Your Neurofeedback Appointment - Brain Map 101

When you schedule your first neurofeedback appointment, our first order of business is to get what's called a Brain Map.  But what in the world is this Brain Map? Why do we need it?  Find out more about Brain Mapping on today's blog!

Functional brain mapping is an advanced way to quickly and effectively observe real time brain function. Unlike MRIs that measure the physical structure of your brain, functional brain maps use EEG technology, which records the electrical activity of your brain in real time. The EEG cap that we currently use has 19 different receptors. This allows us to get a full view of your brain’s activity, so that we can use this information to create a customized protocol for your neurofeedback training sessions.We focus on your brain ‘at rest’.  This is the foundation of your brain’s neurological functioning. Since we are measuring ‘at rest’, you won’t do any task or “testing” during the brain mapping. The real time electrical recordings of you at rest are transferred to the computer where they can be analyzed, mapped based on activation and be compared to a database of thousands of other Brain Maps.

The maps focus on the neurological function of an area, as well as the network-based connections between different brain regions. This allows us to see how well your brain communicates with itself.The brain map analysis looks at specific parts of the brain that have significant under or over-activation when compared with the database. These locations are the parts of the brain that can then be identified as potentially resulting in symptoms you are experiencing, such as anxiety, depression, or an area of brain injury that needs assistance in healing.

Once the specific abnormal regions are identified, we then look at the connections between regions. The brain is very complex and has areas dedicated to specific types of processing. All of the regions must be able to properly communicate between each other in order to adequately transfer information. Less-than-optimal connections and information sharing between regions can typically result in symptoms.

Applying both analyses of regions of the brain and connection between regions together, we get a full picture of the brain’s function. The brain function results are compared to a brain function database of a typical control population. The comparisons are matched with the proper database based of factors such as age and gender. Using this analysis, we can directly see what areas are functioning sub-optimally and contributing to your current symptoms. Using this information, as well as your personal experience with symptoms, we build a custom neurofeedback protocol focusing on correcting your specific neurological issues.

After you've completed your neurofeedback training sessions, we do a second brain map so that we can see in tangible ways how your brain's functioning has improved. The cool thing about neuorfeedback is that we have hard and fast, pre-and-post comparisons with these brain maps!

Are you ready to get a better, real-time, understanding of your brain’s functioning? Call Harper Therapy at 813-434-3639 for a free consultation.