and has been found to be beneficial for the following conditions:
- Substance abuse
- Anxiety and OCD and PTSD
- Depression and bipolar disorder
- Learning disabilities and cognitive impairment
- Behaviour disorders
- Anger
- Pain, migraine and headaches
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Sleep difficulties
- Performance enhancement
Neurotherapy offers rehabilitation through directly re-training the brain. The exciting thing about neuroptherpy, is that when a problem is biological in nature, there is an alternative to medication. Neurotherapy is also being used increasingly to facilitate peak performance in normal individuals and athletes.
Any individual has a brain that runs at four different speeds. These speeds are in fact different brain waves called:
Beta state is the normal daytime state of working, talking, thinking and problem solving. Alpha state is often described as the state of "glow". Theta waves occur early in sleep and Delta waves in a deeper sleep.
Neurotherapy is a therapy technique that presents people with real time feedback on their brainwave activity, as measured by electrodes and shown in a visual display.
Neurotherapy is painless, non-invasive, and is a treatment approach that supplies information. That information can be used to produce changes in brain wave activity. That change promotes more optimal brain wave patterns which is associated with positive behavioural outcomes.
Neurotherapeutic practitioners are trained to use this computerised bio feedback equipment with a specialised extension of techniques called QEEG - Quantitative Electroencephalogram. At this time, training for AEEG is for licensed health care professionals only, including doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, naturopaths, occupational therapists, and chiropractors. We have qualified ourselves in this form of treatment and therapy through Applied Neurosciences Pty Ltd in Melbourne in 2007-08.
In general, ill health or problems typically increases slow activity (theta or delta waves), but decreases faster activity (alpha and beta waves) depending upon neural location, age and conscious state. QEEG produces a brain map and measures brain physiology on function in a normative fashion.QEEG was developed at Harvard University in the USA in the late 1980's, and it was introduced into clinical practice in 1994, with key databases established by 1999.Research studies show QEEG findings closely correlated with other research on brain analysis and function, and over the last few years there has been wide
acceptance of its use as a diagnostic technology in clinical applications.
Neurotherapy enters the scene through the gateway that shows that many conditions are characterised by irregular brain activity. Abnormalities in any of the four brain wave bands can be seen across the pathologies already listed above. Observation, recording, determining the area of origin, leads to diagnosis and treatment, on results from QEEG. Neurotherapy treatment seeks to teach individuals to produce more normalised brain wave patterns that optimises their functioning.
Contact Anne Clark and Peter Stroud for more information.
