Bree's own journey from a concerned parent to a witness of the incredible transformation neurofeedback can bring sets the stage for an insightful discussion with Dr. Licata, a visionary in the realm of applied neuroscience. Dr. Licata illuminates the science behind neurofeedback, articulating how it can reshape the brain's activity to restore focus and balance.
Dr. Giancarlo Licata DC, qEEG-D, is the founder and director of Vital Brain Health and Vital Brain Skills in Pasadena, CA.
Dr. Licata specializes in Functional Brain Imaging and Evidence-based Neurofeedback for students and professionals with Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Mental Health Goals. His expertise in EEG, 3D qEEG, ERP, and applied neuroscience allows him to establish one of the leading neurofeedback centers in the US.
Dr. Licata also educates families and health professionals on Brain Health, the Neuroscience of Autism, and the Neuroscience of ADHD.
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Bree's own journey from a concerned parent to a witness of the incredible transformation neurofeedback can bring sets the stage for an insightful discussion with Dr. Licata, a visionary in the realm of applied neuroscience. Dr. Licata illuminates the science behind neurofeedback, articulating how it can reshape the brain's activity to restore focus and balance.
Dr. Giancarlo Licata DC, qEEG-D, is the founder and director of Vital Brain Health and Vital Brain Skills in Pasadena, CA.
Dr. Licata specializes in Functional Brain Imaging and Evidence-based Neurofeedback for students and professionals with Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Mental Health Goals. His expertise in EEG, 3D qEEG, ERP, and applied neuroscience allows him to establish one of the leading neurofeedback centers in the US.
Dr. Licata also educates families and health professionals on Brain Health, the Neuroscience of Autism, and the Neuroscience of ADHD.
Standard Brain Map: Save $50 with code BREE50
Autism Brain Map: Save $100 with code BREE100
www.vitalbrainhealth.com
IG: @vitalbrainhealth
FB: @vitalbrainhealth
Want more? Find and follow Bree on
www.bodybybree.com
Instagram
Pinterest
YouTube
Blog
Are you looking for a space where you will learn to improve your mental strength, emotional health and heal your insecurities from the inside out? Take the first step to living a more meaningful life with the Better Me with Body by Breed podcast. I'm your host, bree. I'm a certified personal trainer, entrepreneur and mother of three. I've helped empower thousands of women to take action through fitness, nutrition, meditation and development and aligning thoughts with action. This podcast is for those who are ready to feel inspired and motivated to live a more purposeful life. Let's grow together.
Speaker 1:My son, jameson, is seven and he had ADHD and anxiety and we found the most amazing doctor that did neurofeedback for him and it completely changed our life. I say had ADHD and anxiety because he literally doesn't have it anymore. It was the most amazing blessing for our family. I tell everyone about neurofeedback and because of that, I kept getting all of these questions what is it? How can it help my child or me? So I decided to have our specific doctor on the podcast to explain how neurofeedback can help with anxiety, adhd, sleep issues, autism, impulse control and so much more. I cannot wait to have you learn from Dr Lakata. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Dr Lakata is founder and director of Vital Brain Health. His focus is on applied neuroscience, conscious recovery and interprofessional collaboration. Having cared for thousands of patients with chronic pain, migraines and concussions, dr Lakata deepened his expertise with Andrew Hill, PDHD at Peekbring Institute and Tiff Thompson, pdhd at Neurofield Neurotherapy. He now works closely with world-renowned EEG expert, jay Gunkelman, to better understand and improve concussion recovery, attention, sleep and anxiety. His unique combination of evidence-based tools in EEG, QEEG, erp and applied neuroscience is used to create one of the leading applied neuroscience centers in the country. Dr Lakata speaks nationally on topics including brain health, sleep science, performance science, concussion management and has been featured on ABC, huffington Post and national podcast interviews. Welcome to the podcast, dr Lakata. How are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm so grateful for your time. I know you are a busy man, but you have literally changed our lives and I just have to shout it from the rooftops so that we can hopefully help other families that have been in my situation. So I'm so grateful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and I'm excited to do so. It's so fun. I've got three kids too. I know what it's like when they're not doing as well as we want them to do and when you have tools to change them and improve them and help them be more of who they are. Gosh, I mean, it's just so much fun, so good. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:It is. So, first off, give us a little intro on you and maybe how you got involved in neurofeedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been working with concussions and head injuries for about 15 years, and about five years ago we started doing we worked with a company that was doing brain mapping because we wanted to basically understand what was going on in the brain when these athletes and adults were getting these concussions, and so there's basically a type of brain imaging called a QEEG, and we can unpack it, of course, in a second, and what I loved about it was it was telling us what part of the brain was actually not working as well as it should.
