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The Hart Center Product Line, be sure to
ask about them:
Rebalance - Anxiety, Depression
Reenergize - Seasonal Affective Disorder Conditions
Remember - Memory
Sensitivity Balance - Acute Sinus Conditions
Lyme Treatment - Chronic Condition of Lyme
Tick Balance - Tick bite infections
more being created.... and all are organic and kosher.
HEMOENCEPHALOGRAPHIC (HEG) NEUROFEEDBACK IS
NOW AVAILABLE AT ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE CENTERS
INTRODUCTION
Hemoencephalographic (HEG)
devices measure and feed back blood flow levels in the brain. When a
trainee is made aware of ongoing blood flow levels in a neurofeedback
setting, it has been shown that the trainee can use a focused state of
concentration and create increases in brain blood flow levels.
Although these are relatively new devices, increases in brain blood
flow via HEG neurofeedback (HEG NF) have already shown significant
clinical benefits, especially in the areas of migraine, depression and
ADHD.
Blood is nutritious and healthy for all cell functioning. Increasing
blood flow levels where they are needed in the brain is like boosting
the octane level of your gasoline at the pump. Repeatedly engaging in
HEG NF appears to "exercise" the brain in a unique way with very
promising benefits.
EEG neurofeedback (EEG NF) measures
brain electrical activity and also increases blood flow at the site
trained (which is one of the reasons it works), but it does so
indirectly. However, HEG NF increases blood flow more directly since
it uses passive infrared (pIR) technology for its measurement.
By its very nature, the measurement
of EEG brain electrical activity is considered relatively messy,
electronically noisy and more susceptible to artifact (errors) from
intruding, non-EEG signals (e.g., muscle tension in the scalp, face,
jaws, eyes, eye movements, breathing & EKG heart signals).
On the other hand, pIR HEG measures
thermal (e.g., heat) conditions in the brain that are highly
correlated with blood flow dynamics and cellular metabolism. In
contrast to EEG, pIR HEG measurements are considered clean,
electronically quiet and not at all susceptible to the same artifacts
as EEG measurements. Special pre-post SPECT imaging techniques verify
that blood flow increases do, in fact, occur with HEG NF.
With pIR HEG NF, there are no
electrodes, no messy gels and no impedance criteria for skin contact.
A simple, dry headset device is used for HEG NF. Again, there are no
problems with eye blinking, eye movements, EKG cardiac signals or
other muscle artifact, since HEG does not measure electrical activity.
The only drawback is that pIR HEG
cannot measure through human hair. As such, the most common three
sites used for HEG NF are left forehead (FP1), center forehead (FPz)
and right forehead (FP2). These locations wrap around the pre-frontal
cortex lobes of the brain.
At first glance, one might conclude
that HEG measurements are very limited, since the pre-frontal cortex
is only one of six total bilateral lobes in the brain. However, the
prefrontal (forehead) lobes mediate some of the most advanced forms of
thinking and cognitive activity that we engage in as human beings. In
particular, the pre-frontal lobes host the "executive attention
networks" that mediate states of sustained focused concentration. The
prefrontal lobes are very often a target area for EEG NF in ADHD and
other neurobehavioral disorders.
Quantitative EEG (QEEG) topographic
brain maps often identify the prefrontal lobes as dysfunctional or
even "disconnected" from the rest of the brain through the presence of
excessive slow wave activity vs. desirable fast wave activity.
Moreover, engagement of the prefrontal lobes is required in order to
sustain cognitive activity requiring complex thinking, concentration,
emotional tone and general arousal.
Further, activation of the
prefrontal lobes appears to be necessary to succeed in EEG NF there
and elsewhere on the scalp and exercising the prefrontal cortex seems
to improve many auto-regulatory functions of the brain. That may be
why HEG NF shows such clinical promise. Finally, since the prefrontal
lobes mediate so many complex, auto-regulatory brain functions, they
would seem to be the best choice of all brain lobes to be the target
for HEG training.
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