Touching the Third Rail
Siegfried Othmer
Touching the third rail.
Why are we not doing brain maps?
The reasons are historical, theoretical, tactical, and strategic.
Theoretical:
When the opportunity arose for Sue and me to get involved at the very front end of this emerging technology, I thought that my physics and electrical engineering background would be a great advantage. And in a limited sense that turned out to be so. But in this new sphere we were dealing with a system characterized by irreducible complexity and high dynamics, not anything we ever confronted in physics. E. Roy John had a Bachelor’s degree in physics, so he had learned the same physics. Unsurprisingly, he chose the Fourier transform for the analysis of the EEG. The problem is that the Fourier transform is suitable only for stationary phenomena, and the EEG is not stationary. The unsuitability of the Fourier transform became even more obvious later when we learned about phase reset.
A windowing function is used to handle the dynamics as best one can. Dynamics are preserved to an extent with the use of overlapping windows. But the fast dynamics we rely upon in our training are squeezed out of the signal with the windowing.
The objective of characterization, of course, is to get at information that if measured today will still be relevant tomorrow. Here the intention is to squeeze even the longer-term variability out of the signal. The only way to know the degree to which this is being accomplished is by repeating the measurements, which isn’t typically done. But then, alas, we also have the Kaiser/Sterman data on time-of-day variation of the EEG spectrum. The spectral magnitudes are highly state-dependent. With high variability inherent in the system, there cannot be one right answer. The variability must be characterized also.
Further, the spectral magnitudes were not very informative for purposes of training. The QEEG would be more useful for the extraction of connectivity relationships, but that project would take years to mature. The trajectory is well illustrated in the evolution of SKIL, the analysis program developed by Kaiser and Sterman. Over the years David abandoned standard QEEG analysis entirely and focused instead on the relationships among Brodmann areas. The reports became much more meaningful than Loreta analysis, with very specific implications for characterization and for training. There was no ‘Barry’s leap’ this time. The development trajectory was David Kaiser’s initiative entirely, and it led directly toward a very dynamic approach to neurofeedback training, one that engaged people in all their complexity.
Meanwhile, we were exploiting the real-time signal, in its manifold complexity, and training solely on the dynamics. But the divergence in our respective approaches lies very much deeper. It is best illustrated by the wonderful book title, “Lecturing birds on flying.” You can see where this is going…
The book concerns itself with the attempts to forestall instabilities in our economy over the years. Even with top experts in economics and reams of economic data taking the pulse of the system, we still cannot get to a predictably stable economy with any assurance. Our economy is of irreducible complexity, with many internal feedback loops that can ‘spontaneously’ synchronize to lead to overshoots, which then feed on positive feedback.
In the perspective of control system theory, the foundational task in neurofeedback is likewise to get to unconditional stability in the system. Inhibit protocols nicely head us in that direction, but that does not suffice in the general case. Operation at the person’s optimal response frequency turns out to be critical in many cases. That forces our hand to prioritize endogenous neuromodulation, only to find that this is preferable not only for cerebral stability but for core state regulation generally.
The lesson for us from “Lecturing birds on flying” is that cerebral stability cannot be achieved systematically and categorically by top-down, prescriptive methods. This is also Nassim Taleb’s message in his book titled “Antifragile.” Stability must be organically imbedded in the system by way of bottom-up methods such as endogenous neuromodulation that put the brain in charge of the journey.
In the presence of threat, episodic or chronic, the typical brain response is to move toward greater excitability—and thus toward instability. The remedy is to calm excitability in first instance, preferably by way of endogenous neuromodulation, and to train toward stability explicitly, by way of training at the person’s optimal frequency if necessary. With cerebral stability as the foundational requirement in neural regulation, reliance on endogenous neuromodulation offers significant advantages.
Siegfried
Siegfried Othmer
Touching the third rail.
Why are we not doing brain maps?
The reasons are historical, theoretical, tactical, and strategic.
Tactical:
When I first heard Barry recommend brain maps as the path to a scientifically robust neurofeedback practice, I was skeptical. We had enough of a challenge getting neurofeedback accepted within the health professions without adding the additional complication of getting QEEGs accepted. After all, even in the field of neurology the EEG had very limited utility, and the QEEG was still a novelty. We had just multiplied the challenge before us.
