NeurOptimal® and the brain adapt to each other second by second, dynamically adjusting their path based on what the other has just done

How it Works

During a neurofeedback session, you listen to music or watch a movie. The music or movie plays continuously when your brain is running “on course” (whatever that course is for your brain) but as soon as NeurOptimal® detects that your brain has “veered off” its path or has become less stable than what it just was, feedback is provided to the brain through a very brief pause in the sound.

By offering your brain this information, NeurOptimal® gives the the brain opportunity to adapt in response to the information, which then provides yet new and different information for NeurOptimal® to mirror back. Like a dance, NeurOptimal® and the brain adapt to each other, dynamically adjusting their path based on what the other has just done.

Different than Traditional Neurofeedback

This dynamic perspective is different from traditional neurofeedback systems. Those systems require an expert to diagnose ahead, sometimes with what is called a brain map, which is a decision on which direction the practitioner feels the brain needs to be moved as a result of a static picture taken days or weeks earlier. These are called protocols. Diagnosing and then treating in this way is actually an awkward and slow feedback loop from our perspective that does not offer the on-going “self-correction” that naturally happens as part of the brain’s dance with itself.

With NeurOptimal® your brain is simply interacting adaptively with itself moment by
moment, not striving to produce "more" of some frequency and "less" of another according to an outside “expert”. While those kinds of changes may be observed, they occur as part of an intrinsic self-organizing principle rather than an artificially imposed constraint. This is a large part of both the inherent power and safety of NeurOptimal® and how it invites seamless change.