Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast

From EEG Waves to Personalized Care: How Brain Mapping Targets Anxiety, Focus, and Recovery

• Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 4

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What Does A Typical Neurotherapy Session Look Like?

Your brain has a pattern—and a plan. We open the hood on EEG brain mapping and show how raw waves become a clear, personalized roadmap for healing, performance, and peace of mind. From the cap and 19-channel setup to the screen full of live signals, we make the tech tangible and explain how it guides targeted neuromodulation that actually sticks.

We walk through the core frequency bands—delta for restoration, theta for creative drift, alpha as the bridge between subconscious and conscious, and beta for focus and vigilance—and connect them to real symptoms: brain fog, anxious overdrive, word-finding glitches, and hypervigilance that lingers after trauma. You’ll hear how meditation paints beautiful alpha on an EEG, why high beta can trap you in alert mode, and how we nudge networks back into balance so you can switch gears on demand. We also talk candidly about a personal marker at F7 that affects language retrieval, illustrating how precise placement and frequency choices speed up sluggish regions or soothe overactive areas.

If you’re curious about results, we detail two paths: weeklong intensives with two sessions per day and rapid remapping to verify change, and standard schedules that remap after 15–20 sessions. Along the way we pair cortical training with vagus nerve stimulation to bolster parasympathetic tone, track symptoms like sleep and focus, and taper once gains hold. The goal isn’t endless appointments; it’s durable self-regulation and a brain that remembers how to balance itself. Whether you’re a high performer, a trauma survivor, or simply tired of your mind working against you, this guide shows how data-driven neurotherapy turns measurement into momentum.

Ready to see your own roadmap? Subscribe, share this with someone who needs calmer days or sharper thinking, and leave a review to tell us what you want your brain to do next.

To learn more about Transformative Neurotherapy visit:
https://www.TransformativeNeurotherapy.org
Transformative Neurotherapy
570 Lincoln Ave.
Bellevue, PA 15202
412-204-7397

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with your host, Dr. Heather Button, founder and executive director of Transformative Neurotherapy. This is the place where healing happens faster. Because let's face it, your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual until now. Here we take a holistic approach to brain health, bringing together science, mind-body harmony, and the tools you need to optimize your well-being. Whether you're a high performer, executive, athlete, longevity hacker, or just someone tired of your brain working against you, Dr. Putney is here to help you unlock your full potential. From brain fog to chronic stress, we're covering it all. So you can finally experience brain health, mind harmony, and total well-being. Ready to get on stock? Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01:

EEG mapping turns brain waves into personalized roadmaps for healing and performance. Dr. Putney explains how. Welcome everyone. I'm Millie M., co-host and producer here in the studio, Dr. Heather Putney, founder and executive director of transformative neurotherapy. How are you, Dr. Putney?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm doing well.

SPEAKER_01:

