A Deep Dive into the Science of Neurofeedback: Cutting-Edge Insights with Friederike Fabritius and Penijean Gracefire

Neurofeedback from A (amplitude training) to Z (z-scores) with Penijean Gracefire.

Friederike Fabritius speaks with an innovative voice in the neurofeedback and neuroscience space, Penijean Gracefire. Penijean is a neural frequency analyst and constant question asker who rides motorcycles, drinks tea, and designs therapeutic applications for emerging neurotechnology. The pair discuss the real-world applications for neurofeedback, specifically when it comes to working with mental health challenges. Penijean highlights the importance of accurate data collection from brain activity and how it provides valuable insights for personalized mental health treatment. She explains how brain mapping (QEEG) and neurofeedback can help individuals improve cognitive performance and emotional well-being. The conversation reveals advancements in EEG technology and the shifts that have happened over the last few decades. Listeners will learn more about how EEGs work, the benefits they can offer, and why it is important to look at each person as an individual when it comes to mental health support and treatment rather than just use the same standard approach.

00:00 Introduction
00:47 Penijean's Background and Approach to Neurofeedback
02:14 The Role of Biometrics in Mental Health
04:17 Personalized Neurofeedback Process
06:16 Understanding Brain Mapping and EEG
08:53 The Evolution of Neurofeedback Techniques
12:37 Future Discussions and Conclusion

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Penijean Gracefire is a neural frequency analyst and constant question asker who rides motorcycles, drinks tea, and designs therapeutic applications for emerging neurotechnology. Her educational background includes a clinical mental health license and board certification in both Neurofeedback and Quantitative EEG. As a qualified supervisor, she also serves as the co-chair of the  Neuroscience Taskforce for the American Mental Health Counseling Association.

Penijean constructs closed loop EEG-based feedback paradigms which alter neural dynamics in real time, helping people to recover from injury and trauma by improving cortical network flexibility and adaptive cascades. Her ground-breaking work has led to industry-wide changes in neuromodulation and is the basis for current standards in international certification. Penijean’s passions include spectral analysis, creative delivery mechanisms for caffeine, and taking things apart to see how they work.

 

Episode Transcript

Friederike Fabritius (00:05):
Hello everyone.
Welcome back.
Today I have a very specialguest, Penijean Gracefire.
She's an icon in the neurofeedbackand neuroscience community because
she designs those truly innovativeand science-based and cutting edge
neurofeedback protocols based onthe latest science and development.

(00:25):
So she's not just following thetrends, she's shaping the trends.
And so I came across some of her profiles.
They were pretty wild.
Not wild in a bad sense, but I wasthinking like, wow, how does she do it?
And so I'm so happy to haveyou here today, Penijean.
Hello.

Penijean Gracefire (00:43):
Hello.
Thank you for having me.

Friederike Fabritius: Yeah, it's really cool. (00:45):
undefined
So I wanted first for you toexplain what you do and why and how.
So what is your, like how do you work?
What are you doing?
What are you busy with?
Sure.

Penijean Gracefire (00:58):
Probably the very first thing to start out with is that
I am an incessant question asker.
I think a lot of adults who were questionaskers as children and never quite
stopped can identify with the feelingof wanting to understand everything.

(01:21):
I think also being a zillennial.
Being born right at the beginningof the eighties and being
there for that big transition.
You know, technologically where, Imean, I remember as a child reading
encyclopedias, going from encyclopediato Wikipedia has been a significant

(01:44):
just global level change for how weaccess and think about information.
So.
Right.
For somebody like me, the idea ofhaving all the possible information
at my fingertips has been incredible.
The other thing that has occurred, as weall know, is the rise of, uh, information
manipulation and misinformationthat we're also contending with.

(02:08):
How do we identify what's true andwhat's meaningful and maybe what's good.
And so, I think as a person who'salways been interested in accuracy and
truth in, you know what's interesting,the, the reason I really went in the
direction of neurotechnology was becauseI don't think that there is anything

(02:32):
that gives us a more accurate or truthtelling feedback from our environment
than literally the raw biometricsthat we can observe and measure
coming from our own brains and bodies.

