Neurofeedback is an innovative approach to help people deal with many of today’s most common mental health challenges. This unique treatment modality integrates neuroscientific research, advanced technologies, and behavioral intervention techniques to help people cope with their symptoms and start living better lives in recovery.

A frequent application of this advanced technology involves anxiety and stress management. However, understanding how this treatment method can help you overcome mental health challenges requires first learning about the technology, science, and interventions that all work together in this unique treatment modality.

What Is Neurofeedback? Components and Technologies

Neurofeedback is a treatment method that helps people understand and modify their brainwave activity in real-time. To accomplish this task, neurofeedback uses advanced, non-invasive technologies that monitor and display brain activity, as well as behavioral interventions to help people modify their mental state.

How Brain Mapping Works

At Plus by APN, neurofeedback treatment starts with a technique known as quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG), or brain mapping. Essentially, qEEG can provide a measurable map of your brain’s electrical activity.

Starting with qEEG means that you and our team can first measure your brain’s baseline electrical state, identify problem areas that can be targeted through neurofeedback intervention, and track your progress in treatment over time.

While qEEG may sound complicated, it’s a very simple process. Clients simply place a specialized cap equipped with electrodes onto their heads, which monitor the brain’s activity and reveal areas that may be underactive or overactive. This is a completely non-invasive process and only takes a short time to complete.

The resulting map provides important information for neurofeedback treatment. Following treatment, a repeat of the qEEG brain mapping process can provide detailed information about how you’ve progressed.

Understanding Neurofeedback

Neurofeedback itself uses a similar process to the qEEG brain mapping. Clients place a different cap onto their heads, which monitors their brain wave activity in real-time, and can view this information on a screen displayed in front of them.

Neurofeedback can detect up to five different brain waves, each of which has a unique set of characteristics and associated effects. Clients can then learn with practical experience how these different brain waves influence their mood, anxiety, stress, or relaxation. Further, with the help of our mental health treatment team, you can learn to control your brain’s activity through conscious and deliberate effort. There are five different brain waves detected in neurofeedback.

Gamma Brain Waves

Your gamma brain waves are the fastest type of brain wave detected. These brain waves tend to be associated with activities such as:

  • Learning
  • Problem-solving
  • Focus

Gamma brain waves are generally detected when people are deeply focused on a particular problem, engrossed in a learning process, or performing intense mental work. These brain waves occur when people are highly alert, and learning to tap into these brain waves can help boost your productivity and ability to learn new topics.

Beta Brain Waves

Beta brain waves are slower than gamma waves, but faster than the other types of waves. Like gamma waves, beta waves are associated with activities such as:

  • Concentration
  • Problem-solving
  • Focus

However, beta brain waves are typically observed in less mentally intense efforts. You can think of beta brain waves as being indicative of an alert and productive state, but not necessarily implicating deep or engrossing focus.

Beta brain waves are often seen while people are socializing, playing sports, or paying attention to something in their environment.

As beneficial as these brain waves may sound, certain ranges of beta brain waves are associated with elements of anxiety and stress as well. People who are experiencing anxiety symptoms such as racing thoughts or fear often show elevated beta brain waves.

Learning to modulate these brain waves through conscious effort can help you tap into focused concentration when necessary but step away if this transitions into a series of anxious or stressful thoughts.

Alpha Brain Waves

Alpha brain waves are slower still, falling in the middle of the five brain waves detected in neurofeedback. These waves are produced when people are awake but in a more calm and restful state.

Alpha brain waves are often detected when people engage in activities such as:

  • Meditation
  • Daydreaming
  • Relaxing
  • Creative pursuits

Learning to increase your alpha waves with neurofeedback can help you tap into this more relaxed state, which can provide incredible relief for people experiencing stress and anxiety.

Theta Brain Waves

Theta brain waves are the second slowest brain wave detected with neurofeedback instruments. These waves are typically associated with sleep and dreaming or deeply relaxed mental states. You can experience theta waves while awake, but people who show high levels of theta waves while awake typically report feeling tired or sluggish.

Learning to increase theta waves can be a useful tool for helping relieve anxiety, falling asleep, and cultivating deep relaxation at command.

Delta Brain Waves

The final set of brain waves are the slowest and are called delta brain waves. Delta brain waves are associated with deep sleep states and are almost never detected while awake.

How the Neurofeedback Process Works

Exploring the different technologies that neurofeedback uses and the types of electrical brain activity they detect is key. However, neurofeedback itself involves much more than simply mapping the brain and displaying current brain wave activity. Instead, it focuses on helping people alter and control their brain state through deliberate effort.

Our treatment team uses several different techniques to help people learn to control and modulate their brain waves. For example, you may hear certain tones associated with a desired brain state and focus on raising the pitch of the tone through mental effort.

