Your Peak Performing Brain

optimal brain guy Imagine what could you do if your brain worked better. If you could focus better, think faster, and remember more? And do it all more effortlessly? How would that improve your career, your grades, your performance, or your life? Teaching your brain to work at its optimum can unlock your brain’s true potential and increase your options.

Performing at its optimum means your brain does what you want when you want, responding to life’s challenges and events with ease. Staying calm and being able to focus under stress, moving from project to project with ease, using your mental energy for productivity rather than worrying, sleeping well and waking up refreshed.

To perform optimally you need feedback so you know when you’re doing well and when you’re not. The cutting edge technology of neurofeedback provides that information to you. Imagine having insight into your brain and how to help it function better. It’s like having an electronic coach that teaches your brain to perform optimally, Peak Neurofitness Training is the fastest, most effective way to achieve peak mental performance. It works like no other training to achieve results in minimum time. Get an edge that keeps you performing at your peak.

Peak Performance Training

Our peak performance training offers performance enhancement for athletes, artists, students, and career driven professionals who seek to achieve the following results:

Ability to to stay calm and perform under pressure
Ability to relax when you want to (reduces burn-out, increases endurance if can relax between stressful events)
Better impulse control
Creative problem solving
Improved reaction times
Enhancement of specific skills such as reading comprehension, math, writing, and public speaking
Enhancement of meditation
Enhanced ability to filter distractions
Greater optimism
Heightened confidence and intuition
Improved focus
Improved learning and memory
Improved mental clarity
Improved motivation and follow-through
Improved alertness and energy
Improve mental flexibility, to shift more easily from one task to another
Increased ability to sequence and multitask
Increased joy in life
Increased productivity
Increased resilience to stress
Increased sense of well-being
Jet lag management
Reduced circular worry patterns (mind chatter)
Reduced reactivity
Sharpen timing and skills for peak performance in sports
Sleep well and wake up refreshed
Attain a state of flow where performance feels effortless
Help you to perform at your "peak"

Radically improve your sporting performance

Stay calm and focused even under stress
Control test or performance anxiety
Develop a powerful memory
Stay sharp as you age
Increase powers of concentration and visualization
Boost your learning and study skills
Liberate your creativity

Click to read sports research paper

A relaxed and alert state

Most people associate peak performance with a revved up high tension state. Research has shown that this state is difficult to maintain, doesn’t consistently get the desired results, and leads to fast burn-out.

Take a tip from professional pilots, athletes, actors, vocalists, business executives, and others, learn how to get maximum results by focusing in a calm and alert manner.

Peak Performance Research

Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. 2009 Oct 14
An Exploratory Study on the Effects of Tele-neurofeedback and Tele-biofeedback on Objective and Subjective Sleep in Patients with Primary Insomnia
Valck E, Arns M, Breteler MH, Cluydts R.

ABSTRACT
Research Unit Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium. Insomnia is a sleeping disorder, usually studied from a behavioural perspective, with a focus on somatic and cognitive arousal. Recent studies have suggested that an impairment of information processes due to the presence of cortical hyperarousal might interfere with normal sleep onset and/or consolidation.

As such, a treatment modality focussing on CNS arousal, and thus influencing information processing, might be of interest. Seventien insomnia patients were randomly assigned to either a tele-neurofeedback (n = 9) or an electromyography tele-biofeedback (n = 8) protocol. Twelve healthy controls were used to compare baseline sleep measures. A polysomnography was performed pre and post treatment. Total Sleep Time (TST), was considered as our primary outcome variable. Sleep latency decreased pre to post treatment in both groups, but a significant improvement in TST was found only after the neurofeedback (NFB) protocol.

Furthermore, sleep logs at home showed an overall improvement only in the neurofeedback group, whereas the sleep logs in the lab remained the same pre to post training. Only NFB training resulted in an increase in TST. The mixed results concerning perception of sleep might be related to methodological issues, such as the different locations of the training and sleep measurements.
Cogn. Process. 2009 Feb;10 Suppl 1:S101-9. doi: 10.1007/s10339-008-0248-5. Epub 2008 Dec 11.
A theory of alpha/theta neurofeedback, creative performance enhancement, long distance functional connectivity and psychological integration
Gruzelier J.

