...Therapeutic Applications continued
The collective message is one of profound brain plasticity that allows us to teach the brain improved self-regulation. Whereas life for many of us has been a matter of accommodating to the limitations of body and mind, many of them getting worse as we age, through Neurofeedback we are discovering how much our own behavior, and our own capacities, can be placed under our own control and subject to systematic improvement.
Our capacity for the enhancement of brain function is in many ways greater than our capacity for enhancement of physical skills through exercise and training. The unused potential of our brains is vast by comparison to the improvement that might be in store for us through determined physical exercise. Much of this is a skill that just needs to be acquired once. From then on, the brain owns the skill even without continued Neurofeedback sessions. Then life, itself, becomes the reinforcer of good brain function as improved behaviors, moods and thoughts self-perpetuate.
How does training for better brain function help?
Better brain function raises the threshold for symptom expression. This is the case for the degenerative conditions, where brain-training may be able to move a person to the point where symptoms of dementia or Parkinson's may no longer be obtrusive, or they may be significantly reduced. This may also be a way of understanding efficacy for seizure disorder or migraine. The seizure focus remains, and migraine susceptibility may remain as well. But brain stability may have been enhanced to the point where neither occurs any more, or where incidence has been substantially reduced.
Better brain function eliminates the condition in question. This is our model for ADHD, for example, which is characterized behaviorally and for which no organic test exists. Better brain function in the attentional and behavioral realm may mean that the person at issue can no longer be diagnosed with the condition. The essence of ADHD is the disregulation of attentional function and of behavioral inhibition; improving brain function can therefore in principle constitute a categorical remedy.
One might make the same argument for garden-variety insomnia, as well as for mild depression and generalized anxiety. PMS is also a case in point. Collectively, these conditions could be referred to as "Disorders of Disregulation," in that brain-based disregulation is believed to be at the core of these conditions.
Better brain function improves one's tolerance to certain symptoms. This is the model for chronic pain, for example, where organic deficits have been identified in pain mechanisms. Nevertheless, brain training can allow a person to rise above the pain and to live a productive life even in the context of quite considerable pain.
The same argument could be made for someone who suffers functional disturbances post head-trauma, or someone who has suffered a stroke or a chemical injury. Brain training can improve function even without impinging upon the organic basis of the deficit.
