NeuroFeedback, NeurOptimal and Electroencephalography

OK, I've checked on their page how much the renting costs for 10 sessions and that is my whole's month paycheck:wow:. I live on the edge of civilisation:lol:, my paycheck is 7x smaller than yours. I'll have to save some time to afford that, same is with everything you do, it's science fiction for my part of the world. If someone has some good advice or idea, I'm ready to listen.

What is your part of the world? Nearest city?
 
I found one page Neuromediator d.o.o. O nama
they use neurofeedback on children who have language disabilities, dislexia, ADHD... but you have to get a doctor's confirmation you have some of that to start the treatment
Martina, I could not find anyone in Croatia that deals with NeurOptimal (the closest is located in Austria), but there are a lot of them dealing with other biofeedback and neurofeedback technologie. It is recognized as therapeutic method by HZZO (Health Insurance) and is used in hospitals in psychiatry and neurology departments and in various associations that help children with certain developmental difficulties.
 
Martina, I could not find anyone in Croatia that deals with NeurOptimal (the closest is located in Austria), but there are a lot of them dealing with other biofeedback and neurofeedback technologie. It is recognized as therapeutic method by HZZO (Health Insurance) and is used in hospitals in psychiatry and neurology departments and in various associations that help children with certain developmental difficulties.

I'll ask a few questions on the FOTCM private board, Istina. I'm thinking that if there is potential there, we might look into trying to get a machine over there for Balkan members.
 
Recently I came across the subject of headphones for audiophiles. And reading a little bit about them, it looks to me like they could perhaps be a good choice for NeuroFeedback. Here is what they say about planar magnetic headphones :

The driver design of the planar style also results in very low-distortion sound and excellent transient response. Transient response is how fast the driver reacts to changes in the input signal and how quickly it cuts off those frequencies as they’re cut out of the source, which is particularly important for bass notes.

This speed of driver sounds to me like a useful thing for NeuroFeedback, because you would get a faster feedback with those kinds of headphones.

The electrostatic headphones are even faster, but they are more expensive. Planar are also not cheap, but if you can borrow them or buy some used ones, perhaps you could test them.
 
Recently I came across the subject of headphones for audiophiles. And reading a little bit about them, it looks to me like they could perhaps be a good choice for NeuroFeedback. Here is what they say about planar magnetic headphones :



This speed of driver sounds to me like a useful thing for NeuroFeedback, because you would get a faster feedback with those kinds of headphones.

The electrostatic headphones are even faster, but they are more expensive. Planar are also not cheap, but if you can borrow them or buy some used ones, perhaps you could test them.

Are they on amazon? How much?
 
They are open, but I think that shouldn't be a problem in a silent room.

Excuse my raining on the audiophile parade, but I feel there are a few things to be said.
Remember that we are listening to MP3 sources, a far cry from audiophile! In particular, the first thing that MP3 encoding does in the interest of compressing is to clobber the high frequency range, only to have the decoder sort of mimicking it back in.
This means that a planar magnetic headphone’s excellent response and fidelity in the highs (up to 50kHz!) is for naught.
The experience might actually be unpleasant – assuming that your auditory system is young enough to perceive the crappy details in the highs: It so happens that we lose sensitivity to high frequencies as we get older.

In a nutshell, listening to NO’s MP3 source with a 300$ planar magnetic is akin to eating a fast food meal out of Joseon chinaware. IMO.

Besides, all headphones have a fundamental shortcoming which makes many listeners tire rather quickly, become apathic and sometimes slightly nauseated. This because in the production studio, most stereo music is mixed in a way which optimizes the listening experience with external loudspeakers, trying to create a soundstage as wide as possible. To this end, instruments are positioned arbitrarily far apart, without any negative effect because with loudspeakers, both ears are “served” more or less the same sound except that one hears it a bit later, in attenuated and phase-shifted form. In other words, the combination of delay, attenuation and phase shift helps in locating the sound source in our natural way.

In contrast, with a headphone whatever the left channel says goes exclusively to the left ear, same for the right side. So in principle there is no spontaneous cross-feeding between channels to aid in reconstructing a somehow “familiar perception environment”. It seems that this is at the root of headphone listening fatigue.

There have been attempts to correct this electronically, notably by Bauer, Linkwitz, Chan and others. In practice a cross-feed with attenuation and delay is introduced before final amplification. You would not need this special circuit when listening to loudspeakers, of course.

I don’t have an idea about how much of a factor music fidelity is in shaping NO’s efficacy. I can try and find out, subjectively of course. Meanwhile I value the standard Sennheisers for the wearing comfort. Also, following up on the C’s recent recommendation I put together 33 minutes of Gregorian chant. In time for the next session, Wednesday.
FWIW
 
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