Friederike Fabritius (02:46):
Yeah, I think that's really cool and especially if
you're able to actually understandthe data that you're receiving,
I think that's the next step.
Measuring it was one thing, but then thequestion is what do you do with the data?
And so, in your case, can youtell us maybe about what you're
working on at the moment and whatexcites you the most at the moment?

Penijean Gracefire (03:08):
Yes.
So, I ended up starting out in themental health therapy direction because
when you wanna know how people work,you ask: what do we know about people?
And when you wanna know how people work,you also ask: why aren't they working?
What is not working in the people?
And so the idea of, of kind of beginningfrom a rehabilitative standpoint, uh, I

(03:33):
think made a lot of sense at the time.
And then as I begin to understandbetter how people operated, one of the
things that really emerged for me in amental health "clinician", uh, higher
education program was that there werea lot of things that people could not
communicate very easily themselves.

(03:53):
And so, the idea of being able to usebiometrics or potentially neurotechnology
to observe brain activity or observecentral nervous system or even peripheral
nervous system behaviors to give usinformation about how that body or
brain is interacting or responding,became a critical piece of what I was

(04:14):
even conceptualizing as mental health.

Friederike Fabritius (04:17):
Mm-hmm.
And so how do you, like, let's say, Idon't know if you, if you even take on
individual clients, but let's say I wasapproaching you and I said, you know,
I want to transform my brain, reach abetter performance, be less stressed.
Where would you even start?
Like let's say I show up and I havethese goals, what would you do?

Penijean Gracefire (04:37):
Sure, we would do three things.
The first thing is we would havea conversation about what it
meant for you to have those goals.
Because a lot of times we also comewith the difficulty of articulating
for ourselves what it is thatwe even wanna do and try to do.
So even just having some clarificationaround, because people will come
and say, I'm having trouble withattention or anxiety, or depression.

(05:01):
But they have a very clear idea intheir brains about what that means
for their daily lived experience.
And that is not always the same thingthat a professional clinical person
thinks when they mean and say "anxiety".
So the very first thing we do is createsome type of communicative common
ground to appropriately understandand represent what it is that you

(05:22):
actually want to either be ableto start doing or stop doing, that
would improve your quality of life.

Friederike Fabritius (05:28):
That's really clever because in a sense,
it's not like a blanket approach.
It's very tailored to the individual.
So I make my case, forexample, I have five kids.
And I am currently writing two books.
And I, I do keynotes for clients.
And so of course to stay on top ofall of that, is pretty demanding.

(05:50):
It's fun, but it's like a lot.
And so in my case, it would be, I wouldlove to be like, just super balanced, you
know, not feel stressed, not feel bored.
Just stay in that sweet spot where lifeis exciting, but you're not stressed.
I wouldn't fit into anyclinical diagnosis, so you
could probably not go from that.
It would be like very personalto me and what I want to achieve.

(06:13):
So I think that's great.
What's the second thing we would do?

Penijean Gracefire (06:16):
The second thing, which is not always available to everyone,
but part of what we're talking abouttoday is how to make different biometrics
or neurotechnology more accessible ingeneral, would be doing some type of
brain map or quantitative EEG analysisof what you have going on in your brain.

Friederike Fabritius (06:39):
Right.
So, can you quickly speak on that?
I know what it is, but for people,we can maybe explain, you know, you
get these like colorful brain mapsbased on, on measuring somebody's EEG.
So you put a cap on, usually Ithink like 19 channels, and you
get a full picture of the brain andwhat it does at rest, so to say.

(07:01):
And then when you have thoseresults, what do you do?
Like when you get the map, um, in.
I can maybe even pull one up.
You can talk, I will just seeif I can catch one for you.

Penijean Gracefire (07:12):
So, gathering biometric or EEG based data from the brain
has such a wide spectrum of potential.
So for example, um, EEG iselectroencephalogram, electro
meaning electrical, encephalo meaningbrain, and gram meaning picture.
Instagram.
So it's picture of the electricalactivity in your brain.

