Book Description

Quantitative EEG (qEEG) has become an increasingly common method of assessment in the field of neurofeedback. The International Society for Neurofeedback and Research (ISNR) has issued a position paper advocating its widespread use within the field, and many entering the field gravitate toward its use because of its empirical value in the assessment and determination of protocols for intervention with neurofeedback. At the same time, the neuroimaging field has also increasingly taken an interest in qEEG and begun to employ it extensively in research alongside fMRI, because of its high temporal resolution and increasing spatial resolution resulting from recent enhancements such as low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) imaging. This growing common use has provided a valuable new information source for the field of neurofeedback that can be applied at the research and clinical levels for an enriched analysis of client disorders. This chapter, on the one hand, is intended as an example of how those already engaged in qEEG might synthesize the emerging neuroimaging research with their own clinical experience, and is also an effort to present this topic in a generally understandable fashion. Those clinicians who are new to the field of neurofeedback or who are considering the use of qEEG at the clinical level are often intimidated by the complexity of the technology, and by the lack of basic guides to its implementation. Psychologists, counselors and medical professionals do not typically receive the technical training to prepare them for this new and powerful technology, which may come to play an important role in their respective professions. This chapter therefore is also meant to examine qEEG in a basic and comprehensive schema to help inform and initially guide such an audience in further exploration of the topic.