My prior scientific career, starting at the Solid State Physics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1959, was concerned throughout with challenges in low-level signal recovery, much of it relying on frequency-based techniques. Mental health professionals could not be expected to acquire competence in signal processing. Indeed, when the relevant questions started to be included in the BCIA exam, hardly anyone could pass the test. It may in fact have been an intention on Barry’s part to raise the bar on entry into the field, because in his mind it had been amateur hour ever since Margaret Ayers left his laboratory to set up shop in Beverly Hills….
It was to be amateur hour all the way up. There was the infamous happening in which the ‘experts’ were each given the same QEEG report to read, and on that basis were to come up with a diagnosis without consulting with each other. Really? This became an embarrassing spectacle, and it highlights the problem: the standard QEEG is not very revealing on what we most need to know about the person. Why was this not already obvious?
With the claims being made for the utility of the standard QEEG, we were also encroaching upon the domain of medicine. This raised hackles at the FDA, resulting in the confiscation of a Lexicor at one practitioner’s office. Another practitioner pronounced that she was using Q’s in order to rule out epilepsy! It was the Wild West with a messenger problem, mental health professionals making grand claims about what could be divined from the QEEG.
In all other respects, our field was generally abiding by the admonition to ‘be modest in what you claim.’ The hard data offered up by the reports gave clinicians a false sense of the solidity of the observations. In consequence, clinicians began to be regimented by the QEEG. In the presence of adverse effects, they might become defensive: ‘Well, it can’t be the neurofeedback because I know I’m doing the right thing…’
The more sophisticated QEEG analyses that followed in later years, such as David Kaiser’s SKIL, did indeed solve the problems that plagued the field early on. But the high skill level required, and the long learning curve, places limits on the rate of growth of the field. A more accessible path of entry is required for our field to grow organically.
In the early days, we all felt an obligation to stay united in a shared vision. Reliance on brain maps moved people to the use of referential placement in place of bipolar montage. In consequence, we too shifted to using referential placement. This was taking us closer to the localization hypothesis that we should have been moving away from with the network model. This did not last long. Bipolar placement was clearly superior in its impact, as it was effectively training dynamic connectivity, which made the signal more intelligible to the brain.
Years later, Barry told me that he was still doing his standard SMR training with everyone. We also know that SMR training is Jay Gunkelman’s default recommendation. Mechanisms-guided, protocol-based training was continuing to dominate in the field, not only in practice but in the literature, but it was no longer getting the attention it deserved. It’s hard to compete with brain imagery, with its aura of objectivity.
A practitioner in our network who uses brain maps once quipped that ‘it’s nice to have route guidance, but if you need it to get to the grocery store then there is something wrong’. With a systems-based schema governed by the regulatory hierarchy, the road map is grounded in universals. Generalities prescribe the starting point.
The game of chess is a good reference point here. In chess there are a limited number of strong opening moves, and they are all well-characterized. But it takes only a few moves to get from relative ‘universality’ to ‘particularity’. The first moves are likewise obvious in ILF NF, the analogue of the trip to the grocery store.
SMR training on sensorimotor strip is the historical precursor and paradigmatic exemplar of a generic starting point. The approach is both calming and stabilizing. In our implementation via endogenous neuromodulation, there are two basic opening moves: Right-side training for calming (T4-P4), and inter-hemispheric training for stabilization at homotopic sites, most typically (T3-T4). One can readily start with SMR-band training, adjusting the frequency as necessary. The real potency of these protocols, however, is revealed in the ILF regime.
Siegfried
John Anderson
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Leslie Sherlin, PhD
Siegfried and John,
This is a conversation I'm glad to see unfolding on the listserve, and I appreciate both of your perspectives.
John, thank you for the kind mention of the very recent release, Kerson, Sherlin, and Davelaar paper. What I find particularly interesting about this thread is that Siegfried's description of endogenous neuromodulation and the framework we articulated in that paper are often positioned as competing or opposing models. I've come to believe this framing is unnecessary and perhaps counterproductive for our field.
Through clinical practice and recent conversations with Siegfried directly, I've become convinced that operant conditioning and endogenous neuromodulation are better understood as complementary mechanisms rather than competing explanations. They may each predominate at different stages of learning and across different frequency domains, but they appear to be describing aspects of the same underlying phenomena from different vantage points.
