Why Neurofeedback is the #1 Brain Hack with Dr. Andrew Hill

Ari: It’s great to see you, Dr. Hill. Thank you for doing this part too. For everybody listening, I just want to create a little context for this. This is unusual. I’ve never done this before. We are recording on two separate occasions, and we’re going to piece these two together because we recorded the last one when I was– I think maybe 18 sessions into neurofeedback. I’d only done my original brain map. Now, I think after session 20 or 22 or 24 or whatever it was, we did another brain map. Now, we have objective data comparing my brain pre-neurofeedback to my brain, 20-something sessions into neurofeedback. We can actually share that data and show people the results. I asked if you would graciously extend some more of your time to go over the new results and explain to people what they mean.

Dr. Hill: Sure. Yes, absolutely. I actually pulled up, I talked to your provider and I grabbed your training record from him. I was curious based on the changes we had seen exactly what– because I don’t follow the exact course when I’m advising other providers always, which is what happened here. I gave general advice and I was curious what we did and what changed in your brain. We have some interesting agreement, which is cool. Let’s look at some data here. What we’ve done is prepare some attention test data, which are the bar graphs, and some resting brain activity data, which are the circles.

We think about these things differently. The brain is just– how different you are than average and most people’s brains are different. We just want to look through the differences and model them. Say, “Here’s the difference from average.” “Here’s some plausible stuff that it might mean,” and then we’re good to go to generate ideas about what is plausible. We, of course, now have two sets of data. We also have the added luxury of doing contrast hypotheses, if you will. “Hey, this change to this way, this might be experienced this way.” “What do you think?”

Ari: You’ve got the owner of the brain here to comment on it.

Dr. Hill: Exactly. Often when I’m doing neurofeedback directly, our teams are at peak brain. We’re monitoring stuff day to day and I have a much better sense. In your case, I’m semi-blind because I have this occasional sense helping consult on data with you. We have again brain map data to help make hypotheses you can validate with us. Then performance data, which is these really boring ones and twos tests where you just get bored to tears for 20 minutes and we have you click on a one or not click on a two that pops up auditory or visual.

It’s relatively easy but so boring. There’s nothing to push back against and we rapidly unload your resources. There’s no practice effect. You can’t get better at this by trying it. It’s a little variable day to day, this performance test because it’s picking up how you’re performing. If you’re tired or stressed or over it or angry, you’ll see that on the performance. You won’t see it on the brain maps. Brain maps are the same day after day, picking up the traits of you at a high level, where we also have some states, if you will, performance in real-time.

The scoring on this stuff is set up in a bell curve where a hundred is about average for an age match sample plus or minus about 15 points, two-thirds of people on a bell curve, roughly typical. You’re coming in roughly at roughly typical for some of the resources and not others. There’s two sides to this test. One’s called attention and one’s called response control. That’s clicking successfully on the one is attention or pumping the brakes and not clicking on the distractor, which is the two that’s called response control.

If we start with response control, what we call impulsivity or reactivity being automatic, that kind of stuff, you’re in the typical range in both test administrations around a hundred. There’s a little bit of a change in the visual system, dipped a little bit because you have reductions in this thing called stamina. You’re tiny a bit tired this day and you’re burning out a little bit. Your performance is a tiny bit down that day.

The visual, you a little more clicky on the two as it kept going. It fatigued you a little bit that day, but you’re still not letting it pinch up. The overall resources are roughly the same. You can see at a high level it’s a few points difference. There’s about a five-point variability on the raw resources here day to day. It’s about the same but some tiredness perhaps dragging you down.

We also, of course, have this thing on the left. This is the interesting one for you, and this is called attention. How well can you activate and grab stuff? There were some difficulty initially, you were coming in about one and a half standard deviations off the mean for how on you could be for one boring stuff. The transient resource activation. We dig in a little bit gets more interesting because we see the visual systems fine right in the middle of the bell curve. Nothing’s in the way, you aren’t fatiguing out. The auditory though was now showing two and a half standard deviations off the mean. That’s probably a bottle neck.

We dig down further, we see this really specific little narrow thing, the thing called vigilance, which is the moment of catching stuff as it changes, the novel dynamic information flow. We also have focus, which is the boring background. The computer might say 1, 1, 1, four or five times and those repetitive trials are a focus check but the first one of those, as things change gears were a vigilance check. You see how alert you are.

