Frequently Asked Questions

The goal of all neurofeedback is to transform an unhealthy, abnormal brainwave pattern into a normal, healthy, organized pattern. By doing this, the brain becomes more stable and is able to operate optimally and efficiently.

Medication does not cure ADHD – it merely treats the symptoms for as long as you are taking it. Some people experience great success with medication, and others do not. A long-term solution requires a different kind of intervention.

The standard protocol for ADHD has traditionally been medication. The role of the medication stimulates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is associated with pleasure, attention and movement. Medication is meant to treat the symptoms but are not targeted at correcting the cause.

Biofeedback is feedback or measures about your own body’s biological functions. Examples would be your body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves, lung capacity, etc. This information can be used in various forms of biofeedback therapy to help you train the connections between the mind and your physical body.

Learn more about ADHD here

At Zone Health and Performance Psychology we believe: “No matter how good your brain is, we can always make it better!” This is what we mean by peak brain performance. Neurofeedback is used to affect broad regulatory action of the brain, including mood, attention, self-regulation and self-control, sleep, energy, and stress. Peak performance training is different from typical forms of Neurofeedback. Unlike most Neurofeedback where a person seeks treatment for a clinical problem (such as anxiety and depression), peak performance training is more about optimizing and enhancing one’s brain functioning. This is not necessary to reduce problems, but instead, it’s about reaching one’s full potential at work, in school, or in a certain sport or activity. This type of training can improve reaction times, spatial/motor skills, intelligence, attention, awareness, and creativity. Professional or competitive athletes, busy executives, musicians, and students are the most frequent individuals who want to optimize their performance level and seek this training.

Neurofeedback can allow you to gain a competitive edge. By identifying areas of the brain that contribute to a particular skill, your performance and functioning can be enhanced. This can include eliminating factors that affect performance (e.g., anxiety, muscle tension) and also improve various areas necessary to reach your peak performance (e.g., motivation, reaction time, focus, fine-tune skills). Whether you are an athlete, artist, or business executive, we identify what your goals are and the brain-based performance factors that we can target to improve your performance levels.

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health diagnoses and can be debilitating if left untreated. After an initial assessment in which we get a personalized brain map of a client, Neurofeedback can be used to target the underlying brain patterns that lead a person to experience enhanced levels of anxiety. Anxiety is the result of and results in an overactive brain.

For example, it is common in the brains of people with anxiety that the area responsible for emotional regulation can be underactive while the area responsible for fear and negative emotions can be overactive. This means that people with anxiety feel stress more acutely and have a harder time navigating between states of stress and calm. Neurofeedback uses neuroplasticity and operant conditioning to train these targeted areas of the brain to produce more calm brainwaves. With neurofeedback, the goal is to train the brain to slow down and operate in a more optimal zone of functioning. As the brain practices being in this more efficient zone of operation it begins to grow networks that help it regulate itself better when it is not practicing in the clinic. Over time this new zone of operation becomes the default or normal zone of operation.

The symptoms of anxiety progressively dissipate as the individual trains and the brain normalizes functions. Treatment with neurofeedback can lead to a dramatic reduction in symptoms of anxiety such as being less reactive to stress, greater emotional resilience, a feeling of being calmer, and a vast reduction of the physical symptoms of anxiety.

Most commonly people treat their anxiety with prescribed medication which can help relieve symptoms but it can be addictive, have negative side effects, and are a temporary solution. Neurofeedback isn’t addictive, rarely has side effects (no long-term side effects), and can promote permanent growth and changes within the brain.