Mary Young sits in the chair, electrodes attached to her ears and her forehead. She's wearing a maroon cap, with what looks like little white donuts all over it. Psychologist Corydon Hammond has just squirted gel into each of those holes to improve the conductivity of the electrodes. Another electrode is stuck to her neck, monitoring her heartbeat so it can be filtered out.
The test, called quantitative electroencephalography, measures electrical activity in different parts of the brain, creating a brain map. The information is fed into a computer, where it will be compared with the brain patterns of extremely healthy and "normal" people who are the same sex and age as Young to determine if her brain shows any abnormal patterns.It is a test that Young hopes her brain will fail. She wants the brain map to show abnormally slow brain waves.
If it does, then she might be able to retrain them, using a process called neurofeedback or neurotherapy. If the test fails to show slow brain waves, she'll be where she's been for the past 12 years -- in serious pain, sleepless and looking for relief.
It took Young five years to get a diagnosis that seemed to explain her symptoms: fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that effects between 3 million and 6 million Americans. At the heart of its symptoms is chronic, often generalized pain, plus various combinations of memory and concentration problems, decreased sleep, low energy, problems with movement and balance and coordination and more. People who have it complain of "fibro fog," and, like Young, most people say they hurt almost everywhere. They also find that their pain threshold decreases so that things that normally wouldn't be painful -- like the label in clothing rubbing on the back of your neck -- are.
Fibromyalgia is just one of many disorders that neurofeedback holds promise of treating.
It's already proven to be effective with attention deficit disorder -- with or without hyperactivity -- and epilepsy. It's still considered experimental with some conditions. But studies have shown great promise with many types of illness, from chronic fatigue and Fibromyalgia to depression and anxiety, substance abuse, closed head injuries and strokes, sleep disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Hammond, a professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a practicing psychologist.
Call it physical therapy for the brain. And the results in some cases have been an increase of 10 to 20 points on IQ tests. "It's not making you smarter," Hammond said of the neurofeedback. "It's letting what's there shine through" by improving the ability to concentrate, general alertness and more.
The field was first opened up when Barry Sterman, a professor of neurobiology and biobehavioral psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, in the 1960s discovered that a cat's brain wave pattern could be conditioned. That lead to research with treating patients who have epilepsy. Researchers found that in cases with even the most severe epilepsy, neurofeedback seemed to create enough improvements that medication that hadn't worked would or the medication doses could be cut back, Hammond said.
Scientists found that the brains of those with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder both have an excess of slow brain waves in the front of the head -- the area that controls tension, emotion and behavior.
"If your brain waves are too slow up front," Hammond said, "you won't have as good control of tension, emotions and behavior. You won't focus well and you'll get distracted more easily."
They believe the same slow brain waves are present with many conditions, including fibromyalgia.
Neurofeedback can change all that, but it takes time and practice.
It's a form of biofeedback that concerns itself with specific aspects of the brain's electrical activity. Its purpose is to give an individual some control over that electrical activity.
Small electrodes are placed on the scalp, and the person whose brain is being trained is asked to either watch a computer display or listen to audio tones. Both activities are designed to teach the person to over time control the brainwave pattern, whether it needs to be slowed down or sped up. With continuing feedback, coaching and practice, most people can learn to produce the kind of brain waves they want, Hammond said. Desirable brain waves are the beta waves, the waves that are present during a normal, alert stage. But you don't want the beta waves to be too high or fast, lest it create problems with anxiety.
Theta waves are slower and tend to make a person drowsy. Neurofeedback is designed to help the patient increase beta waves and decrease the number of theta waves.
Neurofeedback is not a quick process. On average it takes 40 training sessions to learn to control the brain waves to any degree. So it can be both costly and time-consuming. It is also one of the few things that offer hope to people with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, attention deficit and a number of other disorders.
It will be a week before Young finds out whether she has slow brain waves that can perhaps be retrained. And even the thought of 40 or so training sessions doesn't throw her.
"It would be worth it," she said, "to feel better."