Again, this is really quite fine in the visual system. The stuff on the screen, the ones and twos when they were changing or persisting are just fine but up here, the moment of grabbing the auditory when things were changing gears extra hard, you also burned out a little bit when they got boring. That’s in the way. As you look here now, you’ve not only eliminated the bottleneck and brought it up to above-average levels. The vigilance went from 58 to 105. That’s 47 points more than three standard deviations change. We usually have about one standard deviation change, by the way, every 20, 25 sessions, that’s what I consider a round or a dose of neurofeedback 20, 25 sessions. It’s enough to create a big change. A couple of rounds of that usually is what is needed though, to create this much change. We were–

Ari: Just for people not super familiar with statistics, three standard deviations is an enormous change to see over 20 sessions.

Dr. Hill: Yes. You went from this stuff really getting in the way probably at times, at least when tired, not able to maintain it, to you being above average at the top edge of average. Now at one 13 for the gross auditory, bringing the bottleneck itself from 56 up to 105. So from the corner of the bell curve in some ways all the way up to typical. The bottleneck itself got great focus. The boringness, the running out thing went from 79 to 97, zip right to the middle of the curve, and speed went from 89 to 123. Folks understand what speed is. Same thing in visual. Didn’t need to bring it up, but you did. You’re speeding up a little bit. You’re vigilant state of rock solid in the visual.

Your focus is down a little bit because of fatigue. Focus and stamina both dip sometimes when you’re tired. These little U shapes here, you’re seeing in the attention system with your above-average nice and rock solid. Now, attention, the overall gross attention score went from 79 to 107. That’s basically two standard deviations grossly of how alert and on you can be at a high level because of the specific bottleneck that was eased. That’s great. The U shapes that still exist suggest we have a new perspective on your attention resources.

Now, you are quick and you’re alert, but you’re using those things a little bit more than average. This speed 123, it’s a nice fast speed. The alertness is great too, above average, but you’re being quick and alert to catch the stuff you’re about to miss is a compensatory strategy a little bit inefficient use of powerful but not quite efficient. We took some resources that were a little pinged up and flagging, cramping up and not performing well, brought them up to typical, and now you’re not efficient yet, not perfectly strong at even though everything’s out of the way in function, so to speak.

Ari: This is the story of my life. This is like a microcosm, powerful but not efficient. [chuckles]

Dr. Hill: Well, now, you’re more efficient, which is cool, and the auditory system especially, which used to be in the way, but even the visual got a little better. Once this test picks up your fatigue that day. Once you’re not tired, the focus will actually probably be a little better. The impulsivity side, again, was pretty fine. It didn’t change that much, but your stamina is both dipped, which means you were a little tired. We also have sustained scores. What are the sustained auditory? Look at that. The trend across time for sustained scores in the auditory was a 69, which is for mathematicians in the audience, two standard deviations off the main, off the middle.

You went to 110, which is pushing one above average. That’s a nice solid change. You also flag the positive attention factor initially means you’re ADD in your performance. At least auditorily is the driver here, and that is now negative. You changed so much. You went from inattentive in performance at a high level to it not showing up in a pattern, which is great. Any reaction time differences?

Ari: There was impulsivity there that was positive on the first one as well.

Dr. Hill: Let’s see. Right, so the ability to not click on the two is called impulsivity, hyperactivity. You freeze up or release your behavior and that now is negative. You also change the– what did you change enough interesting? Everything leveled out just enough to make– you were barely positive on the impulsivity before is what was happening and you’re barely negative now, but it’s crossed that threshold. Essentially, whatever’s in the way, be it sleep or fatigue, or stress or concussions or whatever it is, or his historical inefficiencies.

It’s in the way when I first met your brain data, at least, as much as like ADHD stuff, it’s at that level. I don’t know what causes, it doesn’t look like ADHD in your brain maps exactly. Whatever’s in the way, it looks a little like that if from the outside and it gets in the way that much. Now you’ve brought all these things up so it does not get in the way. Let’s see, this was 9:29. At 9:29 you’ve had done 24 sessions before this session you did after the map. Done a few since. Interesting.

This is a very large change. You’re changing about twice as fast as we usually get, which is great. Our man in Havana or San Diego as the case may be is wonderful and very careful and has been doing some good work with you apparently. Now, part of the reason we’re able to get this done this way, and this is nice in the data but check ourselves for a second. You’re experiencing something, you’re feeling a little different.