Speaker 2:And then there's this whole other set of tools that became available called neurofeedback, which really started allowing us to help these concussion injuries. People were restoring their focus. We had guys that had concussion injuries from football, maybe even a decade ago, and they were getting really kind of angry and impulsive and they were losing their temper all the time, and we were helping them restore that again and they were feeling like they had their mind back, and so, long story short, we were able to do that with that population and we realized, ah, you know what, you don't have to keep it limited to people that had full-blown injuries. You could help it with people that just need a little bit of tuning, and so we've worked with ADHD and learning disabilities and other things as well. So it's a pretty amazing set of tools.
Speaker 1:Well, I found you because my friend her son had severe ADHD and we were at the pool one time and I all of a sudden noticed that he was like making eye contact with me and carrying on a conversation and he wasn't as destructive and I was like what's going on with your son? Why is he so good?
Speaker 1:It was like a big change I noticed right off the bat and she's like we've been doing neurofeedback and it's been such a blessing. And so I started noticing similar tendencies in Jameson and I'm just kind of going to give a little bit of a backstory for my listeners who maybe don't know how we found you and the story of Jameson. So we did a brain scan with him because we noticed his symptoms were the impulsivity he really didn't have like a what's the word with your frontal lobe where you have no self regulation.
Speaker 2:It could be self regulation.
Speaker 1:Yes, very impulsive. The self regulation wasn't there. He would have these downward spirals that would last like these meltdowns that would last like it wasn't normal. It would last like 45 minutes, like seven times a day. It was just I could tell he was struggling and it wasn't normal. He was dealing with a lot of anxiety and so we took him to Dr Lakata because I was like I'll do anything, like I don't want to put them on medication, let's see if we can do it this way.
Speaker 1:First, dr Lakata did a whole brain mapping, which is what he's talking about, and the cool part is we had given you a little bit of a background on Jameson, but you told us more about Jameson in the brain, math, which is fascinating because he's like oh yeah, I can see in his brain like this frontal lobe is not working as well and he has anxiety and I can see he does have ADHD and I can see he's having trouble here and he has outbursts because of this part of his brain. It was fascinating because it gave us answers to what we were questioning, like hey, something's off, but we don't know what. And you just nailed it and, to be able to see, he walked us through. He did a whole call and walked us through basically Jameson's brain, which was the coolest, most fascinating thing ever. So when someone like the process, I guess if somebody does want to look into it, that's the first step, right as you do the brain map and then you assess where maybe they need some help and where their weak points are.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, you know I oversimplify this, obviously for parents, but because who says you should be reading neuroscience articles every day? I say think of the brain like a 21 room mansion, right? So, jameson, he's got 21 rooms and each room has different jobs. The same way, like our mansion would have different jobs in the different rooms, right, a kitchen has a different than a bathroom, and so on. And so a brain scanner, brain map, is a functional image of the brain.
Speaker 2:And so what does that mean? It helps us see the different rooms, and we're not necessarily looking for full blown injuries like an MRI would be looking for, because oftentimes an MRI is negative, right, very few times do people have it. Anything show up on an MRI, but, you know, obviously the person still doesn't feel like they've got everything in balance, and so it's more sensitive. It's what's called functional. We can actually see how the different rooms are firing. We know what healthy brain waves look like in certain rooms, and we know when there's brain waves that are excessive, that shouldn't necessarily be there, when the person is just calm sitting there on the chair, and so, yeah, and so it gives us a lot of insight. And so let's just say, for example, somebody has, you know, a lot of big outbursts, right, huge emotions.
