Showing posts with label neurons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neurons. Show all posts

Friday, October 8, 2010

My Journey Into LENS Neurofeedback

My Journey Into LENS Neurofeedback

In December of ’09 I began investigating LENS (Low Energy Nerve Stimulation) Neurofeedback by going to LA to shadow my friend, Dr David Dubin. He has been working with neurofeedback for over four years, and LENS, specifically, for the past two. His enthusiasm and stories of dramatic and fast results in treating patient with significant problems piqued my curiosity. And so, my journey into LENS began.
I followed-up my first trip with a second. Between trips I read two books, The Healing Power of Neurofeedback and The Symphony in the Brain. I also downloaded and read everything I could find on LENS. The more I read the more intrigued I became. I recall saying aloud; ‘If half of this is true, it is incredible.” The results far surpasses any medical, psychiatric, psychological and alternative treatments for conditions that are difficult to treat at best, and often remain refractory to all care; all, without drugs and barely with any active participation on the part of the patient.
How could that be?
On both trips I interviewed Dr Dubin’s patients. It was hard to believe, but 100% reported positive improvement in a very short time with problems that had been longstanding and resistant to a whole spectrum of lifetime therapies. I also interviewed two psychotherapists who referred patients for LENS. One even caught herself saying; “I guess I could say that I lost a long-term patient to David, as he got better.”
So, here I am in LA to begin my training, with Len Ochs, PhD himself (the creator of the technology) to become a certified LENS Neurofeedback practitioner. I really could not be more excited about the possibilities I will have to help people improve their lives by reclaiming their health.
This seems like a natural next step for me as my interest and reading, for the past 2-3 years has been focused primarily on the brain. And, while I am in awe of the human body as a whole, the brain is, perhaps, the most wonderful and extraordinary achievement of evolution.
While it is astonishing and fascinating for instance, that the stomach specializes in digestion and the lungs in oxygen exchange, the mechanisms are easily understood in terms of anatomy and physiology. The brain, on the other hand, composed of over 100 billion neurons with trillions and trillions of connections is far from easily understood, It is essentially ‘a three pound gelatinous hunk of thinking, conscious, loving, dreaming meat,’ the source of our humanness.
The brain undergoes a miraculous embryological development in only 9 months to a level of structural and physiological complexity that boggles the mind. Combined with its role in basal survival mechanisms, its capacity for limitless conscious and sub-conscious interpretations of its interactions with the environment and other beings, and its vulnerability to injury, it is nothing less than amazing that we’re not all dysfunctional. Perhaps we are, but to varying degrees.
As such, we can all benefit from LENS.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Brain Renewal (Guest Column)











Brain Renewal: A NewApproach
David Dubin, MD
Is it possible to renew the brain? We used to believe that the adult brain’s ability to change was very limited; that we were born with a set amount of neurons and once we reached adulthood that number did not change. Over the last ten years, however, this view has changed dramatically.
We now know that there is no time in our lives when substantial renewal cannot occur. Not only can we increase the connections among the existing brain cells and form new pathways, but we are able to actually grow new neurons.
This changing of neurons, the organization of their networks and function via new experiences is called neuroplasticity. However, most efforts demonstrating neuroplasticity have required a great deal of time and effort: extensive rehabilitation after a stroke, acquiring a new language or learning a musical instrument.
But there is an exciting new way the brain can renew itself without prolonged exertion, called LENS (Low Energy Neurofeedback System). In fact, with LENS you hardly have to do anything at all. LENS is a passive system, where the participant does not try to change any brain wave and does not feel or know when the incredibly short neurofeedback session is even being given. Other than closing her eyes, the patient does not do anything at all.
Over the last ten years, this new system has been helping with all types of difficult health problems. With a few sensors, we feed back to the brain the very same brain waves that various areas of the brain are emitting and adding the slightest amount of change, called an offset. Then, over a number sessions (averaging between 10 and 20, with a typical session lasting half hour or less), the brain self-regulates and minimizes its dysfunction.
It is as if someone pushed the brain’s restart button, getting it out of stuck patterns and allowing the brain to begin anew. That translates to thinking better, feeling better, and sleeping better. Anxiety, panic attacks and post traumatic stress decrease or disappear entirely; depressive thoughts lighten up; foggy, cloudy thinking gets clearer; headaches are reduced or eliminated. Even emotional issues may be brought to the surface and released, freeing the person in that dimension. Neurofeedback is as effective as Ritalin for ADD and currently the single most effective treatment for traumatic brain injury.
So, to answer the question asked in the first sentence of this article, the brain is able to renew itself, and in truly profound ways.
*Dr. Dubin is one of only a few hundred LENS practitioners worldwide.
THE BRAIN
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
Emily Dickinson (1830–86)