Ari: Absolutely. Yes, I’m noticing big changes in resilience specifically, focus and extended concentration. The other thing actually, I just noticed really in the last two weeks or three weeks, my mood has really improved. Not that it was terrible by any means before, but I really feel like I’m in probably the best place as far as mood and motivation, that I’ve been in in years.

Dr. Hill: I find that interesting because we did this map at the end of September and Elia and I consulted about your map and stuff and I gave him some more directions that might make sense to consult with you and say here’s some menu items I think might be good to go after. Ever since then, the past two weeks, well, at least, yes, two weeks he’s been focusing on a different area for you that tends to bring up a little bit of flow. We did some alpha theta with you. The eyes closed. Water sounds one.

Ari: Yes. I want to ask you about that. I actually just did a session alpha-theta session a couple hours ago.

Dr. Hill: That’s a protocol that brings up immune function, creativity dramatically. It reregulates cravings for alcohol dramatically. It has some really interesting impact across domains. I’ll talk about it in a moment. Let’s show some brain data. Because that’s the sexy stuff visually at least. We have a map here early on and a map that is more recent on the right. Again, these are about 20, 24 sessions and there’s some consistency, but there also are some changes. Now, one of the first things, we’re looking at eyes closed data here, you can tell because we have your rapper name here, DJ [unintelligible 00:12:47]. Then your album Eyes Closed is right there. Your first album.

We had two recording sessions, two albums each day, Eyes Closed and Eyes Open. It’ll either say EC or EO on these pages, folks, but you want to look at EC data more carefully because I joke that Eyes Closed is the first album and Eyes Open is the jazz album or the Christmas album or the techno project. It’s a little specific when you open your eyes. It’s also noisier like jazz. Nothing against jazz, but the forehead gets tight when you open the eyes. The visual system for obvious reasons gets loaded when you open your eyes.

It’s hard to predict what’s true across people when there’s more stuff going on. You cool the brain down a little bit with the eyes closed and you can look at some of the differences and wonder if they’re true. We were seeing some interesting stuff here next year ears. The reason to focus on that is because that’s where the auditory system lives. We actually had this as a goal to work on a couple areas involved with focus and sleep regulation. Those areas are actually right here on the left side of the head.

Generally, the way that I work, you get a lot of sleep maintenance and increased sustained output when you brain train beta up in the left side of the head generally. You had this odd phenomenon on the left, right where I’ve done some training where you weren’t making much delta, which suggests your brain was having trouble like shutting off there. We had no chill like always on, but that would’ve meant like poor deep rest and not feeling really clear, inspite being activated would’ve been non-efficient in how you felt focused without any chill mode there.

We also see other frequencies, alphas and neutral frequency. It’s a little higher now because you’re tired and beta is an activated frequency. You’re seeing some of the same phenomena now. The big delta change is why we’re getting probably some huge change in your performance. You basically can put the brain asleep or wake it up now. This is auditory tissue. We have two of them and they’re used together. The big issue is not so much that you have low delta, you can’t turn off this tissue, you can’t sleep it. The issues that only one side is in this mode, it’s like driving your car with a plastic tire and one of the front wheels for a spare and you tap the gas and it spins for a second because it didn’t have the same traction.

When one side and not the other is activated, the auditory systems wants to activate together, like your legs usually do, let’s say, these bilateral paired systems. When it’s asked to activate one side and not the other. This for you probably produced a little tiny hitch, a lag in auditory alerting, which is the thing called vigilance on that test we just looked at. This is very plausibly a big outlier statistically that tracked initially when I was talking to your provider, this tracked the initial phenomenon. Okay, he’s got an auditory thing, this is very plausible. Here’s some strategies, top of his goals, et cetera, and dig into it.

As you can see, it was this dark blue, medium blue color about two standard deviations off the average. Here’s the bell curve again, for folks that are watching. When things are greenish, they’re typical. When they’re unusual, they get blue or red. Out here, two and a half is what this sucker is. It means this tissue is having trouble making delta or compared to the average person making less is a more precise way to phrase it.

Then you would guess in hypotheses, auditory function things are cramped up, not relaxing, and we saw something there. Great. Now what I found really interesting, I grabbed your chart earlier today. Those are sites called T or temporal lobe sites. There’s the mid ones called three and four, and there’s the lateral ones called five and six, T3, T4, T5, T6. We have a protocol we use, where we measure them relative to each other. Put wires on both sides. You can see a protocol called T3, T4.