ABSTRACT
Professionally significant enhancement of music and dance performance and mood has followed training with an EEG-neurofeedback protocol which increases the ratio of theta to alpha waves using auditory feedback with eyes closed. While originally the protocol was designed to induce hypnogogia, a state historically associated with creativity, the outcome was psychological integration, while subsequent applications focusing on raising the theta-alpha ratio, reduced depression and anxiety in alcoholism and resolved post traumaticstress syndrome (PTSD). In optimal performance studies we confirmed associations with creativity in musical performance, but effects also included technique and communication. We extended efficacy to dance and social anxiety.

Diversity of outcome has a counterpart in wide ranging associations between theta oscillations and behaviour in cognitive and affective neuroscience: in animals with sensory-motor activity in exploration, effort, working memory, learning, retention and REM sleep; in man with meditative concentration, reduced anxiety and sympathetic autonomic activation, as well as task demands in virtual spatial navigation, focussed and sustained attention, working and recognition memory, and having implications for synaptic plasticity and long term potentiation. Neuroanatomical circuitry involves the ascending mescencephalic-cortical arousal system, and limbic circuits subserving cognitive as well as affective/motivational functions.

Working memory and meditative bliss, representing cognitive and affective domains, respectively, involve coupling between frontal and posterior cortices, exemplify a role for theta and alpha waves in mediating the interaction between distal and widely distributed connections. It is posited that this mediation in part underpins the integrational attributes of alpha-theta training in optimal performance and psychotherapy, creative associations in hypnogogia, and enhancement of technical, communication and artistic domains of performance in the arts.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2013 May 15. pii: S0167-8760(13)00127-X. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.05.004.
Application of alpha/theta neurofeedback and heart rate variability training to young contemporary dancers: State anxiety and creativity
Gruzelier JH, Thompson T, Redding E, Brandt R, Steffert T.

ABSTRACT
As one in a series on the impact of EEG-neurofeedback in the performing arts, we set out to replicate a previous dance study in which alpha/theta (A/T) neurofeedback and heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback enhanced performance in competitive ballroom dancers compared with controls.

First year contemporary dance conservatoire students were randomised to the same two psychophysiological interventions or a choreology instruction comparison group or a no-training control group. While there was demonstrable neurofeedback learning, there was no impact of the three interventions on dance performance as assessed by four experts. However, HRV training reduced anxiety and the reduction correlated with improved technique and artistry in performance; the anxiety scale items focussed on autonomic functions, especially cardiovascular activity. In line with the putative impact of hypnogogic training on creativity A/T training increased cognitive creativity with the test of unusual uses, but not insight problems. Methodological and theoretical implications are considered.

Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2013 Jun;38(2):91-9. doi: 10.1007/s10484-013-9211-z.
Behavioural and psychophysiological correlates of athletic performance: a test of the multi-action plan model
Bertollo M, Bortoli L, Gramaccioni G, Hanin Y, Comani S, Robazza C..

ABSTRACT
The main purposes of the present study were to substantiate the existence of the four types of performance categories (i.e., optimal-automatic, optimal-controlled, suboptimal-controlled, and suboptimal-automatic) as hypothesised in the multi-action plan (MAP) model, and to investigate whether some specific affective, behavioural, psychophysiological, and postural trends may typify each type of performance. A 20-year-old athlete of the Italian shooting team, and a 46-year-old athlete of the Italian dart-throwing team participated in the study.

Athletes were asked to identify the core components of the action and then to execute a large number of shots/flights. A 2 × 2 (optimal/suboptimal × automated/controlled) within subjects multivariate analysis of variance was performed to test the differences among the four types of performance. Findings provided preliminary evidence of psychophysiological and postural differences among four performance categories as conceptualized within the MAP model.