Speaker 2:And so, again, as a parent, this is you know you're in the grocery store, your child wants you know, whatever cocoa pebbles, and you know you're saying no, not today. Maybe you know, maybe let's get something else. And all of a sudden it's like a half hour tantrum. You know, in the middle of aisle four, right, like, and you're like wait a second. Like we're not horrible parents, right, we don't know our mistakes. But like this, like why is he doing this? Or why is she doing this? And what we can see on a brain map is that sometimes in areas around the frontal lobe, like some rooms can't fire in these faster brainwaves, they're firing in these slower brainwaves, and when that happens, we can pretty much tell you that that child is going to have a very hard time self-regulating, right, that's one example. Like, oh, here's the room, here's what we see it doing, and we can kind of tell you what your child is working with right now, you know, and that's really helpful, I think.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Well, the cool part is you were like, hey, what do you want to work on? Do you want to work on self-regulation, anxiety, sleep, like what? So that was really cool because I was like, okay, the first thing I want to work on is self-regulation, and we saw, within two weeks, a difference. It was so crazy and I just have to tell you before we get into the nitty-gritty of you know why we did it, what you kind of do there, what it looks like Jameson before would say I hate myself, I want to die. You know horrible things and we would.
Speaker 1:I'm the person that is doing positive affirmations with him every morning, you know, and I'm telling him how loved he is and how amazing he is. But it's like he couldn't feel it because his brain just was like short-circuiting basically, and so when and you even showed me his brain waves were just off the charts, crazy, just like basically fighting with each other. And then, once we did these sessions and you showed me halfway through, it was so cool to see how his brain had kind of calmed down and the brain waves were more natural and more peaceful and it was like his demeanor and just his whole energy was completely different and he was more calm. Now I am telling you like I have a different child. He's at the top of his class. Everyone loves him, his teachers love him.
Speaker 1:He's kind, he's smart, he's sweet, like of course, he's a normal kid that gets upset, but he has not had those spiral meltdowns for months. Like he might have one every you know month like, instead of six a day. So our life has changed. Like I owe you so much because he's excelling and he says all the time no, I love myself. He'll say that all the time I love myself. I'm actually really smart, mom, I actually am a good boy. Because he's doing so well, he's not getting the negative reinforcement, so he has more confidence. It's changed every aspect of his personality in his life for good, and so that's why I'm like we need to share this with people.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that is so huge, right. I mean, oh my gosh, as a parent, I mean that's like, that's like half the battle right there.
Speaker 1:All right, Dr Lakata, help us understand. I thought this was fascinating when you explained it to Adam and I. What are kind of the three main reasons that someone could have an imbalance in their brain?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the three main and most popular reasons are going to be injury, genetics and the environment. So injury could be anywhere from a concussion or like a head injury or neck injury that we didn't think was a concussion but actually was, or an injury could be birth trauma, believe it or not, or even I think we've talked about this in the past we see where twins, one twin, the way that they were positioned in the womb, maybe the way they came out is maybe not hitting their developmental milestones as quickly as well as their brother or sister, and so injury could be all the way back down to in utero and everything in between.
Speaker 1:That is fascinating. I have a question about that. What about if a baby? You know how they come like, if they're used the four steps to get their head out or if they're sitting in the birth canal too long? Could any of those issues yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So four steps vacuum, where they're literally like a really powerful suction cup on the head in order to pull with more traction. Those can cause injury by far and again. The challenge is that it's not life threatening injury, it's not bleeding in the brain. So for the most part, medical doctors are just going to say, well, it's quote, unquote, within normal limits, right, but it leaves a mark. So, yes, so, absolutely. Any of those can happen. And also, right, when the baby is sitting, maybe crowning, but not fully out and it's taking longer than everybody would like. Well, that's time when there's stress on the brain, this time when there's sometimes a little bit less oxygen in the brain, and it leaves a mark. It doesn't again, it's not debilitating.
Speaker 1:Right, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that's the answer. In fact it happens a lot more than people think. I mean, I'll just give you my example. I had, you know, pretty significant ADHD and so, but you know I process quickly and I have a lot of interest and so on, and so I went on and got three degrees and you know I've had thousands of patients and I was on different boards, you know, throughout the US, and still I didn't feel like I had everything. You know I wasn't doing anything to the level I knew I could and it was very hard for me to actually then actually sit and do something, like, you know, taxes at the end of the year, like almost impossible.