There’s the date, it’s a recent one, but look at early on. We did some work on that left side called C3. That’s that blue spot right here. A bunch of it actually, a whole bunch of work at C3. That helps with sleep maintenance and focus like I was describing. A bit on the right side in the same session. Same C4 for executive function control. Just pretty basic good like you’d never been to the gym before, which runs you through some basics and see how you respond. Some of it matches your data. Then here we started getting into tailored stuff or specials. Things were designed based on very plausibly unique to your needs, goals, stuff to change.

You can see from the beginning of August, all the way through again the T, all these temporal load protocols and then a central protocol following it for sleep and executive function. We tend to work this way. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, move a little more forward as the numbers get lower. Center of the head, three. That was it, basically, for that chunk about 10. Then we did some work in the back of the head, a little more work on the executive function you mapped and now we’re shifting into alpha-theta. We did about a good solid 10 sessions targeting an outlier as well as the rest of your two dozen sessions targeting some of the specifics in beta and alphas, but really about the regulatory features of sleep, stress, and attention broadly and bringing in the target.

You can see the change. It’s really lifted beautifully. It’s still there. This almost reassures me your performance lifted so much. This is what I expect to see. A nice little shift about a standard deviation, maybe two if we’re lucky. Okay, cool. This is clearly the same brain. This is the thumbprint or the fingerprint of you. It would’ve looked the same without neurofeedback. That’s the interesting thing. Two months later or whatever, it would’ve been the same brain map here looks like 10 weeks, otherwise. There’s still some stuff to work on. We still see your alphas a bit low in those same tissues, so it’s hard to relax some in terms of neutral.

We still see some beta probably still could bring up your sleep quality and focus a lot more. It went from behind the ear to just this other feature. It’s changing as we work things out. You can also see some stuff happening down here. The blue means things are low and the second row is called relative power where stuff takes over for what’s low. We’re looking at beta waves and fast beta waves called high beta here.

You can see these little structures of the little hotspot sticking out that probably represent structures in the brain called the singulates. On the front, the back midline, the anterior and posterior singulate are involved with switching our focus around. The front midline helps us remember what we’re thinking about, and the back midline helps us orient ourself, everything from watch the road to grab the Frisbee, heads up, kind of stuff.

Your singulates appeared to be a little bit hot, so to speak, a little cramped up and high gear before. Not much alpha, couldn’t make neutral, couldn’t make delta in sleep, a little bit in the beta. Like spasming because they couldn’t relax, essentially. The one in the front and the one in the back tend to produce common complaints when they cramp up. One in the front, anterior singulate produces a stuckness in the mind. I call this perseveration. Songs play in the head, you kind of OCD, maybe bite your nails or tick or picket stuff. It’s that stuck cognitive state. Then the back midline is a similar thing, but visceral. Stuck in the gut where you’re threat sensitive, you’re worried, you’re ruminating. Perseverating and ruminating, stuck in the head, stuck in the gut. I looked at this data with your provider and was like, “Oh, okay. He’s probably stuck in his head and stuck in his gut, perseverating and ruminating. If those are goals, let’s do some midline protocols.

Those are FZ minus PZ, or FZ in the front, PZ in the back over these spots, and for fun, looking at your history. We look at the protocols we used and wouldn’t you know that we didn’t start early on, but starting about three weeks before we mapped you here, we did a whole chunk of PZ protocols trying to relax those extra fast betas and really bring up some like neutral alpha and let those circuits unclench so you can bring some beta down. Naturally, we didn’t train it down aggressively, we just brought up some neutral so you could learn to shut it off. We don’t want to tranquilize you. Then a little more executive function, we go back and forth. This is cross-training. You can’t do one workout every day.

Looking good overall, and then a little more FC, PZ when we mapped you the last couple of sessions as you were mapping. Those are the midline structures, the FC, PZs, and gosh if they didn’t change by about one to two standard deviations. I would expect, here’s the check, data’s beautiful but it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel some change. I would expect from the front kind of letting go that you’re more flexible. You’re less stuck in your head, essentially, and from the back letting go, back in your heels, you’re less evaluating for danger. You’re less ruminating, you’re less worried. More flexible.

Ari: The biggest thing for me I think was that the posterior singulate hypervigilance evaluating for danger.

Dr. Hill: Okay.

Ari: That’s the thing that, that resonates the most. That’s the thing that– well, I’ll put it this way, I’m very good about assessing for danger and keeping my family, and my children safe, for example. I also pay a big price for it. My brain is always perceiving the world through that lens, and it makes it difficult to relax and not be in that state where I’m trying to make sure they don’t hurt themselves or get injured by going into the street or whatever. I’ve been living in Costa Rica the last couple of years, and there are many, many sources of lack of safety or things you have to watch out for down there, different from living in the States that I think has really exacerbated this for me.