Monitoring the entire spectrum of psychophysiological and behavioural features related to the different types of performance is important to develop and implement biofeedback and neurofeedback techniques aimed at helping athletes to identify individual zones of optimal functioning and to enhance theirperformance.
Biol Psychol. 2013 Apr 25. pii: S0301-0511(13)00099-9. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.04.005.
Beneficial outcome from EEG-neurofeedback on creative music performance, attention and well-being in school children
Gruzelier JH, Foks M, Steffert T, Chen MJ, Ros T.

ABSTRACT
We earlier reported benefits for creativity in rehearsed music performance from alpha/theta (A/T) neurofeedback in conservatoire studies (Egner & Gruzelier, 2003) which were not found with SMR, Beta1, mental skills, aerobics or Alexander training, or in standby controls. Here the focus was the impact on novice music performance. A/T and SMR training were compared in 11-year old school children along with non-intervention controls with outcome measures not only of rehearsed music performance but also creative improvisation, as well as sustained attention and phenomenology.

Evidence of effective learning in the school setting was obtained for A/T and SMR/beta2 ratios. Preferential benefits from A/T for rehearsed musicperformance were replicated in children for technique and communication ratings. They extended to creativity and communication ratings with creative improvisation which were shared with SMR training, disclosing an influence of SMR on unrehearsed music performance at a novice level with its greater cognitive demands.

In a first application of A/T for improving sustained attention (TOVA), it was found to be more successful than SMR training, with a notable reduction in commission errors in the children, 15/33 of whom had attention indices in the ADHD range. Phenomenological reports were in favour of neurofeedback and well-being benefits. Implementing neurofeedback in the daily school setting proved feasible and holds pedagogic promise.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2013 Apr;88(1):1-16. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.02.001. Epub 2013 Feb 13.
Boosting brain functions: Improving executive functions with behavioral training, neurostimulation, and neurofeedback.
Enriquez-Geppert S, Huster RJ, Herrmann CS..

ABSTRACT
Cognitive enhancement is a popular topic, attracting attention both from the general public and the scientific research community. Higher cognitive functions are involved in various aspects of everyday life and have been associated with manifest behavioral and psychiatric mental impairments when deteriorated. The improvement of these so-called executive functions (EFs) is of high individual, social, and economic relevances. This review provides a synopsis of two lines of research, investigating the enhancement of capabilities in executive functioning:

a) computerized behavioral trainings, and
b) approaches for direct neuromodulation (neurofeedback and transcranial electrostimulation).

Task switching, memory updating, response inhibition, and dual task performance are addressed in terms of cognitive functions. It has been shown that behavioral cognitive training leads to enhanced performance in task switching, memory updating, and dual tasks. Similarly, direct neurocognitive modulation of brain regions that are crucially involved in specific EFs also leads to behavioral benefits in response inhibition, task switching, and memory updating.

Response inhibition performance has been shown to be improved by neurostimulation of the right inferior frontal cortex, whereas neurostimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex exerts effects on task switching and memory updating. Due to a lack of consistency in experimental methods and findings, a comparison of different training approaches concerning their effectiveness is not yet possible. So far, current data suggest that training gains may indeed generalize to untrained tasks aiming at the same cognitive process, as well as across cognitive domains within executive control.
Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2013 Mar;38(1):29-44. doi: 10.1007/s10484-012-9205-2.
Developing a Performance Brain Training™ approach for baseball: a process analysis with descriptive data
Sherlin LH, Larson NC, Sherlin RM.

ABSTRACT
Neurofeedback may be useful for improving sports performance but few studies have examined this potential. Here we present data of five development players from a major league baseball team. The aims were to evaluate the feasibility of conducting sessions within a professional organization, assess changes in quantitative electroencephalograph (QEEG), NeuroPerformance Profile™, and report qualitative self-report data before and after brain training.

