Buenos Dias, top of the morning! Welcome to my notes from day three of the S.M.A.R.T. workshop. After a very restless night (some BBQ from the previous evening didn’t quite agree with me), Charlotte and I got up just a little early today to meet Becky at the EEG lab. The morning sessions of the workshop are taking place at the actual school, so she agreed to give us a private demonstration of the machine and software that they use. She asked if either us wanted to be wired up and I jumped at the opportunity.
She attached four electrodes to my head and then asked me if I wanted the airplane game or the dolphin game. Being a typical American male, I chose the airplane. There were two computer monitors, one that I was looking at and one that Becky was looking at (I couldn’t see that one from where I was sitting). After a minute, the airplane came on the screen along with some really cheesy MIDI music. Sounded like a really bad ring tone! The airplane chugged along with the music and every once in a while it would fly through a coin. When it did, my score would go up by 10 points. Every once in a while, the airplane and music would pause for a second or two and then resume. At first, I actually thought that it was just computer lag. I quickly discovered that it was brain lag of sorts instead!
Whenever I was exerting conscious brain activity by concentrating on something really hard or by moving around, the music would pause. I could keep it going only by relaxing and sort of semi-focusing on the airplane. Whenever I shifted in the seat, the airplane would pause and when I concentrated too hard on trying to make the airplane keep going it would pause as well. I also found that it would pause whenever I blinked which caused me a fair amount of anxiety! I think it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. After a while, I expect it to pause whenever I blinked, so I would concentrate on not blinking as much as possible, but when I did blink, it was a significant event and of course the airplane paused.
I definitely had a hard time keeping the airplane continue on without pause. At one point, I stopped watching the airplane and instead stared at the stuffed animal on top of the TV. This did seem to work at first, but then I found watching the airplane in a relaxed state was actually more effective.
Midway through the test, Becky asked me to try to recite the alphabet backwards. I think I would have trouble doing this on the best of days, but considering that I was really tired this morning I found it very challenging. To be honest, I don’t really remember whether the airplane kept going because I was concentrating so hard on the reciting the backwards alphabet. I have to assume that the airplane was on pause most of the time, but it will be interesting to see the video that Charlotte took to verify that.
When I finished up, the first thing Becky asked me was how I slept last night. After disconnecting me and turning the other monitor so I could see it, she showed me how she knew that one already. The screen looked sort of like a stereo equalizer, but the bouncing bars represented different types of brainwaves instead. It was immediately obvious that the bars along the bottom were signfificantly longer than the others. She pointed out that those were theta waves (I’m pretty sure that’s the right term, I’d double check if I had WiFi). Those waves were the sleepy kind, the type that are longer when someone has more of when they’re tired. She also mentioned that they’re the type you would expect to see more of in someone diagnosed with ADD. Hmm… Double whammy, eh? Tired & ADD. Those waves probably should have stretched from Minneapolis to Chicago! Oh yeah, for the record, just in case I was going to be able to try the EEG for myself, I didn’t take any Ritalin or drink any coffee this morning. I wasn’t surprised at all to see those waves stretching out so far at all.
Becky also pointed out where the beta waves were (do I have those two terms confused?). She said that those were the waves that they wanted to train better. Ideally, they would be even with the theta waves. When that happens, a person is in a relaxed state of mind and yet actively ready to learn. Essentially, they’re a perfect model of the student sitting at the desk, pencil in hand, ready for the teacher to begin the lesson. No anxiety, no distraction, just relaxed but on task. When someone has decreased their theta waves and has an appropriate amount of beta waves, the airplane keeps moving along. I believe she said at one point a couple of days ago that someone who was really good at getting in that frame of mind could make the airplane go faster. Not sure about that one though.
We talked briefly about my blinking issue and she said that it’s a fairly common problem. She said that after a while, you just get used to it and stop being distracted by it. Obviously I never got to that point, but I was only hooked up for around five minutes.
I bet you’re waiting for me to answer the million dollar question; is this just a fad solution to a nationwide problem? I was much more impressed with this machine than I was with the AVE. One of my main issues with the AVE was that the person using it was basically a passive receptor. There was no conscious learning or training involved and I have a problem believing in completely passive solutions. That’s why I don’t believe mediation alone is really a solution for any problem along the lines of ADD. Behavior modification and awareness is just as important, if not more important, than medication in my own experiences. This EEG machine involved a person consciously training themselves to adjust their brain activity to create an increased sense of readiness. I wasn’t able to get into that frame of mind, but I did see how I could get to that point. It reminded me of a batting cage. If you keep swinging that bat again and again and again, when it comes time to be in front of a live picture you’ll feel calm, cool and ready for action.
A peroson who trains with this machine could certainly get to the point where they can put themselves into that frame of mind at will, but whether they could put themselves into that state on a continuous basis is questionable. They touted that this could in some cases ‘cure’ an ADD child without the use of medication. I want to know if children eventually can maintain that mind state without it being a conscious decision. In other words, does the child need to constantly be reminding himself to concentrate like they learned when hooked up to the machine, or does it just come naturally? I remember a device that I tried out way back in the day that was supposed to help students with ADD. It was basically a pager that vibrated every few minutes. The idea was that every three or four minutes, an ADD child’s mind would start to wander. By providing an aritificial reminder, it was thought that ADD children would be able to constantly jolt themselves back into a state of readiness. In other words, it didn’t eliminate the distractibility of the child, but it helped to get them back on task. The EEG machine seems to help to eliminate the distractibility, but does it need something like the pager to help remind them to put themselves in that frame of mind? Ideally, you want it to just come naturally, to train the brain to put itself into that state whenever it needs to be ready for learning.
I definitely see the benefit of this machine though. The ability to concretely measure brainwaves in real time and then training children to increase desirable waves while decreasing undesirable waves is incredibly valuable. I would love to spend a month or two with that machine on a daily basis and see what kind of impact it has on me. Would it eliminate the need for Ritalin? Or would it simply allow me to function more effectively when I’m not using medication?
The podcast I did with David Warlick also makes me wonder whether the persons personality, creativity, and thought processes change in any way when a person trains their brain in this way. David has said that he never takes medication when he’s writing, but he usually does before presenting. Writing is a creative activity, whereas presenting is more logical, analytic and requires a different frame of mind. Would this sort of training affect his writing in any way? In other words, he sort of turns his ADD on and off through his use of medication. I wonder if this sort of training would have a detrimental effect on his writing, if he wasn’t able to ‘turn it off’ and get back into his natural frame of mind.
Regardless, I definitely see merit in the exercise. I’m going to have to check out whether there’s a similar set up somewhere nearby in Chicago to find out more.