Quantitative electroencephalography: new technology to optimise cognitive functions

What happens in the brain when you watch your favourite series? Are your waves speeding up or slowing down? And what does the brain do when you start to get bored?

SHA Wellness Clinic will answer all these questions, and some more complex ones. It will even train your brain to concentrate and not wander off when you start to get distracted by your mobile phone after fifteen minutes on the sofa. This is all part of a neurofeedback training that will be carried out with the quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) helmet, recently acquired by the Brain Health Unit.

Professor Bruno Ribeiro, PhD, head of this unit will start using the QEEG helmet in the cinema. While patients watch a film or a series, the helmet will map the brain in real time. “Each of its endings is an electrode that measures in real time where thoughts are moving. This technique allows us to know the semantic value and texture of each image that the patient is evoking in the cinema,” explains Ribeiro.

In the darkness of the cinema, the brainwaves of the more relaxed patient can be measured. “On the big screen, we will be able to visualise the mapping of the brain while asking the patient to do certain activities. The helmet makes it possible to create a specific neurofeedback protocol much faster, as the mapping identifies which brain circuit is activated,” Ribeiro reflects.

Depending on what appears at each point in the brain during a neurofeedback session, the treatment protocol can be specified as much as possible.

If, while the patient is watching their favourite series, brain wave dysregulation occurs, the helmet will detect the alteration in brain activity, and visual stimuli will immediately appear on the screen, forcing the patient to change the way they function, and optimise brain functioning. “For example, if the patient is bored during some part of the series, and the aim of the treatment is to train low beta brain waves to improve concentration, the series will stop and the screen will emit an irritating sound, or go red,” says Ribeiro.

What has happened is that the helmet has detected that a part of the brain is not emitting enough low beta waves, and so its software has decided to modify the stimuli (in this case, stop the series) until the brain is brought back to the desired level of concentration. “This educates the brain to stay within the brainwave frequency fluctuations that maximise its cognitive abilities,” Ribeiro summarises.

Professor Ribeiro believes that combining neurofeedback techniques with the neurotreatment helmet will achieve spectacular results in the diagnosis of neurological and degenerative diseases such as depression and dementia.

The use of the QEEG helmet will be a breakthrough in the understanding of brain function and ways to train the brain to optimise its cognitive. functions.

With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the brainwave measurements are sent in real time to a server that compares them with a database of brain activity of thousands of subjects recorded by a laboratory. The software will illustrate brainwave deviations and frequency bands corresponding to specific brain regions and compare them with a normative database to produce a comprehensive report of the patient’s brain functioning.