Imagine an “exercise” for your brain. One that is non-invasive, has no negative side effects, and helps you improve performance, sleep, and focus, and reduce stress and anxiety — all while you relax. The NeuroRevival Center in McAllen offers neurofeedback sessions to “train the brain.” No diagnosis necessary — training your brain is available to everyone, and the benefits can be universal.
Neurofeedback, also known as EEG biofeedback, has been around since the 1950s when psychology professor Joe Kamiya discovered that, through feedback, people could learn to tell when they were producing alpha waves, which are associated with relaxation. He then learned to use sound cues, which people responded to by voluntarily entering into an alpha state. The idea that stress and stress-related conditions could be relieved through biofeedback became popular, and later on more scientists learned to use this technique to treat other conditions. From seizures to stress, depression, ADHD, and other diagnoses, neurofeedback continues to be a therapeutic approach which empowers people to manage their conditions with real results.
“Children, adolescents, and adults with seizure conditions, behavior disorders, attention deficits, autism, ongoing developmental delays, acquired brain injuries, birth trauma, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, stress-related problems, and insomnia or interrupted sleep patterns, as well as those with age-related cognitive loss, may find neurofeedback helpful,” Psychology Today explained. “Neurofeedback may also be used as an adjunct intervention with other forms of therapy.”
The NeuroRevival Center does not offer therapeutic services, but instead brain training to improve certain brain functions. This means that you do not need a diagnosis or a doctor’s order to receive this service, but instead may seek neurofeedback sessions with them on your own account as a way to train your brain. This also means that in order to use neurofeedback to address the above mentioned conditions, a licensed mental health professional trained in using neurofeedback equipment and programs would have to take your case and utilize this technology as a therapeutic intervention.
The Neurorevival Center offers neurofeedback sessions for brain training.
“Neurofeedback is considered a gentle, painless and non-invasive method of restoring balance within the Central Nervous System,” said Paulina Peña, advanced certified trainer by Zengar NeurOptima. The Central Nervous System integrates the information our bodies constantly receive, then coordinates and influences the activity of all parts of the body. Under certain stimuli or emotions, different brain areas become active. However, when there are underlying conditions such as ADHD, trauma, or chronic stress, there may be impediments in function or abnormal brain activity that further affect how we function daily. Studies have shown the effectiveness of neurofeedback in helping to reorganize or retrain those brain signals to regulate and improve brain function.
Neurofeedback sessions are straightforward at the NeuroRevival Center.
“We place sensors on the scalp and through the use of conductive paste, the brain wave activity is collected and sent to an amplifier that changes the voltage into numbers,” Peña said. She further explains that those numbers are translated by another computer into brainwave frequencies. Each brainwave frequency is related to a state of arousal: delta waves are associated with sleep, theta with drowsiness, alpha waves with relaxation, beta with active thinking, and high beta with excitement, etc. Via visual and/or auditory cues, a person learns to enter into the functional brainwave to perform optimally, adjusting as needed.
Using NeurOptimal technology, neurofeedback sessions at the Neurorevival Center may help you enhance your learning capacity by feeling more alert, focused, and calm, manage rest with more restful sleep and waking refreshed and recharged, improve your ability to cope with life’s daily challenges, improve executive functioning and mood, and can even help with aging and brain fitness, and achieve your athletic goals by decreasing sport anxiety.
“NeurOptimal is a fully automated non-invasive neurofeedback system safe for all ages,” Peña said.
Whether you are seeking to explore a different technology that improves brain function, or looking to try a new method to address certain problem areas in your day-to-day function, neurofeedback is available for all ages. The positive effects of neurofeedback have been recorded for several decades now, and although it is widely used as a therapeutic approach to treat certain conditions, its effects can benefit those seeking to train their brain for optimal function. As a non-invasive treatment, you get to sit back and relax (literally) as your brain sends and receives data that help it improve performance.
The NeuroRevival Center is located at 2091 W. State Hwy 107, United #938, McAllen.
This article does not constitute medical advice. Anyone seeking to treat a medical or psychological diagnosis should seek the help of a licensed mental health professional trained in using this technology.