The EEG was recorded with 19 electrodes for 20 min of baseline conditions and approximately 21 min of a continuous performance test. The fast Fourier transform analysis provided average cross-spectral matrices for bands delta (1-3.5 Hz), theta (4-7.5 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), low beta (13-16 Hz), beta 1 (13-21 Hz), beta 2 (22-32 Hz), and gamma (32-45 Hz) from the pre and post intervention evaluations in the baseline condition of eyes open. The continuous performance test metrics included the errors of omission, errors of commission, response time and response time variability. The 9 scales of the NeuroPerformance Profile™ were examined.

The QEEG data, CPT data and NeuroPerformance Profile™ data were all compared between the pre and post 15 sessions of brain training using a within subject paired t test design corrected for multiple comparisons using false discovery rate method. Following brain training, comparative QEEG, CPT and NeuroPerformance Profile™ analyses illustrated significant differences. The QEEG findings of all participants illustrated significant changes within the training parameters but also across other frequency bands and electrode sites.

Overall, the positive findings in both objective and subjective measures suggest further inquiry into the utility of brain training for performance enhancement with the specific application of sport is warranted. Particularly QEEG and CPT gains were noted in the areas that correspond to client self-report data demonstrating improvement in attention, decreased intrusive thought patterns and improvementssleep patterns.
Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012;2012:4643-7. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6347002.
Double-blind single-session neurofeedback training in upper-alpha for cognitive enhancement of healthy subjects
Escolano C, Olivan B, Lopez-del-Hoyo Y, Garcia-Campayo J, Minguez J.

ABSTRACT
This paper reports on a single-session neurofeedback (NF) training procedure on the user-specific upper alpha band for cognitive enhancement in healthy users. A double-blind study was designed using a NF group and an active control group. Control group performed as the NF group but received sham feedback, minimizing the non-specific factors of training. This design aimed to (i) investigate upper alpha as a NF parameter, (ii) evaluate the NF effects on upper alpha during the execution of a cognitive task, and (iii) evaluate the effects on cognitive performance by means of a cognitive task and a battery of psychological tests.

Results of EEG analysis show the key role of the feedback: only the NF group enhanced upper alpha during the training, and it led to a desynchronization increase during the execution of the cognitive task. Regarding the behavioral results, a strong learning effect was observed, with the NF group performing better in almost all measurements but many of them without statistical significance.
J Altern Complement Med. 2011 Feb;17(2):109-15. doi: 10.1089/acm.2009.0191. Epub 2011 Feb 8.
Neurofeedback-enhanced gamma brainwaves from the prefrontal cortical region of meditators and non-meditators and associated subjective experiences
Rubik B.

ABSTRACT/OBJECTIVES
: This study had two aims: (1) to explore the inner experiences associated with increased production of gamma brainwaves in an initial neurofeedback experience; and (2) to measure and compare neurofeedback-enhanced increased output from the prefrontal cortical region of meditators and non-meditators, using the Peak Brain Happiness Trainer(™) neurofeedback system.

DESIGN:
This was a controlled pilot study; it involved a single session per subject.

SETTING:
The research was conducted in a nonprofit laboratory in the United States.

SUBJECTS:
There were 12 adults in 2 groups (N = 12): 6 practitioners of Transcendental Meditation(™) and six controls.

MEASURES:
The measures were self-assessed inner experiences and measurements of clarified gamma output at the prefrontal cortical region.

RESULTS:
(1) Self-assessed descriptions were comparable for both groups; (2) the associations of 16 supplied descriptors with the initial neurofeedback experience were comparable for both groups and showed highest scores for "happy" (p < 0.0001) and "loving" (p < 0.0001), and lowest scores for "stressed" (p < 0.0001) and "disappointed" (p < 0.0001); (3) baseline measures were comparable for both groups; (4) both groups were able to increase gamma brainwaves using neurofeedback (p < 0.01); and (5) meditators produced greater increases over controls (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSIONS:
The inner experience associated with increased clarified gamma amplitude from the prefrontal cortex apparently involves positive emotions of happiness and love, along with reduced stress. Meditators achieved greater increases in the gamma band from the prefrontal cortical region over controls during an initial neurofeedback session.

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