Neurofeedback: Session #1
The doctor was in and ready for my appointment this time. I felt a little guilty for writing smack about the office in my last post so I made an extra effort to try and notice why I considered it cluttered. In looking around the conference room I realized that it really wasn’t messy at all, just the usual stuffs of any well-used office.
I was invited to sit in the egg chair. As soon as I eased back into the aural dead zone of the cocoon the doctor confirmed my suspicions that it was a modified stereo chair from a 1970’s Sharper Image catalog. I leaned forward while the doc glued-up electrodes for each side of my head just above my ears, and clipped a third ‘trode to my left earlobe explaining that it was the ground wire. A set of stereo headphones comfortably squeezing my head completed the wiring and I eased back into the egg in my favorite position for relaxation… slouched.
On the flat panel television in front of me the doc was queuing up what looked to be a video game. I got to pick my car make (Cobra), color (green), and starting track (mountain). For the next 10 minutes I just sat in my egg and watched the screen while the doctor scooted the mouse around outside the periphery of my vision. The car on the screen jumped around much like the cartoon antics of Mario Cart on the home Nintendo Wii. Finally the doctor announced a lock on the frequency that I would be sensitive to.
Without any instruction he started the ‘game’ and left me to my puzzle. I had a lot of thoughts running around my head, mostly what was happening and how it was beginning to re-map my neural pathways. As my mind wandered to different places the car would stop, crash into other cars, and sometimes the screen would fade to gray indicating that I wasn’t consciously in attendance. Amazingly I found the game strikingly accurate in response to my thoughts, even though I couldn’t consciously make the car travel predictably. It was obvious that there was subconscious calisthenics at work.
I finished the 3 or 4 laps of the mountain circuit and it queued up another course automatically. This time I was on snow and ice. The Cobra did most of the same maneuvers only with a different backdrop. The music in the headphones changed as well. Instead of the usually synthesized motor and metal sounds of a video race game, I listened to soothing instrumental music. The doctor checked on me after about 10 minutes and announced that I had another 10 minute exercise ahead. I really wanted to feel control of the game but at the same time realizing that ‘letting go’ was what made my car stay on the path in steady acceleration. There was definitely something my brain was learning with this exercise but I couldn’t articulate anything other than it was important.
After the final session the doctor removed the electrodes and swabbed the glue from the sides of my head with a sterile gauze. I mentioned the traffic in my head and the doctor confirmed from his vantage point of computerized charts and graphs that there was plenty of mental pollution going on. Besides the usual chaos in my head, there was a certain novelty I was fighting with as well. It’s not every day that; A) I’m up this early, and B) that I’m wired up to a video game that I’m controlling using only my brain waves.
I drove to work thinking about what I’d just experienced, and what did it possibly mean. No answers yet, but 49 sessions to go. There were no after effects except toward late morning I started getting a low-grade headache. I popped a couple Excedrin to move the pain from my head to my stomach. Nothing else noticeable other than returning to memory of my feedback session throughout the day, dreaming possibly of a future time when I could command my head to function with focus and concentration.
In: Depression · Tagged with: bi-polar, Depression, Neurofeedback, unable to concentrate