Speaker 2:So, long story short, my first brain map years ago show that I had some residual injury. These are called trans and slow waves and it's when there's white matter injury, white matter damage, and so turns out it was most likely what I think from old concussions probably. You know, when I was younger and high school I played football, basketball, I snowboarded, skateboarded, and so here I am, like you know, 20 years later, and some of the things that are quote, unquote, adhd and inattentive for me were actually related back to that, because once I trained and I was able to help, you know, those areas heal and, on the remap, those slow waves went away. It also, you know, matched up with my ability to actually stay way more focused than I think I was able to remember.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. So injury could be anything. I remember when we were doing our brain map with you, we thought Jameson's stuff was because he had fallen when he was younger and Adam blamed himself so much for that. And when we actually looked at his brain you were like no, it's actually not injury, it's actually hereditary. So it's Adam's brain. He got it from Adam's brain, but he didn't. It wasn't from injury. So he could like breathe at night knowing that like okay, I didn't do this to my child from him falling. You know it was an accident, totally an accident, but that's just fascinating that you can know that. So there's injury. What are the other two?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know genetics, or you know what we call phenotypes, and so there have been quite a few studies that have shown that there are certain brain patterns or brain types that we inherit from mom, dad or both, and so some of these could be traits that will look like aspects of, like anxiety or high arousal.
Speaker 2:It can look like sometimes a tendency to get fixated or obsessive. You know, there could be other things, even ADHD types. I mean, you know, a lot of parents will often come to me and say you know, my son or daughter are having all these issues and they have really hard time focusing in. And you know, you know my husband also has this challenge, or also I have this challenge. And so there are phenotypes. We can see them, you know, people way smarter than me have already done the research and have shown that these correlate, and then again, you know, you can change them. So but yeah, so that's the genetic side, and I'm sure there's probably gonna be more that we discover as time goes on, but at the very least, I think there are now 12 identified. You know phenotypes, genetic tendencies that we can see in the brain.
Speaker 1:Well, that's fascinating because we always joke that my daughter, olivia, got my mother-in-law's OCD. Yeah, like we see it in her, because I'm like I have no idea where this came from. Like this is not, I am not in any way OCD and like I'm not super organized, but she just came out like organizing her shoes and you know, like as a little child, and we joke that that came from Michelle, but it really did, like it actually did come from her.
Speaker 2:Right. Yes, you can totally see now that the trait coming through, right it's so fascinating.
Speaker 2:It's so fascinating and you know I'm always looking for metaphors and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But you know, when we say OCD, there's an area of the brain called the anterior cingulate and that area can tend to overfire and so I also I liken it to like a volume knob, right Like. We can inherit the tendency for that to be maybe at a setting of like five and above, maybe if it gets all the way to like a nine or a 10, then now we get those, you know, big, scary diagnoses of like OCD right Like the actual right Diagnostic code. But you know, but oftentimes. But what happens when that's like at a seven or a six Like? It's still affecting us, it's, we're still expressing this trait, but it's not as bad. And some people are like at a four right, a three right. So again, there's a little bit of a continuum or a little bit of a volume knob rather than like a light switch, like you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's fascinating. You might be on a different scale than someone else.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you may still be, out there Like grandma right.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah. Interesting okay.
Speaker 2:And then the third. You know so the first injury, the second was genetics or inherited traits. And then the third is environmental. And you know, an environmental could be. It could be mold exposure, it could be heavy metals, it could be.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't get to see what they are. What we get to see on a brain map is are things like you know I'm just gonna throw out a term you know, like global slowing of the brain, and so, and what we know, based on the physiology, is that, well, it seems like that when that's the case, when we refer those people out then to functional medicine doctors or naturopaths or others or sometimes they're primaries what we see is that when they go and do the testing, they'll often find, you know, very high levels of you know again, name it right Very high levels of mold toxicity, very high levels of aluminum, and so then you know we get to have them, do, you know, go through their treatments and detoxes with their, with their therapist, and then after that, then we remap and then we can actually begin to help track some of the changes, at least from the brain's perspective right, that's so fascinating.
Speaker 1:So when you so how this is helping, like, let's say, someone comes in, how does knowing this information help them moving forward?
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I'd say you know two things, I think usually One. It's often extremely validating, right it is it's so validating.