I've recently completed a manuscript exploring this integration in some detail and hope to share more specifics once it moves through the review process. The short version: what Siegfried describes as the endpoint of effective ILF training looks remarkably like what Davelaar's multi-stage model predicts as the mature phase of neurofeedback learning. The theoretical tension may be more apparent than real.
John's hope that "we can become an eclectic field where we use the best fit approach for each individual client" resonates strongly. I'd suggest we're closer to theoretical integration than the current discourse sometimes suggests.
More to come (hopefully soon if reviewers are kind 😊).
Leslie
Leslie Sherlin, PhD, PhD, MAC, MSc, MAPH, LPC-S, CMPC, NCC, BCC, BCNL, BCBL, ECP, QEEGDL, CTP
Licensed Professional Counselor | Certified Sport Psychology Consultant
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Siegfried Othmer
John Anderson
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John Anderson
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Siegfried Othmer
Rustam Yumash
I’m currently working on formulating a more comprehensive theory of neurofeedback that goes beyond protocol- or mechanism-specific models by explicitly incorporating brain dynamics, system-level organization, and self-organising principles. The aim is not to discard existing learning or operant frameworks, but to situate them within a broader theoretical landscape that better accounts for global brain states, infra-slow regulation, and the role of emergent properties in learning and change.
As part of this process, I’m using AI as a support tool to help review, structure, and stress-test different aspects of the theory, including links to systems theory, neuroscience, and philosophy of science. AI is not being used to generate conclusions, but to assist with synthesis, clarity, and formatting across a very wide and interdisciplinary body of ideas.
I’m sharing this in the spirit of transparency and dialogue, and I very much welcome critical feedback, alternative perspectives, and pointers to relevant work that could strengthen or challenge this framework.
Drawing on Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness principle, this work also takes seriously the idea that no sufficiently complex self-referential system can fully explain or ground itself from within its own rules. Applied to neuroscience, consciousness, and AI, this suggests that increasing levels of self-reflection do not eliminate blind spots but instead expose intrinsic limits of formal explanation. From this perspective, questions of meaning, grounding, and what has historically been referred to as “God” arise not as theological assertions, but as boundary concepts that emerge when reflective systems confront the impossibility of complete self-closure. Gödel’s insight thus frames these questions as structurally inevitable rather than metaphysical speculation.
I thought this is important framework to consider .
Rustam
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Leslie Sherlin, PhD
Leslie Sherlin, PhD, PhD, MAC, MSc, MAPH, LPC-S, CMPC, NCC, BCC, BCNL, BCBL, ECP, QEEGDL, CTP
Licensed Professional Counselor | Certified Sport Psychology Consultant
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Pamela Blodgett
Brain training of New England, Clinical Director
John Anderson
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Leslie Sherlin, PhD
Hi Pamela,
Absolutely, please do. The purpose of these exchanges is for all of us to learn and grow together, and extending that learning beyond the listserv only amplifies the benefit.
Speaking for myself, I'm happy to have anything I've contributed shared widely. Generally, listserv discussions aren't expected to be confidential or proprietary unless someone specifically indicates otherwise.
If you're putting things in print or written communication, it would be nice to source the information back to the contributor and the ISNR listserv.
If you were going to cite anything from the dialogue, since the ISNR listserv is a members-only Google Group, the personal communication format is likely the appropriate APA style choice unless the specific thread has a shareable public link.
Treat it as a personal communication, which appears in-text only with no reference list entry. Even for my manuscript, way back and of recent I have cited Siegfried. Below is a sample should that be appropriate for anyone:
In-text citation: (S. Othmer, personal communication, December 21, 2025) or S. Othmer (personal communication, December 21, 2025)
Best,
Leslie
Leslie Sherlin, PhD, PhD, MAC, MSc, MAPH, LPC-S, CMPC, NCC, BCC, BCNL, BCBL, ECP, QEEGDL, CTP
Licensed Professional Counselor | Certified Sport Psychology Consultant
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voice: (480) 389-6971 | text: (949) 445-1967 |
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Siegfried Othmer
Touching the third rail.
Why are we not doing brain maps?
The reasons are historical, theoretical, tactical, and strategic.