Theft is a huge issue. Home break-ins are extremely common in the area that I’m living in. Sometimes violent home break-ins. Car thefts, leaving your stuff on the beach, potentially might not be there when you get back. Every night, that’s a concern that’s in my head when I go to bed setting the alarm system. Sometimes there’s false alarms, which set that off in the middle of the night. Then I’ve got to go out of my room with the potential for someone to be in my home. Those are all things I don’t worry about in the States at all. Even more so than that. Simple things that you would never– to an American, these will seem totally trivial and they would’ve seemed that way to me prior to being in Costa Rica.

It’s made me realize that inventions like sidewalks and bike lanes are amazing, brilliant inventions because when you don’t have them, walking and biking on the side of a road can be extremely dangerous, particularly in a place where people drive horrifically bad. I’ve been nearly killed riding my bicycle multiple times in the last couple years. We’ve had just in the couple miles stretch near our house, we’ve seen dozens of accidents and many, many fatalities of people riding motorcycles and ATVs.

The danger is very real. I’m also surfing almost every day in big waves and strong rip currents. That’s also a very real danger. If your leash breaks, you can–almost every surfer down there has a near-death experience to tell. This is to say that part of the reason my brain has been trained this way is actually due to real dangers. I pay a price for it to be in that state of hypervigilance all the time. That’s one of the things I really came to neurofeedback wanting to work on.

Dr. Hill: Your brain learned the world was not especially safe or predictable and over-resourced you in these things that were already strong, probably cramped up and spasm and got hard to shift out of the complaint. Do you feel less stuck in those modes?

Ari: Yes. Thank you for allowing me to complete that. 100%, I’ve noticed a big difference in my overall relaxation. I went surfing this morning here in San Diego in crowded conditions and good size waves. I went rock climbing this morning with my family. Both of those, I’ve always had a fear of heights. Part of why I enjoy rock climbing is because I enjoy kind of challenging that. I’m so much calmer and more relaxed as I’m doing these things now. I don’t have that adrenaline surge that would normally accompany this. I could do it before, I would still do those activities. It’s just now it’s a matter of, it doesn’t stress me or cause a lot of tension and anxiety. I can stay in a relaxed, playful space while I go do these kinds of activities.

Dr. Hill: I think we’ll take that. That’s great.

Ari: [laughs] Me too.

Dr. Hill: That’s great. I’m glad that you’re experiencing some of this stuff. That’s wonderful. Now also brain maps are the same all the time. The degree to which you experience reflects change. I don’t know what you’re experiencing, that’s always real, but I have hypotheses, and my blind hypotheses kind of match your experience. You’ve changed your brain, which is cool. You’re seeing the new resting states.

Typically, I would guess people would need another chunk of training to really push them where they want. I think that might be true for you. We still see those low-power beta areas. We still see some residual tendencies to get stuck. One of the things that I wanted, folks have an experience in our feedback, you’re not changed like personality-wise. If you had to deal with danger that was significant or you do deal with danger, rock climbing, and surfing. You’re not dulled or like a zen monk or tranquilized the slightest, I would assume. There’s a different relationship with stress, right?

Ari: Yes, absolutely. I’m still aware of the danger that’s present. I’m just not responding to it so aggressively. I’ll give you an example. Actually this morning, something a bit scary happened, which was my wife was surfing with me. She’s pretty new to surfing. I taught her to surf just almost exactly a year ago. She’s one year into it. She’s very good for only being a year into it. This morning she had her first experience with nearly getting run over by somebody. As she was paddling out, there was a guy who did something he shouldn’t have. He dropped in on a big wave very late and basically was going right at her. His board didn’t– the fins didn’t basically grip the wave. He was out of control and basically going right at her. She dove off her board and went underwater to avoid him running into her head.

 was just to the side of it. I was also paddling out. I witnessed it and, actually, I remarked at how calm I was. I was trusting what I’ve taught her as to how to protect herself in that situation. I stayed calm throughout the whole thing. They came up, the two of them, sort of had a collision. He fell off his board. Then, it was actually remarkable to me to observe myself at how calm I stayed during the whole thing. That, for sure, is a big difference.

Dr. Hill: Right afterward, still calm?