Speaker 1:I was like, thank you, I'm not crazy, you can see what your child is doing and the behavior that they have. But to actually look at it on a brain map and say this is why it's just so validating.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, and that's so. So one, it's validating, and I think that that has huge, immense value in of itself. And then, and two, once we see, you know, the underlying patterns it's not my job to diagnose or necessarily treat, it's my job to say, hey, we see these patterns, these tend to be associated with whatever you know the person has, and then you know, what we're able to do is then help direct the parents maybe to the right. You know professionals, and oftentimes it's not just one, it's the right team, right, and so it may be. So let's use an example.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes a child reserves the right to have more than one problem at a time. So we had a young child who had real, significant outbursts. Now, outbursts can be from a lot of things. This person, she was about 12, and she had huge, massive outbursts, and they were violent, meaning she would attack her parents, right, and and so, and it turns out she had what we call sharp and slow activity in the brain. How did it come?
Speaker 2:We're assuming it was from injury, we're assuming we don't get to know that and though, she had some other things going on, and so, based on that, we were able to then refer her to, you know, and to basically a psychiatrist or neurologist, so that they can, you know, so the parents can decide if they want her to be on anti-seizure medication.
Speaker 2:We also referred her to a functional medicine doctor to kind of help them with diet and understand how, you know, sugars and other things are going to make this worse and then, of course, you know, things like keto or keto like food, are going to make it better. And then we also were on her team and our job was to help, you know, help the brain produce more stabilizing rhythm, because neurofeedback got on the map out of UCLA because it showed it'd be so helpful with with epileptoform activity or seizures, and so, and so it helped us create a game plan, or helped us, you know, co-create a game plan with the parent, and so and it's not always about us, it's about just well, what does that person have? And so you can't create a solution if you can't define the problem Right.
Speaker 1:Right, I love that.
Speaker 2:So it definitely helps the parents kind of get out of the just out of the dark, right? I mean, so many times we're just, like you know, reaching and maybe hoping for some insight as to what to do next and, and oftentimes it's really hard to tell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what are some of the symptoms that you see that you can help correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So, for instance, okay, so definitely with emotional regulation. I think is huge, huge yeah.
Speaker 1:That was our biggest thing with Jameson.
Speaker 2:That was your biggest thing with Jameson, absolutely so. And what I have found is that nine times out of 10, the child doesn't want to have the outbursts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, they feel like a failure, they feel like a problem child.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And so nine times out of 10, it's not misbehavior, it's not. Or parenting, you know, faults. Nine times out of 10, it's really areas of the brain that cannot do their job to maintain regulation. And so, in the words of Dan Siegel, you know, they flip their lid very, very easily because certain parts of the brain aren't as strong as they should be. Right, so that, would I'd say, is probably one of our most common you know, another part of regulation is anxiety, and so I'd say the second one, after outbursts, are going to be things like anxiety. And now, you know we all live in a post COVID world where it seems like every child rightly so is feeling anxious and stressed.
Speaker 1:Right and or adult. Like you have adults too, not just children.
Speaker 2:Many, many, many adults, many parents that come in, many, you know, young adults as well. But oftentimes you know, look, we live in an overwhelming world and so if we already have a tendency to be anxious because of, let's say, we inherited some of it and maybe we had trauma, we can actually see certain patterns associated with trauma, then, you know, then oftentimes we're able to identify in the brain and then also help it. So, emotional regulation, outburst, anxiety, and then, if I said that there were, you know, I mean two more. Believe it or not, we see a lot of children on the autism spectrum or with Asperger's A lot Interesting.
Speaker 2:In fact, if you would have asked me five years ago if I thought I would be, you know, serving this population as much as I am now, I would have said no, I don't think so, you know, I don't think that that's really. You know something that that you know we would intentionally go out to help. But you know we see so many and we'll never claim to treat autism. However, a brain you know, a child's brain that you know is on the spectrum, will have certain patterns. You know, oftentimes the areas of the brain don't talk well with each other as well as they should, and you can see it on a map and you can improve it.
