Brainmapping 101 with Dr Jeffery Fannin,PhD

• Report rights infringement
• published: 05 Sep 2014
• views: 1851

Learn more about our Brainmapping and Neurofeedback Program http://iquim.org/programs/education/brainmapping-neurofeedback-certification/ This is Brainmapping 101. Let's kind of jump into it. One of the things we understand about brainmapping is it's a non-invasive procedure. I know it doesn't look like a non-invasive procedure here where we're trying to stick a needle in somebody's head. We're not actually putting that needle into their scalp. It’s a flat needle that is allowing for us to inject the gel through the electrode onto the scalp, and so it's a conductive gel that makes contact with the scalp. Once it makes contact with the scalp, that's what turns it into the EEG, or the Electroencephalogram, the squiggly lines that maybe you're familiar with. Now, when we are measuring the locations on the head, there is a system that we call the International 10-20 System. Each one of those electrodes will be placed where these circles are identifying those specific locations, and we won't get into a lot of detail, but just know that they are calibrated based upon the size of the cap and the size of the head of the person who is wearing the cap, and so you may see different colors of caps. A red cap is a medium-size cap. Most women's heads will fit into that category, and then blue is a larger cap. So there is no difference in the electrodes, just the cap that we're looking at. So to familiarize you with some of the frequencies that we are looking at, we’ll start in going up in levels of consciousness, if you will. Delta is… when Delta is dominant, it's usually in our sleeping patterns. Going up in that consciousness, the twilight drowsy state is what we call Theta. The more reflective, restful while we are alert but awake, we call Alpha. Our cognitive thinking, our busy mind activity is what we call Beta. And then for problem solving, concentration, those kinds of things, we get into the Gamma range. So when we look at a brain map, here are some of the things we're going to be measuring. We look at standard deviation. We're going to convert those squiggly lines into what we call a QEEG, a quantitative EEG, and so we're going to look at this scale that goes from minus three to plus three, and those are our standard deviations. So, when we look at a Gaussian distribution here, a bell curve if you will, those areas down here that are what we call a Z-score is the center part, from minus one to plus one. Then we have from minus one down to minus three, and then plus one to plus three. So there are colors that come up when we're looking at the Z-score, or the range in the middle. That's when we will see green activity on the brain map. As we go up to one and a half to two standard deviations above the EEG activity that is considered normal, then we'll see yellow or orange. When we get above 3 standard deviations, then we are going to see red in the quantitative EEG. On the other end of the scale, the lighter blue is going to be 2 standard deviations below what is considered normal, and dark blue will be 3.