Ari: Yes, 100%. I just went over to her. I made sure she was okay. She was fine. Then we paddled back out and smiled and she caught a wave five seconds later and had a good one.

Dr. Hill: Great. That’s wonderful. I’m so glad to hear that. Let’s dig in a little more, one or two things to show you more. We have speeds of brainwaves here, which track a bunch of things like how fast you think and also how tired you are generally. We see alpha waves, it’s the speed of processing and this tracks a bunch of subjective experiences. It actually correlates pretty highly with things like IQ once it’s like in your natural range. Yours is still pinched by fatigue pretty hard, but it used to be a lot worse.

The alpha here is running negative numbers from -2 roughly down to like -7 or -8. It’s like 0.2 and 0.7. It’s not hugely slow, +1 or -1 is considered problematic or unusual, at least, statistically, but it’s spreading out. which means the gears aren’t meshing fully subjectively. The neutral modes between different parts of the brain aren’t always lining up and synchronizing well when they relax for a moment, which makes it hard for them to coordinate.

So the experience from having the alpha spreading out like this and slowing down like this has a couple of complaints that usually come along with it. The most common one is going to be for someone who’s an adult, is going to be things like word-finding issues, and delayed recall. This is literally your speed of processing, handing off, “Hey, brain, give me the idea, the thing I just heard, or the person’s name.” “Here it is.” Great. When you’re running draggy, you reach slowly and the information decays. There’s a timing mismatch and you’re tip of the tongue with stuff. I would guess that used to be in the way a fair amount and has lifted a fair amount now, is that true?

Ari: You mentioned this to me in the first podcast that we did. I might struggle with word finding or–

Dr. Hill: That wasn’t a valid–

Ari: Something to that effect. I don’t resonate with that. I’ve always felt that I’ve struggled with that since I was a young kid. I felt I’ve had difficulty with that. I actually feel at this point in my life that I’m probably the best that I’ve ever been in that regard. I’m often told by people that I’m a very good speaker. I told somebody, some family friends, the other day that I personally perceived myself to not be a great speaker and they started laughing at my face because they thought that was absurd that I would suggest something like that. Anyway, now I’m just struggling. Now I’m on the spot struggling to find words. The hypervigilance of the posterior singulate activity, that, certainly, resonates very strongly. This one doesn’t resonate that well, but–

Dr. Hill: Great. What I was doing was a cold hypothesis, not a history-based symptom-matching thing. I was saying, here’s a hypothesis and we just– like we did once before, I’d forgotten that conversation. That difficulty with word finding was a thing and diction was the thing you’d work through and now you’re above average. You don’t feel it as a problem. I’d forgotten that explanation. Still invalid, but the other thing that comes with alpha being draggy is you get motivated and your mood gets low and it’s hard to find joy, hard to summon the, “Yes, I want some of that. Let me check it out.” “Cool.” “What’s that? Let me play.” As you see the alphas all come up– I’m wondering, I would assume a little bit of this alpha speed goes along with feeling more fluid, feeling more joy, feeling more engaged and motivated.

Ari: That part resonates for sure. As I mentioned before, the last couple of weeks, I’ve certainly been feeling the most joyful, playful, motivated that I have in years.

Dr. Hill: I would guess this is related to the stuff you’ve been doing in your life. That’s not neurofeedback plus some of the neurofeedback you’ve been doing because the stuff you’ve been doing is focused on access consciousness. Honestly, the protocols recently that we thought those might be good points for you. “Oh, he still want to do some flow state work. Let’s give him the flow state work.” It seems like that’s real unlock something for you, which is great.

Earlier on when I first talked, I wasn’t totally sure this was like– I wouldn’t have guessed the mood thing necessarily, but the change, you’re coming in half a standard deviation above average when you’re rested. You’re still dragging here and there, but you can see that you went from negative 0.5 roughly up to positive 0.5 roughly. You’re moving your internal speeds up a lot. Not a hundred percent. Some of the stuff that drags alpha down is your delta. The delta being negative here, which is in both maps suggests the quality of deep sleep is still not great.

There’s still a sleep architecture thing that’s not great. It’s also related to some of your stress. You’re conscious is still on. Your brain doesn’t let go all the way and you bounce off deep sleep a little bit. Your sleep tracker’s going to lie to you and say, “Oh, two hours deep sleep,” but it was light deep sleep if that makes any sense.