Strategic:
Ideally, we would like to have NF (and BF, in combination) come to be seen as indispensable in people’s lives. The self-help ‘industry’ is huge. The resources people expend to manage their physiological state by various means are collectively immense. This includes the resort to licit and illicit drugs. Yet much of what people do is a poor substitute for what we accomplish readily with NF, as the implicit objectives are improved mental function, improved emotional status, and self-regulatory competence.
We are also now able to say that no one can know their inherent potential until they have had a chance to train their brains with NF. That holds true across the age range. It is in our collective best interest to make NF available to every child early in their educational career, or earlier if there are developmental issues.
We would like to stay out of the jaws of the medical regime (“What do you call an alternative and complementary method that actually works? ‘Medicine!’”—an MD). It would be nice for our special competence to be recognized and that a collaborative relationship with medical professionals is in prospect.
To be in demand universally, we need to meet a universal need: Core state regulation. To stay out of the smothering embrace of medicine, we need to portray ourselves as operating within the frame of an optimal functioning model. We may meet a medically recognized need, but not with a medical (i.e., deficit-focused) remedy: The formal objective of core state regulation suits the purpose.
To be universal, our services must be accessible and affordable. For the struggling masses, this can only be accomplished within institutional settings with government, charitable or corporate support. In that regard, there are now many publicly supported agencies that offer ILF NF in our area. Also, ILF NF is being offered within the LA Unified School District, the second largest in the country. And the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health is taking up the work. The juvenile justice systems of three states are utilizing ILF NF, as is the German juvenile prison system. The Frankfurt airport has been offering ILF NF to its employees for many years.
ILF NF has been offered to service members at Camp Pendleton since 2009. Major Michael Villaneuva then introduced the training at Fort Hood. He then also took the instrument to Afghanistan, where the personnel at a forward operating base—including the command staff and the medical staff—availed themselves of the training. This was presented at ISNR in 2014.
None of the above would have happened if we had placed QEEG characterization in the agenda at the front end. It presents a huge barrier to entry. A key characteristic of the American persona is the “I’m OK” - attitude, which is almost obligatory even when it doesn’t fit. This holds true even more strongly among service members. If we are not operating within a deficit model, we don’t need to spend precious resources looking for the deficits.
The middle class has sustained our growth over the years within a self-pay model. Here the QEEG up front is likewise a barrier to entry. Vince Monastra saw the greatest value of a QEEG for ADHD children in terms of buy-in by the parents. They took the whole matter much more seriously. Buy-in is no longer an issue when clients arrive by way of word-of-mouth.
The trend we are seeing is toward more severe presentations than we used to see—a direct reflection of the fact that we can now handle much more challenging conditions than before. People are coming to see us for whom the training is not discretionary, and the alternatives are limited or unattractive. For such obvious clinical cases, the only humane option is a reimbursement environment that accommodates NF. Our competences will come to complement those of psychiatry, neurology, geriatrics, and they should be at the heart of integrative and functional medicine.
For the optimum functioning model, our own family experience represents the ideal. NF is available to us on demand without the impediment of cost. Every member of our family gets a NF session occasionally. A variety of practice models will be needed to approach this ideal in terms of access and availability, including remotely supervised training, as well as one-on-n training with people whose protocols have settled down into a routine, and with families on family plan. Also, practices will become multi-modal in a manner less demanding of clinician time. We are headed for a lifetime relationship with our clients, as optimal functioning is everyone’s issue, and the challenges change with age and with various crises.
Siegfried
Siegfried Othmer
Leslie Sherlin, PhD
Hi Pamela,
Speaking for myself, I'm happy to have anything I've contributed shared widely. Generally, listserv discussions aren't expected to be confidential or proprietary unless someone specifically indicates otherwise.
If you're putting things in print or written communication, it would be nice to source the information back to the contributor and the ISNR listserv.
If you were going to cite anything from the dialogue, since the ISNR listserv is a members-only Google Group, the personal communication format is likely the appropriate APA style choice unless the specific thread has a shareable public link.