Other techniques may involve playing a game on a computer screen with just your brain activity or increasing the brightness of a light source with certain desired brain waves.

Regardless of the specific way you prefer to interpret your brain waves with your senses, our team will walk you through specific strategies to cultivate different brain states. For people with anxiety and stress, this might include:

  • Increasing alpha wave activity to promote relaxation
  • Increasing beta wave activity to promote concentration
  • Decreasing beta wave activity to reduce the symptoms of anxiety or stress
  • Increasing theta wave activity to promote sleep

Specific strategies by our team of providers help you learn to alternate between different brain states, and with training and positive reinforcement, you can learn to shift your brain’s electrical activity without any specialized technologies required.

Neurofeedback Benefits for Anxiety and Stress Management

Neurofeedback can be thought of as having a personal trainer for your mind. Rather than lifting weights, your treatment team helps you to build your capacity to control your own mental state.

The ultimate goal of neurofeedback is to help you cultivate these skills for the outside world. Neurofeedback is not meant to be an in-the-moment tool for stress or anxiety relief, but rather a conditioning course to help you manage life’s stressors more easily on your own, outside of your treatment sessions.

An abundance of evidence has shown that participating in neurofeedback can have positive mental health benefits and may even help many people recover from anxiety or chronic stress altogether. Additionally, these changes have proven to be incredibly durable, meaning that you can get the long-lasting relief you need for your personal well-being.

Neurofeedback and Anxiety

In a study investigating the effects of neurofeedback on people with generalized anxiety disorders, a group of participants underwent ten neurofeedback sessions focused specifically on promoting alpha wave activity. Researchers investigated their overall anxiety severity and the number of depressive symptoms they experienced.

Participants were placed into two groups, each focusing on a different neurofeedback target region: one targeting the left parietal lobe, and one targeting the right parietal lobe. In both groups, anxiety and depression scores dropped substantially throughout treatment, and symptoms further improved for weeks after the intervention was over.

Specifically, the left parietal lobe group’s average anxiety scores dropped from an average of 47.15 to an average of 35.5 four weeks after neurofeedback was completed. For the right parietal lobe group, average anxiety scores dropped from 44.92 to 29.85.

These improvements align closely with the expected changes in anxiety, considering the role of alpha waves in promoting more relaxing states of mind. By learning to enter these more calm, relaxing states at will, people living with anxiety disorders can find tangible relief in their daily lives.

Neurofeedback for Stress Management

The same theoretical underpinnings of how neurofeedback can support people in recovery from anxiety disorders apply to stress management. By focusing on cultivating alpha wave activity, you can create a sense of calm, restoration, and stress relief.

Interventions for stress management typically include exercises such as deep breathing and muscle relaxation, which can help promote these alpha brain waves. Further, people with high stress levels can learn to identify how they experience stressful situations — usually indicated by elevated beta wave activity — and how to avoid activating future beta wave increases while under a state of stress.

Neurofeedback as Part of a Comprehensive Mental Health Treatment Plan

As effective as neurofeedback is, it is not a universal cure for stress or anxiety. Thankfully, neurofeedback doesn’t have to be the only approach you take to achieving mental health wellness.

Since neurofeedback is a non-invasive, medication-free approach, it can be paired with a number of different mental health treatment methods to further enhance the improvements you experience during treatment. Some common mental health treatment options to pair with neurofeedback include:

By combining neurofeedback with one or more of these other mental health treatment interventions, you can work on overcoming your anxiety or stress through several different channels.

For example, neurofeedback can be an important tool to help yourself calm down when feeling overwhelmed, while tools learned in talk therapy can help you change the way you think about a situation, respond in response to stress, and interact with the people around you.

Taken together, these make up a powerful and comprehensive approach to overcoming nearly any mental health challenge. Even if you’ve lived with anxiety and stress for years, there is true hope for you to achieve a lasting and enjoyable recovery.

Start Anxiety Treatment at Plus by APN Today

When you’re living with a mental health challenge, it can be difficult to take the first steps toward recovery. At Plus by APN, our team is dedicated to making the process as simple and effective as possible by offering different evidence-based treatment approaches and emphasizing compassionate support at every step of your journey.

To speak to our team, call 424.644.6486, fill out our confidential online contact form, or use the live chat function on our website to get more information about starting neurofeedback treatment today.

References

  • “Neurofeedback Training Improves Anxiety Trait and Depressive Symptom in GAD.” Wiley, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/brb3.1561/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.
  • Ruths, Florian. “Neurofeedback for Stress Management.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 2 Jan. 2018, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/principles-and-practice-of-stress-management-3rd-edn-edited-by-paul-m-lehrer-robert-l-woolfolk-and-wesley-e-sime-guilford-press-2007-721pp-us8500-hb-isbn-9781593850005/AEBAA118F7270456D7EFB8AE8DC80786.