One of the rewarding aspects of doing neurofeedback comes from comparing a “before and after ” set of Brain Maps. In this case we are presuming that someone got a brainmap before doing any brain training, and then another after doing a significant round of it.
The “map” will include all kinds of data, some of it represented visually, some more as lists of correlations with functions, some as specific locations in the brain. We know the meaning of all these variables, but no one, no one anywhere knows all the information about how they relate to each other, how one affects another.
There’s no possibility of looking at all the interrelationships between all the variables.
If you try, you quickly get in over your head, said organ swimming with just too much information.
Thus you need to step back and make choices – what is most relevant, which relationships seem to be the most pertinent?
As you look at all the evidence in front of you that a living brain, a complex self regulating system, has responded to the demands placed on it by brain training, it has moved certain things one way, and other things another way. It’s an amazing orchestration way more than it is a shepparding. You nudge the brain in a direction, seeking to bring greater balance and functional integration. This complex system, with layers and layers of regulation, of compensation, of communication from level to level responds in ways that we cannot predict.
But, in taking in key variables, and key changes that you are seeing, you can begin to hear the story of where the compensations and the movements are going. How is one area shifting one way, to allow another area to adjust in another? What does it all mean…
The greatest experts would listen deeply to this story and seek to extract meaning – what all good stories give us. Here we have the stories of the neurons – as they join together into vast nets, vast oscillating rhythms of communication and function. And maybe, just maybe we can make out the story.
Maybe something like overall mood is improving, one area of memory is better, another is unchanged,some areas have slowed down, allowing another to focus more clearly. Certain bedrock functional tendencies are largely unchanged, but the system has the flexibility to change layers of response and function anyway. That’s a story I can sink my teeth into, a complex story that shows change as we manage to come to understanding.
Neurons! Organelles! Perception networks – Tell me a story; let me dig deep into your pictures and rhythms. Show me what is changing, and improving. Let me understand the complexities.