Ari: Actually, this room that I’m in right now is in an Airbnb and this is my bedroom. As you can see here to my right, there’s a whole bunch of big glass doors. On this side of me, it’s all glass doors. On the other side, there’s a whole bunch of windows, and none of them have blackout curtains. I’ve actually been sleeping quite poorly in this home. I have a beautiful ocean view, but I do not sleep well in this bedroom at all.

Dr. Hill: I encourage you to think about other sleep hacks, especially the one about fasting before bed to let your insulin drop, which allows more growth hormone release once you are asleep, i.e., deeper sleep. The one way you don’t worry about your bedtime, is you lock in your wake time nice and release seven days a week and you get up and be active in a low-key way for a bit.

Ari: The biggest thing is the light. I got a new eye mask that blocks the light completely. The one I was using before didn’t, light was getting in there and disturbing me. This one does block it, but the other aspect of that is I hate sleeping with an eye mask. The eye mask now disturbs me. So the best I can do for the time being.

Dr. Hill: That’s all we can ever do. You’ve made some nice changes though. I bet your brain’s more resilient against disruption. Now this is eyes-open data now and again it’s your jazz album which I’m being careful interpreting it as like how you always are, but you see all the stuff next to the right ear now. We had low power delta behind the left with eyes closed. Brain couldn’t shut off all the way. You had to open the brain, sorry, open the eyes and wake the brain up a little bit with sensory stuff. It can’t activate all the way on the right-hand side, the other side for some reason, I’m not sure why.

That was high in the amount of like theta, which is like lubrication. You can’t stop tissue from doing its job with theta or alpha, which is neutral on the right and then beta was still low on the left or initially and all of that– not all of it, but a lot of it’s lifted. You’re still seeing that same phenomena because that’s like a fatigue phenomena for you. These are the areas, T3, T4, and FCPZ that we trained. We also worked on some of the connectivity between those areas. This is hyperconnectivity and theta which you have here.

This is usually not comfortable, doesn’t always get in the way. It can be just like a bit of giftedness where your mind’s a bit of a steel trap, but usually, this theta hyper coupling front to back between the singlets. The part of the brain deciding what to think about and the part of the brain evaluating the world around you are playing ping pong with stuff that bothers you. “Did you hear, I heard. Did you worry? I heard you–” Not letting things settle. Once they get up there, they’re like volleying for a minute.

Then the alpha phase lag, low phase lag means high– sorry, it’s coherent, so it’s low coherent, it’s chaotic. The neutral frequencies is rather chaotic. It’s unable to quell and settle things. The lubrication is very like letting things bounce back and forth. These are usually uncomfortable stuff.

Ari: Just to be clear for people listening, this is in reference to the original brain map I did pre-neurofeedback.

Dr. Hill: Yes. The first one we’re looking at now has thick lines, red or blue lines that suggest, again, about three standard deviations on the bell curve or more, really big outliers, very stuck brainwaves that aren’t differentiating or changing as much as they typically do.

Now, in the current brain maps, we do see little tiny hints of the same regions having tiny little hints of the same connectivity. There’s been multiple standard deviations of change in a bunch of places where you just let go of all the hyper coupling and you’ve rested the brain so it can wake up. Your brain’s still not resting super well. Gosh, so much better, honestly, than I would guess at the beginning. What I heard a minute ago was that your recent sleep’s been disrupted and maybe disrupted more, some of the delta suggests that, but this suggests the consequence of that is not as extreme somehow.

Ari: I actually feel great. I have great energy levels. I’m doing tons of exercise every day. The complaint I have from those who live with me, my wife and my nanny, is that I have too much energy and want to do too much stuff. I wear everybody else out because I’m always trying to go out and take my kids on adventures and go have fun.

Dr. Hill: Great. That’s wonderful.

Ari: I took it as a compliment when my 26-year-old nanny was– She asked me, she’s like, “How do you have so much energy to do all this stuff?” I guess, despite not great sleep, I’m still functioning like that.

Dr. Hill: We see here sleep eroding in quality and architecture across the past few weeks a little bit, but we also see somehow all the things that normally come from not being rested, like hyper-focusing, feeling hollow, feeling chaotic, feeling burnt out, those have lifted as your sleep erodes. It’s a pretty nice, interesting combination effect. You’re seeing things to work on, which is quality deep sleep. You’re seeing that a lot of the stuff that was probably more acute, more in the way, more specific has actually mostly changed towards typical.

 At this stage, you’ve done a little more neurofeedback since this map about five, six sessions, and mostly what you’ve done, you can see here before I explain what you’ve done recently, this is theta and alpha initially.

