Meg, you can take credit. It was your enthusiasm and willingness to teach
that led me seriously to explore ZNC.

By the way, my practice is in Riverdale, not Yonkers. Express buses from
midtown Manhattan stop within a block of my office.

Julie

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:09:20 -0400, parisprints2002 <megp1@...>
wrote:

> Thank you Julie for using your extensive knowledge of biofeedback and
> neurofeedback to get across some very nice points. Bravo and thanks.
>
>
> Meg
>
>
> --- In neurofeedcommunity@yahoogroups.com, "Alan Bachers"
> <abachers@...> wrote:
>>
>> Here is a recent post from another list from Julie Weiner, a Zengar
>> NeuroCARE user in Yonkers, NY, posted with her permission. This is
> in
>> response to an inquiry as to others' experiences with various
> systems and
>> whether they would recommend them.
>>
>> Alan Bachers
>>
>>
>> Like many other very experienced neurofeedback practitioners, I have
>> switched to Zengar NeuroCAREPro. It is simple to learn and to use
> once it
>> is correctly installed on your computer, and it very reliable as a
>> clinical tool because it feeds back to the brain information about
> signal
>> variability, which was years ago identified as a key measure of
>> self-regulation, rather than specific amplitude or coherence
> measures.
>>
>> I tried for years to use symptom and QEEG-based protocols, but the
> problem
>> with those is how plodding a way of working they are. As with
> medication
>> trials, it can take hours, days or weeks to "get it right." During
> that
>> time, it is easy to lose the client's confidence because of
> setbacks,
>> interruptions to or lack of progress.
>>
>> Zengar NCP is reliable because it leaves to each brain the question
> of
>> exactly what needs to be corrected. The brain is a far more
> efficient
>> correlation machine than you or I can possibly be no matter how
> expert we
>> become in referring to databases of QEEG norms or EEG-equivalents of
>> neuropsychological symptoms.
>>
>> ZNCP simply triggers the brain's own "orienting response" whenever
> any of
>> the brain's self-regulatory mechanisms go off-line. The brain
> checks out
>> what the problem is within itself, and begins to self-correct. How
> the
>> program knows when a self-regulatory mechanism goes offline: by
> measuring
>> changes in signal variability (more detail on which, below). How it
>> triggers the orienting response: by creating a very brief pause in
> a
>> musical phrase when variability changes. (The client or therapist
> chooses
>> the music being played from either a CD or music files on the
>> practitioner's computer.) The unexpected break in the rhythm or
>> continuity of phrase triggers the orienting response, upon which the
>> brain automatically scans itself (as it always does when something
>> unexpected happens; after all, self-scanning is the only way brains
> figure
>> out what's going on in their environment, since all sensory
> information
>> about the outside world is represented inside as neuronal changes).
>>
>> How ZNCP measures and feeds back signal varibility: it continually
>> measures, from the center of both left and right hemisphere (C3 and
> C4,
>> the central placements over the sensory-motor strip), the signal
> amplitude
>> of eight different frequency bins, and certain of the relationships
>> between left and right (e.g. difference, I presume, although the
> exact
>> parameters of the four "Zengar" protocols are proprietary), and
> derives
>> variability measures over a moving time-window. Whenever there is a
>> change in signal variability above or below the recently previous
>> differences measured, the music (and/or visual signal; one can use
> a movie
>> or AVI file or G-force abstractions) is stopped for a brief instant.
>>
>> The therapist's role, at present, is simply to be present with the
> client
>> as witness to their journey, and to maintain the parameters of the
>> feedback so that the stops do not become too regular and frequent,
> which
>> would cause the brain to habituate to and ignore them, nor too
> long, which
>> would make listening to the music annoying because of all the
> pauses, nor
>> too seldom, which might provide too little information for a
> session to be
>> meaningful.
>>
>> The down side of NCP is that it requires a high-end computer
> because of
>> the graphic, audio and rapid, concurrent calculation demands,
> adding to
>> the expense. And some people find the personality of its inventor,
> Val
>> Brown, pompous. But he really has come up with a brilliant system,
> and
>> perhaps deserves his pride of leadership and frustration with the
>> obtuseness and hostility of some of his critics. I have followed
> the
>> development of what is now Zengar NCP over many years. It grew
>> organically, through Val's systematically integrating several
>> then-established (or neglected) but competing neurofeedback
> protocols
>> (e.g. beta, SMR, alpha-theta and the then-frequently-ignored earlier
>> discoveries about 40-Hz and single-Hz frequency bins; Val himself,
> as far
>> as I know, developed 7/14/21 Hz work from Mike Tansey's
> observations about
>> the emotional concomitants of particular single-Hz bins); exploring
> the
>> strengths of Thought Technology's original Biograph program ( e.g.
> its
>> ability to feed back, with a variety of both visual and auditory
> signals,
>> more than the three threshold settings and frequency bins that were
> then
>> standard; to set moving thresholds; to allow the therapist to view a
>> full-length, two-channel "frequency mirror" or other technical
> signal info
>> on one screen while giving the client simple visual images of
> specific EEG
>> frequency-bin changes on the other; to track variability; etc.);
> finally
>> inventing his own program when he had fully tested the limits of
> Biograph,
>> and increasingly automating NCP "journey" choices to free the
> therapist to
>> be more psychically present with the client. Other instrument
>> manufacturers are now inadvertently flattering Val by incorporating
>> derivations of variability (e.g. "Z-score" or variability feedback)
>> capabilities into their programs, automating protocol choices, etc.
>>
>> So, I've finally officially joined the NCP bandwagon. If I were
> still
>> using QEEG-based protocols (as I suppose I will eventually again if
> some
>> client in the future isn't satisfied with the effects of NCP), I
> would go
>> with Thornton's Activation QEEG (provided my DOS-based W98 computer
> and
>> Lexicor equipment hold up), Peter Van Deusen's similar mini-Q
> procedures
>> for testing under cognitive challenge, or Sue Othmers' symptom-based
>> protocols, patiently derived from the original simple SMR and beta
>> protocols of Sterman, Lubar and Tansey and alpha (or alpha-theta)
>> protocols of Kamiya, Fahrion and Peniston/Kulkosky over many years
> of
>> experience with a wide variety of severely disabled clients. (See
>> http://www.eegspectrum.com/Applications/Intro/UltimateSelf-
> Help/HistoryofEEGBiofeedback/
>> for a good summary-history of neurofeedback).
>>
>> Anyway, if you can invest the bucks in a fancy new computer, I'd
> vote for
>> Zengar. Especially if you're new to neurofeedback, it is truly
> turn-key;
>> there is less to learn to get up and running (though eventually you
> might
>> want to learn more mathematics if you're curious about some of the
>> instrument's assessment capabilities) and you can be doing amazing
> work to
>> help your clients without having to know a lot of neurophysiology,
> without
>> investing in QEEG equipment and learning how to paste 23 electrodes
> in the
>> right place with the right impedances, and without sending clients
> out for
>> a $1200 QEEG evaluation before you work with them.
>>
>> Julie
>>
>
>