7 Healthcast: Neurofeedback

Jane Mouradjian suffers from depression.

"I've gone through various different therapies, medications and now I'm here," she said.

At the Neurodevelopment Center in Providence, Jane hopes neurofeedback will help.

At first, a map of her brain showed a real problem.

"This is the area here where there's too much of the fast activity that is what you see in the brain when someone is in a state of emergency, very overexcited state," said Dr. Laurence Hirshberg.

With neurofeedback:
"You're retraining the brain and you're reshaping or retraining the brain to function better and to function more close to norms," Dr. Hirshberg said.

Electrodes are attached to various parts of her head.

"It's like a microphone that's picking up the brain's electrical activity and then that activity gets analyzed by the computer and shown in a way a person can understand," Dr. Hirshberg said. "As it's close to you and spinning, for Jane, what that meant was less of the fast activity and more the alpha state, that's calm brain activity."

Jane says she's learned to control her brain activity and it's helped.

"I think it does get to a point where you have to keep searching, you have to keep finding what works for you and this works," she said. "I feel normal."

Jane started her neurofeedback treatment twice a week for ten weeks and now has it once every couple of months.

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