Mouthful for me sometimes. Excited to be back with you today. Tell us how does EEG mapping personalize treatment?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, um, EEG mapping, so EEG is called an electroencephalogram, which is, you know, kind of a big mouthful in of itself. But basically what it means is um I'm gonna show you my fun little cap here. And this is what we use to collect an EEG. That's the back of it. It looks pretty similar either way. But um, I'm even gonna slide it on so you can kind of see what we what we do. But if you can see that there's these little circles right here, and those are going to go to specific parts of my head. So I'll move this around. We use what's called a 1020 system, and it's let's see, there's little beautiful little ear clips as well that it will replace these earrings where we're actually doing it, and it collects information from these 19 channels, which is this beautiful rainbow cord, and we plug it into the computer, and then it can analyze each of these channels individually. And so these have a little metal circle here, and we put an electro gel in the little, you know, in the little thing. This is like a blunt tip needle. So it just goes in the canal, puts a little squirt of electroconductive gel that helps collect the electrical activity from the scalp of my brain up into that little disc, into the wire, into the computer, and lets us look at what's going on in each of these little spots of the brain.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then, and then what we can do is really high-end mathematics and computation, which can help us triangulate based on the different parts of the brain and kind of figure out what's going on different in different spots. So if you want to cue that the screen that we talked about before that we showed right before this, this is kind of what what the raw data looks like. And this is actually a picture of my brain. So these are just each of these 19 little channels, those little circles that we saw, and this is the data that's collected. And this little, this one at the very bottom that looks like this, that's we also collect your heart rate. So we're trying to connect, uh see how your your your brain and your heart and how cohesive it is, and heart rate variability, so we can track all of that. And so, kind of as we go through, this is just kind of a little bit of what that can look like. Are those your thoughts? Um, it's not quite that simple, but our thoughts are conveyed and there are different things at different times. And we even see a little bit of this is called artifact, where I actually blinked in the EEG. Some of this will get when we when we actually clean it up uh computationally, it'll it'll kind of snip up the eye blinks and some of the other like when we swallow or whatnot. But yeah, I just showed you what it looks like raw. Then what happens? I'm gonna click on another one, is then we throw it through the computer and we can see what's happening at each of these different channels, and it maps to kind of like each of those little spots of the, you know, of the head. So, and we can see, you know, a kind of a balance of frequencies that you know that is happening in different areas. And I actually, you know, have a little thing going on right here, which happens with the to map with word finding. Um, it's a genetic thing that my family has. My mom has the same marker, and it's something that we've been working with a little bit. But yeah, this shows you some of the different activity in the head. And then we also can analyze it like this and kind of see, you know, what's going on, what the speed of which the the brain is processing information, if anything is out of sync, like and like I said, it doesn't have to be super serious, but there can be even little pieces that the brain's just not, you know, you know, functioning optimally and can still do a little bit of work.

SPEAKER_01:

So these waves and these changes and and this data all comes together, and that's how you formulate your treatment for someone. So, how does that data translate into um how you treat a patient?

SPEAKER_00:

So basically, what like I said, we kind of put that raw data in and it also, you know, we can compute it to kind of target the different areas. And based off of that, so like I show that my my brain has a little bit of irregulase at the F7, it just runs a little slow. So, word finding, sometimes you might hear it here. I hear, I know the word it's on the tip of my tongue, and it doesn't always come out. You know, that's just like that part is just not running optimally. And so, you know, we could do some treatment, and I have done some treatment and it works better, but it's still that's actually some genetic wiring on my part. So, what we would do is we would very uh specifically target different parts of the brain. So, in that situation, we'd be targeting kind of over here in this F7 region to kind of like speed it up and kind of get it moving a little bit faster. You know, different brains may have different profiles, like anxiety might be way too much fast way where it's running a little bit too hyper or a little bit too anxious. And so we would want to like slow that down and we would target parts of that parts of that brain where we'd be sending some different kinds of frequencies that kind of calm down and soothe and soothe the brain. So if you want to click back to the screen share, this is something from my educational report, but it's basically showing that the brain naturally produces a variety of frequencies. So, and we should produce a little bit of everything. And when the brain is in balance, it's kind of like the symphony being in tune, you know, and everything sounds really great. So we should, when we're creating delta, we do that a lot in our sleep. It's kind of slower wave activity, it's identified with you know, self-awareness and sleep. Theta, it's more of like the diffuse focus. It can be that dreamy state, kind of being in that creative state at times.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that the one um people are trying to target with like meditation and subconscious messaging?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they well, it kind of they tend to do that between that alpha theta loop, okay? Because the state the theta is kind of more that subconscious and the alpha is that is the gap between the subconscious and the conscious. So so we they do a lot with alpha, but yes, they so really more meditation is going to be in this alpha state, but they are trying to be able to connect that that theta alpha and then you know with the beta. So alpha is our bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. So actually, when we ask, actually, if we get an EEG and we ask someone to meditate, you'll see more alpha, beautiful alpha waves, high, high amplitude alpha waves start to be produced, uh start to be produced. So that's what we see there. So an alpha is kind of like the idle state, we're in that peaceful, calm, like I said, it's that bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. So it's a really great place to be. It can have both internal focus and external. And then when we move up into the beta stage, the low, the low beta, that's when we're like focusing. So if I were trying to write a report or do a cognitive task, we should be shifting out of that dreamy state and we should be shifting into that like more focus, so creating a little bit more fast wave activity. And then, you know, these just kind of speed up as we go along, beta two, three, and so and and so forth. You know, so these are more external focus. If we have a little bit of this, you see up in beta three, that can be some hypervigilance where people are kind of stuck in that, like their brains a little bit overramped, a little bit too fast and so forth. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly. They're kind of they're kind of staying there, they're not, they don't have enough of this calm and chill, you know. So what will happen is, you know, if the brain is stuck in that or it's like really imbalanced in that way, then we may feed some sort of you know frequencies specifically to reset that, or to kind of help get the brain back in back in balance because it's creating too much over here and not enough over here.