Speaker 2:Another pattern they can have is they can actually become very rigid or obsessive, right? They only well, they'll only eat these two foods, or they're only, you know, they only want to. You know, do eat at this one place or do this one thing, and anything new is always an immediate no. That's. That's goes back to the volume knob of the anterior signal right, and so their areas have to do with regulation. They can't self-regulate. So there are a lot of things that we can help as far as like improving those volume knobs in those traits for them.
Speaker 1:So that's fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, and it's now become probably the fastest growing aspect of our practice, Our, you know, families that are coming in with children that are on spectrum, and it's pretty profound. It's pretty profound. I mean we see many, many kids In fact. We're seeing I mean we've got probably at least a dozen right now that are somewhere in their teens, usually pretty high functioning as far as this group is and but they're very rigid, very obstinate. They will refuse to do anything that that isn't within their own comfort zone and they'll often then have outbursts. That gets triggered by the relaxation Right.
Speaker 2:So, now, you know, as as we're working with them, like they become, it's like they move way down the scale in that spectrum. They move to way higher levels of function and then they're able to kind of preserve their superpowers, because most kids on the spectrum have some superpower. They're just, you know, they've got some gifting that we don't have, and so now they're able to kind of have this amazing, you know, improvement. While they may still be technically on the spectrum, now they're just way more functional, right.
Speaker 1:So that is so cool. That's so cool and also sleep. I know you help us sleep too.
Speaker 2:Right, yep, yep. And so you know there are many areas of the brain that are necessary for sleep and, yeah, we help, we help with so many, with so many. In fact, there's actually things we call sleep spindles that are the very thing that we train During the day. They're called sensory motor rhythms and, you know, during the day they're what give you the ability to be calm and focused At night, they're what help you stay asleep. And so if we train that muscle quote, unquote, you know during the day, then you can use it during the day to be more stable. And then guess what you get to use that same quote unquote muscle so you can sleep better at night. And so, yes, oftentimes sleep is almost always what we call a comorbid or an additional symptom that the person checks. If they have anxiety, dysregulation, definitely almost everybody with concussions. There are things that we see and there are things that improve.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so cool, even just to know that there's some help out there. Even my nephews I have three nephews. They're all alcohol, fetal syndrome babies that they had adopted from foster care and they're all doing neurofeedback and it's completely changed their life.
Speaker 2:Wonderful, wonderful. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are believers. So I just have a couple of questions on specifics, because I know people will wonder what are you doing in a session? Like, briefly, what is it? What are you doing and explain that process and how many sessions do they need to improve?
Speaker 2:Totally Okay. So the quick setting is think of your brain like a 21 room mansion. That's my simplest metaphor. There are many rooms in the brain and many hallways, and so it's not like the whole brain gets trained at any one moment. Based on a person's map, we get to see which rooms could use some remodeling, which rooms Some improvement, and so that's really key Then.
Speaker 2:So what do we do Once we know the rooms and we know what they're doing? They're firing too much or too little, too fast, too slow, in which frequencies and how? Then a person basically either comes into the office or they're training remotely. They put a sensor over the area of the brain where that room is and we train, we customize what we want the brain to do more of, and so, basically, somebody sitting with some kind of maybe they're watching Netflix, they're watching a show, and there's a sensor over room in the brain and we will see real time. That person's brain waves over that one room and let's say we want that room to fire more in a particular frequency.
Speaker 2:Well then, great, then they're producing the frequency that's creating some of that dysregulation. The Netflix show will go into a little bit of black and white and it'll look like there's rain on the screen, and when their brain is able to produce more of the frequency that we want over that room, the Netflix show goes back into color and looks like the rain on the screen goes away. And so what's happening is, as far as the person's concerned, they're pretty much passively watching a movie. But what is actually occurring underneath the surfaces? We're rewarding the brain when it produces more of this right kind of frequency. And so in one 30 minute session and it's usually about 30 minutes it's usually about anywhere between two and five times a week. During that time the person may get 900 to 1,000 little feedback loops, little reward, saying good job, do that again, do that one again, produce that again.
Speaker 1:Right, and so To basically strengthening the positive neurofeedback waves instead of the negative.
