There are a few different types of neurofeedback. The system that best suits a client’s needs is individual to their brainmapping and symptoms being experienced.
Frequency/Power Neurofeedback
The most commonly used form of neurofeedback is frequency/power neurofeedback (Marzbani, 2016). Two to four electrodes are hooked up to a specific site on the head that has been shown to be problematic on a brainmapping. At the sites, specific brainwaves/frequencies are chosen to be uptrained or down trained (depending on whether you produce too little or too much of a specific brainwave).
Once these frequencies have been regulated, most clients report reduced symptoms of why they sought out treatment in the first place (ADHD, anxiety, depression, OCD, sleep, etc.)
LORETA Neurofeedback
A more intense version of neurofeedback is LORETA neurofeedback. LORETA incorporates frequency/power neurofeedback into it and includes a few more elements.
Traditional frequency/power neurofeedback reads brainwaves being emitted at the surface of the scalp/cortex and bases treatment off of this. LORETA (low-resolution electromagnetic tomography) neurofeedback uses an algorithm to convert raw surface EEG signals into 3D LORETA images.
This creates a 3D depiction of the brain, allowing treatment to go beyond surface training and target areas not discovered by surface level treatment. The brain is more accurately defined in LORETA training- into 3D regions like the amygdala, thalamus, hippocampus, cerebellum and segments called Brodmann areas that cover the whole brain. On top of training the frequency/power of these brain regions, LORETA neurofeedback also helps train something called coherence and phase.
Rather than focusing on the activation/inhibition of brain waves like frequency/power training does, coherence focuses on the amount of communication happening between different regions of the brain. All the different regions of the brain (amygdala, thalamus, etc.) communicate to each other. Sometimes they are communicating too much or too little with each other. LORETA neurofeedback can detect problem areas of coherence and help train them towards balanced communication and synchronicity.
Phase refers to the ability and speed of energy in one part of the brain to move and arrive at another part of the brain in a timely manner to complete a specific task. Someone who has OCD experiences phase issues- they get stuck on a task and are unable to complete it in a timely matter because phase it out of synch.
By regulating phase through LORETA neurofeedback, the brain can learn to function in a more efficient manner reducing symptoms related to phase dysfunction. The combination of frequency/power training, coherence training and phase training makes LORETA neurofeedback a very powerful intervention. It is full cap (19 channels or more) and learned through Z-score training.
What is Z-score training?
The clients brainwaves are compared to a normative database of brainwaves (a group of people the same gender and age as the client who don’t suffer from any form of ADHD, OCD, Depression, Sleep disorders, etc.) and trained towards this normative database.
The training happens through operant conditioning- usually the client will watch a movie or screen during session and is rewarded every time their brain is functioning closer to the norm through the screen going bright. When their brain is not doing what it needs to do and is deviating from the norm, the screen goes dim.
Over time and with enough sessions, the brain learns how to regulate and obtain more rewards- making the screen become bright more and more. With most cases, once brain regulation is learned (the amount of time this takes depends on the severity of the case), the brain no longer needs the screen and sessions to function optimally (aside from the occasional tune-up session).