Neural Entrainment: A short-cut to achieving deep relaxation?
Thursday, 24 September, 12 – 1pm
The seminar will be streamed via Zoom. Please contact Bruce Stevenson for the link and password.
Presented by Bernadine Cocks, University of New England
Relaxation is a core component of many psychological therapies yet achieving an appropriate state of relaxation can be time-consuming and may require pharmacological assistance. It may be possible, however, to induce deep relaxation non-invasively through the process of resonance. In this process, neural oscillators/networks contain intrinsic resonance frequencies that can be entrained and then modulated through exposure to a photic flicker. This brief talk will describe three pilot experiments (n=9) conducted between 2012 and 2015 exploring such photic flicker neural entrainment; specifically, it will describe how a closed loop EEG feedback (CLEF/aNFB) system was trialled which appeared to induce deep relaxation in <500 ms. This system also appeared to improve some cognitive abilities, with results showing an average 10% decrease in error rates on an auditory digit span task. If these pilot results could be replicated, such a closed loop system could have both therapeutic and commercial applications.
All welcome
For further information, contact Bruce Stevenson (6773 2565, bstevens@une.edu.au)
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