NeurOptimal® is a non-linear Dynamical Neurofeedback™ system and is designed to focus on the central nervous system – training the entire brain in a “holistic” nature. NeurOptimal is the most highly effective form of brain training that can unlock untapped cognitive potential and help you achieve long held goals and dreams. “It is completely noninvasive and nondirective because it is based on the understanding of how the brain works as well as how the brain is best optimized. Your brain is capable of optimal functioning, but when your central nervous system is off-kilter your brain operates inefficiently and is disorganized fashion.
Neurofeedback is a methodology whereby the brain is trained to regulate itself at its optimal level. Every brain has the potential to optimize itself, if given the right information.” (1)
The NeurOptimal® system, developed by Zengar Institute, is designed to train the brain as a whole, without reference to a particular location or frequencies. Unlike classical neurofeedback approaches, in which the client engages actively and/or consciously with the software and is rewarded for producing prescribed brainwave patterns, clients in the NeurOptimal® approach simply “let’s go” and allow the brain to use the feedback – provided as brief interruptions to the music he or she is hearing – to enable its own innate brain capacity for self-organization.
The feedback delivered by NeurOptimal is systemic – based on the whole brain’s dynamic activity over time, not its achievement of prescribed states for prescribed locations (as in classical neurofeedback).
This approach recognizes that the brain has natural tendencies toward self-regulation and resilience, allowing flexible cognitive and behavioral responses to a challenging and changing environment. The brain is always seeking its highest and best good in the training.
What Happens in a Session?
Because there is no diagnosis required for this form of neurofeedback, and no specific protocols developed on the basis of diagnosis, this approach – NeurOptimal– is considered to be training the brain in flexibility and resilience rather than treating particular symptoms. The NeurOptimal neurofeedback system is rooted in an understanding of the brain as a non–linear dynamical system. Practically, a single sensor on each hemisphere of the brain is placed at the right and left side of the brain (central nervous strip of the brain). These sensors simultaneously analyze the activity at eight clusters of frequency within each hemisphere of the brain. And by doing so, is able to retrain the entire brain in “real time”.
The clients sit quietly, listening to soothing music via earbuds. Brief interruptions in the music site signal to the participant that the software is providing feedback in real time. The client does not need to respond in any active way to the feedback or even attend to it consciously. The brain – a complex of adaptive system – uses the feedback for its own process to self-organize without reliance on conscious intervention for it higher good.