Last year journalist Katie Drummond, of The Daily, interviewed Staff Sgt. Justin Roberts, who suffers from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) about his experience with neurofeedback.  
Katie also did her own neurofeedback session with Sue Othmer, of EEGInfo.

Neurofeedback can help reduce the anxiety clients with PTSD experience, because it helps the brain learn to regulate itself by showing the brain a mirror of itself.  Check out this post for more on how neurofeedback works.

It is so exciting to see neurofeedback showing up more and more in mainstream media.  Check this video out for another perspective on neurofeedback for PTSD.  Let me know in the comment section what you think of the video in the comment section.

Nikki Schwartz is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Oaktree and focuses on using neurofeedback, play, and talk therapies to provide practical, effective counseling to families and clients.

When our brains are over or underaroused, we have trouble focusing and concentrating, planning our day, regulating our moods, attitudes, and motivation.  So, what is a neurotherapist?  And what do they do?

A neurotherapist helps calm the brain by reading a client's brain waves, or EEG, and uses that information to create "feedback" as part of a video game to show the brain what the brain is doing.

Information on brainwave activity is fed into the computer and is used to control elements of a video game, such as the speed of the spaceship moving through the tunnel.  The video game uses the brainwave activity to adjust the speed of the spaceship, the amount of exhaust smoke, the volume of the video game music, and the visibility of the screen.

When the brain sees that it is controlling what is happening on the screen, usually after a few minutes, it will use that "feedback" to adjust it's own activity to be more calm, more stable, and better regulated.

According to Sigfried Othmer, in this video from EEGInfo, the brain spends most of it's time focused on itself and it's own activity.  The brain seeks to control the outside world and quickly recognizes that it is impacting the activity on the screen.  It can use the information to regulate it's own activity.

This is a learning process, so the brain is able to regulate itself based on the training provided by the neurotherapist through the neurofeedback process.

Nikki Schwartz is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Oaktree and focuses on using neurofeedback, play, and talk therapies to provide practical, effective counseling to families and clients.