Treat it as a personal communication, which appears in-text only with no reference list entry. Even for my manuscript, way back and of recent I have cited Siegfried. Below is a sample should that be appropriate for anyone:
In-text citation: (S. Othmer, personal communication, December 21, 2025) or S. Othmer (personal communication, December 21, 2025)
Best,
Leslie
Leslie Sherlin, PhD, PhD, MAC, MSc, MAPH, LPC-S, CMPC, NCC, BCC, BCNL, BCBL, ECP, QEEGDL, CTP
Licensed Professional Counselor | Certified Sport Psychology Consultant
|
voice: (480) 389-6971 | text: (949) 445-1967 |
*Pronouns : He, him, his
Date: Monday, December 22, 2025 at 4:50 PM
To: isnr_memb...@googlegroups.com <isnr_memb...@googlegroups.com>, John Anderson <qeeg...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Touching the Third Rail
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Pamela Blodgett
Brain training of New England, Clinical Director
Siegfried Othmer
Why are we not doing brain maps?
The reasons are historical, theoretical, tactical, and strategic.
Strategic, II:
Can Endogenous Neuromodulation meet our society’s most critical needs?
Between January 2023 and December 2024, inpatient mental health claims increased by 80% in the US, while outpatient claims increased by 40% (The Economist). This indexes a mental health crisis in our country of unprecedented scope. Here’s the context: Our national health status is worse than that of our peer countries, and it is declining in all age brackets. Our life expectancy is ranked lowest, as is our infant mortality rate (by a factor of two with respect to the average of our peers). This trend has been long underway. Back in 1991, the book titled “Betrayal of Health” was published that identified the usual culprits in our looming healthcare crisis: Personal behavior, nutrition-less food, toxics in the environment and in our agriculture, etc. A ‘biobehavioral’ remedy was urgently called for.
Over the succeeding third of a century, matters have only gotten worse in all these areas. The dominant causal factors in chronic medical disease remain lifestyle-related. These, in turn, are rooted in our collective state of dysregulation. Thus, the key to chronic medical disease is our mental health status. The key to mental health status is brain functional competence—core state regulation. The heart of core state regulation, however, lies in the emotional rather than the cognitive domain. Much of our society exists in a state of estrangement from their essential selves.
Our society is no longer organized around our basic needs at the level of the family. It has become malignly indifferent to our state of well-being. But even in Denmark, where social welfare is not neglected, the markers of emotional distress in young girls have decremented by four years over the last fifteen years. We and our peer countries are in a civilizational crisis in which our children are the canaries.
The distribution of the healthcare burden is bimodal, and Pareto’s Law applies. In its simplest formulation, it states that 20% of the population accounts for 80% of the impact. Perhaps one-quarter of our children have a history of early childhood trauma. They are at high risk of undergoing a dysregulation cascade that eventuates in chronic medical disease. Thus, early emotional trauma is the principal causal factor accounting for the vast majority of our medical costs due to chronic medical disease over the lifespan. It also accounts for much of our crime, of school failure, and of social dysfunction.
Early emotional trauma is the toughest challenge we confront in our work. The category includes borderlines, DID, the personality disorders, and accounts for much of our problem with treatment-resistant addiction and chronic pain. The most promising path to recovery we have found is Endogenous Neuromodulation and synchrony training in the ILF regime. With adolescents and adults, this is combined with Alpha-Theta training.
The optimal functioning approach also serves in the role of prevention. The social and health care calamity we are living with has only one viable and affordable remedy: the move toward a prevention model. With respect to trauma syndromes, the objective is to allow the trainee’s brain to relinquish the defenses of the trauma response and thus to abort the dysregulation cascade. The earlier in life this is undertaken, the better. This approach is subject to the least constraints when engaged early in life, before dysfunctions have elaborated and compounded.
In this arena, we face no competition, and the need is great. The only viable neurofeedback option we have for infancy and early childhood is endogenous neuromodulation. (Brain stimulation can also play a role, as Nick Dogris demonstrated with his own son.) We can best meet the needs of our society by giving our infants and young children a healthy start. We offer remediation to everyone else. This includes the autistic spectrum in particular. In the optimal functioning model, one need not wait for a diagnosis.
Our discipline has attracted the broadest category of health professionals, and it has done so for the best of reasons. It is the only discipline that regards ‘regulation’ per se as its objective, as well as the pathway to effect recovery. We must now raise regulatory competence to the level of primacy in our healthcare enterprise. Training core state regulation according to the regulatory hierarchy, the developmental hierarchy, and the frequency hierarchy by way of Endogenous Neuromodulation offers us an efficient remedy, one that is synergistic with nature’s design.
Siegfried