SPEAKER_01:

I've known people like that, people who have had like maybe chaotic childhoods or people who have been in the military. Like they were always having to be on alert while deployed. So now we're in a restaurant and they're waiting for a bowl to drop, or you know, saying they're just always this hyper-vigilance about them that doesn't serve them anymore in their current environment. So that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we work a lot with a lot of people with trauma, and uh, we can do a lot to kind of help reset that nervous system. We do vague vagus nerve stimulation, which can kind of help, you know, create with that parasympathetic uh sympathetic balance to help reset the nervous system. And so, yeah, that's one that's one profile that we may see where that they might just be too much of that over-aroused, kind of anxious, they can't kind of calm and chill. And so, yeah, we kind of help their brain and their bodies kind of reset and get into a more balanced, balanced place. And something did usually happen with these clients that caused them to kind of be in that place and it was functional at the time, and now it's not helping them. They can't sleep well, and there's other things going on because their brain can't can't shut down, can't calm and relax. And so we try to help get them get them to that place to help resonate.

SPEAKER_01:

As well as you can target that part of the brain and say, this is where the issue is coming from, and we're gonna give it some direct treatment. And I think just people in general need to understand how their brains work a little bit better in order to um have those solutions. So tell me how often do you remap and do you adjust treatment based on that remapping?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so usually what we do with with neurotherapy, with a neuromodulation, it depends. If we are doing an intensive, what which if someone's coming in maybe from far away and they're doing an intensive treatment model, they might receive up to two treatments a day for five days. So that's a lot of treatment in a week. We'll actually remap at the end of the week because we'll we can see the needle move. So what the brain looked like before, you know, it may not look like after 10 sessions, especially when we're doing it really intensively like that. So then we will remap and we'll compare the first one to the second one. We're also tracking symptoms and we may treat the placement like, okay, we calmed down a little bit here, but now we need to go to the back. It, you know, this is also over aroused. There are some trauma markers, things that we can look at and we can kind of shift around based on what we're seeing and based up based on the symptoms. If we're doing a more traditional, like three times a week treatment, we will probably rescan after between 15 and 20 sessions, you know, because it the movement doesn't happen as quickly as it does in the intensive sessions. So, because we're we're doing a lot of treatment in a short amount of time and it really does move the needle very quickly. And so we readjust quicker as well.

SPEAKER_01:

We love quick results, don't we? Yes, we do. So once that person gets to where everything's kind of evened out, they just come back if they have an issue.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I mean, the whole goal of neuromodulation is to, you know, help with neurogenesis and rebalancing the brain. And then once the brain kind of gets it, it kind of learns by experiencing. So that brain that we talked about before that was a little overroused, producing maybe too much beta, you know, and it starts to kind of get a little bit more of that parasympathetic frequencies in there and kind of calm back down and kind of rebalance, you know, the brain kind of figures that out and it can hold it on its own. So barring the fact that there's no injury or metabolic crisis or anything like that, you know, the clients will kind of taper down slowly, you know, and we're watching for their symptoms to kind of stay good and we slowly ease out, and they there's not really a need to come back unless something, you know, shifts and change.

SPEAKER_01:

I really appreciate you, Dr. Putney. This is all so fascinating. I loved your graphs and your examples, and we thank you so much for breaking that down so clearly. We appreciate you and your expertise. See you next time. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

You've been listening to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with Dr. Heather Putney. Remember, your brain isn't supposed to hold you back, it's supposed to power you forward. So stop letting it crash your party and start letting it do its job. If you're ready to optimize brain health, sharpen your focus, and age like a fine wine, schedule your free consultation today at transformative neurotherapy.org. Or call us at 412-204-7397. Because here, healing happens faster. See you next time.