Theta’s high, Alpha’s high with your eyes open initially, so that’s too much lubrication, too much spaciness. You can’t get out of neutral or out of reactive mode sometimes with beta or alpha or high. Those can be ADHD things or brittleness and fatigue and reactivity, they are not usually good self-control stuff. Now you don’t show any outliers. Little fatigue here and there. Low power, but no giant stock amounts in the raw brainwaves.

Now without extra theta and alpha, we’ve switched to a technique for you more recently called alpha-theta. Alpha-theta is eyes-closed hypnagogic state training. It brings you right to the edge of asleep and awake, and it lets the monkey mind drop away, and let’s the theta, the insight awareness-release stuff bubbling up, it let’s start that surge. What happens is you end up doing insight work, visualisation, awareness. It tends to drop away some deep stress from people somehow, sometimes, not always. It can maybe exacerbate stress sometimes. Had you began there earlier on, you would not have enjoyed it, you would have been less spacy and stressed.

Ari: I have to say, I’m really enjoying it now. I enjoy it more than regular neurofeedback. In fact, it scares me that Elia, who runs the clinic that I go to in San Diego in Solana Beach. He’s saying, “Oh, we’re only going to do six or nine sessions of it.” I’m like, “Oh, I really want to keep doing this.”

Dr. Hill: Yes, you can do more. He would probably check with me if you want to do a whole bunch, but yes, you can do more. You can absolutely do more. Let me see. You joined in with the one-channel variant right in the back midline. There’s a couple of other variants we can do which are– There’s one I want to do with you which is inside of the head. That will not just bring you into the state of being aware, busy mind drop away and your aware mind surge, and the insight stuff surge, it’ll also then make both hemispheres talk to each other at the same time which creates this literally internal communication kind of experience.

Not always in language, often not in language, but it’s a deeper level. Not always a better level, but it’s worth trying given how your brain looks. A little bit of a low power theta back there, and alpha too. Definitely worth playing with. I’ll talk to Elia and give him a few more things to play with for you. What I would suggest though is you don’t do alpha-theta every session. You wouldn’t do deadlifts every day at the gym.

Ari: Okay.

Dr. Hill: Pretty aggressive, alpha-theta. It can be. This time we mixed it in the past couple– actually, one of these times you mixed it with SMR, but I like pushing hard in one direction and then letting it settle. What I’d recommend is doing two sessions or three in a row, and then shifting. You can plan and say, “Hey, about this week we do alpha-theta? How about next week we do something else?” You can plan based on your goals with Elia, and I’ll crank up a higher-level version of alpha-theta for you.

Ari: Great.

Dr. Hill: I will also help build another protocol which I think is more temporal lobe training. Well, let me ask you. Do you need more support with executive function and drive and motivation, or do you need more support with relaxing and dropping into that still point and being more even keeled, less stressed?

Ari: Oh, can I choose both?

Dr. Hill: You can, but alpha-theta is going to get you some of that last one, anyway. It’s going to keep massaging your ability to downshift deeply.

Ari: I’m really enjoying the motivation aspect. I feel like I’m on fire with business right now. I’m super creative, I’m accomplishing a ton of work, I’m very excited about a new project I’m working on, and I’m really enjoying being in that space. I feel the most motivated to work on business that I felt in years, so if I can crank that up even more, that’d be amazing, and then–

Dr. Hill: Yes, a little more, sure, and deepen your sleep at the same time.

Ari: Yes, and then I do struggle to sometimes turn off my brain and go into relaxation mode. I’m fine prioritizing one, and then we can work on the next one.

Dr. Hill: Well, you can prioritize the deep flow state alpha-theta creativity deep relaxation stuff, and something else in cross-train.

Ari: Great.

Dr. Hill: Then choose two, three in a row to build an effect, switch gears, two, three in a row. That’s how you would go deeper at this stage, is you would pick, “Hey, I want to be in this mode for a minute,” but you’ve done four already in a row in that direction, probably should shift into a non-alpha-theta. One useful perspective on neurofeedback is it’s personal training for the brain, not medicine.

It’s not like a solution for you or a fix. It’s exercise, and you get an effect, you get some shift in the resources afterward and we have to evaluate that, validate that, think about training the whole system, not push too hard. There’s a bunch of factors that go in, but I’ll talk to Elia later this week and we’ll get a little bit of an extra plan for you for some more things to play with.

Ari: Great. I do have a few other questions for you that I was hoping you’d answer.

Dr. Hill: Sure.