Page Title

1 Brainwave Connections Summer 2005

Text Box: difference and flexibility in its concepts and applications. In order to understand these issues, it is important to know and understand the practitioners behind them, and know how and why they reached their conclusions. The article on thresholding in this issue has more to do with people than with numbers. Read it with an eye toward connecting with the individuals behind the thinking, and connecting with your trainees as you work.

Text Box: It is appropriate to ask ourselves what constitutes a field, a discipline, or a body of knowledge. At one level, these can be understood as a snapshot of ideas, concepts, rules, standards, and other objective criteria. However, any science or practice is in fact the result of the aggregate activity of individuals, and evolves. These individuals work both independently and in collaboration to develop, articulate, and promulgate their work. As a result the emerging body of knowledge and practice is more of an extension of the human effort, and less of a static body of information. Students of history and science gain insight by understanding the people who develop and promulgate the science, the climate in which they work, and the immediate goals at hand. Rather than being an

Text Box: objective and sterile body of knowledge, science is a living, breathing activity that reflects both the strengths and the foibles of those involved In the case of neurofeedback, one example of an issue that takes on a human quality is that of setting of training targets, which gets into the topic of autothresholding and session control. There currently exist many varied opinions and practices in this area, and they are representative of the practioners who developed them. The relevant issues include learning theory, motivation, operant conditioning, equipment capabilities, the needs of the client, and the practicalities of conducting the sessions. Neurofeedback is more like music than paperhanging. It tolerates, in fact needs, considerable individual

Text Box: In his article on “Things noticed along the way,” Hal Schaus takes an uncommon view on the role of neurofeedback software and displays. It is that biofeedback training should be as boring as possible, in order to reap the maximum benefit. The challenge of attention training, according to this perspective, is to allow the

Text Box: trainee to learn to pay attention and focus, in the absence of stimulation. It is when we are faced with simple, possibly boring things that our attention may be most challenged. Learning this will equip the trainee to be comfortable with stillness, whether it is in history class, reading a book, listening to a family member, or watching a quiet sunset.

Text Box: If we continually try to appeal to the need for stimulation, then we will only perpetuate the idea that everything needs to be exciting and ever-changing. If, on the other hand, we learn to appreciate and respond to simplicity and stillness, then we will reap the benefits of depth of thought, clarity of feeling, and simplicity of life.

Brainwave Connections

Text Box: In this issue: On Personal Connections One Thing at a Time Thresholding—When and how to use it? Things Noticed Along the Way by Hal Schaus Book Review: The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child by Thom Hartmann

Dedicated to communication and education in the emerging fields of neurofeedback, mental fitness, neuromeditation, and brain modification

Text Box: In coming issues: Concepts: Information, Entropy, and Freedom of Choice “But what do I do?”: Instructions to Neurofeedback Trainees Book Reviews, Site Reviews, and personal commentaries