Speaker 2:Correct, correct, or another way to say. It is the person, that part of the brain should be able to produce both. We want it to learn how to produce more of this thing so that it can use it again in the future.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, yeah, jameson loved he would try to control a car with his brain like he's hooked up with the electrodes for my listeners and he would look at the car on the screen and if he wasn't focused the car would veer off the road. And then, when he'd focused on the screen, he's basically driving the car with his brain. It was fascinating. So he's thinking this is so cool, he's just playing a video game, but really it's like rewiring his brain, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we pay tens of thousands of dollars for all kinds of games and interfaces. So, yeah, so he was able to play the video game. So it's the same idea, though right, he's getting rewarded when his brain is producing the right thing, and with him, the video game car would race other cars and it would go forward and win. And if it didn't, it wouldn't, right. So we have flying games, we have puzzle games, we have carnival games. Oh boy, I mean, we pay for a lot of these and at the end of the day, it's mostly so that whoever the child is is they're gonna be interested in it, right?
Speaker 2:But, it can go back to a simple as also watching a movie with that overlay, and it's not the game format per se that's really doing the trick.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's really knowing where we're training, knowing what we're trying to train and then following it so that until the brain finally learns how to access that again.
Speaker 1:So cool. So how many sessions do they need to do? I know it's probably different for everyone, and maybe they need to do a consult first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:So in our office what we do is, if we won't take someone on, if we don't think we can get at least like a 30 to 50% improvement in that person's primary goal, right, if we do, then what we see is we have a round of training which is about 40 sessions, and the reason why we do that is because neurons that fire together, wire together, and so, and because we see so many complex cases, we really want to make sure that we start slow, make sure we get to know the brain and not have any kind of potential responses to the training.
Speaker 2:That is an ideal. And then we want to do some focus on targeting the area that we want, and then we want enough repetition afterwards so that when we're done, like Jameson, the brain learns it's lasting, the brain learns to keep it right, because then every time he's regulated, every time he doesn't flip out, he's reinforcing that again, right, and so he's able to kind of self-reinforce, right. So for us a round is about 40 sessions and, from what I found talking to hundreds of other high-level practitioners, that seems to be the minimum effective dose, and so yep, and so that's what we do, and so we do that also and we do it remotely.
Speaker 1:So if someone's interested in signing up, the first step would you would have them do the brain scan, go over the brain scan and then decide a plan after that.
Speaker 2:Correct yep, yes.
Speaker 1:And we do have a code for my listeners, right, we want to give out so you can actually get $50 off of your brain scan if you use the code BREE. So if you're interested, they are located in Pasadena. What if people don't have access to? What if they don't live in California? Are they're not close to Pasadena? Do you have a remote option for them?
Speaker 2:We do, we do. We've been waiting for years for the technology to catch up, and so we now have a remote option, and so people that are interested can reach out and we can go over those details with them as well. So, yes, we've got-.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:All across the country and beyond.
Speaker 1:That is so exciting. So also, if someone is wanting to do neurofeedback in person, where they are, are there certain qualifications that they look for in someone that's offering Cause? I know there's a lot out there. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:So in essence I would probably go to isnrorg. It's the, I want to say it's the international, let me see IS, international Society for Neuroregulation and Research and so and that I think has a good membership list. At least you'll make sure that people are somewhat qualified. But it's a pretty heterogeneous group, meaning a lot of people do a lot of things and so. But I think that's the first place and I think that at the very least, whoever you are going to work with, should have at least some kind of certification or a diplomat. So, for instance, we have a diplomat in quantitative EEG. So we believe that you should know what you're reading on the map before you tell somebody what to train. And so there's also another that's called a BCIA certification, and so you just want some like most basic you know certification so that that you know that they've got a baseline skill set. But other than that, I think isnrorg isa probably great place to start.
Speaker 1:I love that, so can you share with our listeners where to find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so vitalbrainhelthcom is probably the best way to reach out to us, and or you can you also have an Instagram right? And we have an Instagram. Yes, yes, I'm not the one that's on it very much, but, yes, some of our team is on it. So if they want to just DM through that, they can definitely do so.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much. This was very, very helpful, dr Lakata, thank you.
Speaker 2:Love it, Bree. Thank you for having me and thanks for sharing this with more families. We all need it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I shout it from the rooftops to everybody. Anyone that will listen. Like there's a better way. Neurofeedback.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely Well, thank you again.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I'll talk to you later All right.
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