(07:35):
You can actually derive quitea bit of information, even
from one or two locations ofelectrical recording on the brain.
But the more dense the arrays, essentiallythe more points in the brain that you can
put a sensor or an electrode and measureactivity, the more that you can construct
a three dimensional understanding ofwhat is actually happening and where.

(07:59):
So one of, one of the ways of makingthat EEG global and informative, but also
accessible and affordable, has been a 19channel, 19 channel array, because arrays
can go up to 128 or even more electrodes.
So the more, the more placements youhave, the more subtle data you can get.

(08:21):
But

Friederike Fabritius (08:22):
yeah, I have, um, a brain master discovery at home.
So I, you know, regularly record mybrain and my family member's brains.
And I look at the raw EEG andI, I find it really fascinating.
So, one question I have for you islike, I don't wanna interrupt your
logical process of what we'll be doing,but this is really a question I have

(08:42):
with these normative data databases.
I always wonder are these "ideal"databases or are these like average?
Because sometimes I think deviation couldalso be a sign of something positive.

Penijean Gracefire (08:53):
Great question, and it's an ongoing conversation in our
industry about once we get the data,whether it's one channel, 19 channels,
254, once you actually physicallyget that data, what does it mean?
Like, how are we gonna analyze it?
Right?
And also, how are we going to useit as a potential reference to then

(09:14):
give feedback or information backto the individual for learning.
A couple of different, uh, popularways that people are doing it
historically and, uh, emergently.
Mm-hmm.
One of the most common popular waysis popular because it's a little less
expensive in the barrier for learning it,

(09:35):
the learning curve is a little lesssteep, is having a both an assessment
and a feedback device that only doesmaybe a small amount of EEG channels.

Friederike Fabritius (09:47):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

Penijean Gracefire (09:48):
And so people who potentially go in that direction, they
normally give feedback based on sort ofreal time monitoring what's happening
and what they're usually looking forincreases and decreases, you know, local
activity in the brain and potentiallysome amount of connection or interaction

(10:08):
relationship between those few locations.
So it's very ciritcal for them to pickthe right locations and look at, you
know, very particular increases anddecreases or relationships between
those few cherry picked locations.

Friederike Fabritius (10:24):
Right.
So would that be Amplitude traininghere or are you thinking about
Z-score training with a few locations?

Penijean Gracefire (10:30):
Well currently I'm talking about the idea
historically of amplitude training.

Friederike Fabritius (10:34):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

Penijean Gracefire (10:35):
Because as you know, our, what we're capable of doing changes
as the technology advances and improvesand becomes higher resolution over time.
So originally what we're callingneurofeedback or EEG biofeedback,
started off with just a few channels.
So we measured what we couldand we did what we could.
However, in the last couple of decades,one of the things that's really emerged,

(10:58):
I'd say eighties and nineties, has beenthis interest in taking the possibility
of a database, maybe some standardizedunderstanding of brainwave range activity.

Friederike Fabritius (11:11):
Mm-hmm.

Penijean Gracefire (11:12):
Trying to then apply that to learning, because essentially a
database, us saying let's take a couplehundred people, measure their brains, um,
maybe do some screening like is it, youknow, try to screen out some pathologies
or maybe a severe history of injury.
What seems to be atypical functional brain?
What seems to be a brain thatlooks like it has some pathology?

(11:34):
Us trying to identify out categoriesthat we could associate with function.
So the idea of a database, I mean,I think our first really big one
happened in the seventies, so we'vebeen trying to pursue this idea of can
we categorize brain activity using EEG?
And I think we've made a lot of progress,but recently, just in the last 20

years, the question emerged (11:56):
well, if we can see maybe some normative or
typically expected patterns of activity,could we inform the brain instead
of just asking, make more of thisbrainwave here or make less of it here.

Friederike Fabritius (12:10):
Mm-hmm.

Penijean Gracefire (12:11):
Could we say, instead of just going unidirectional,
make more or make less, could wesay, oh, here is a range, here is
an upper and a lower threshold.
And then there's a range in here thatwe would love for you to hang out in?
Anything

Friederike Fabritius (12:26):
yeah

Penijean Gracefire (12:27):
too high, maybe not as functional.
Anything too low, maybe not as functional.
Can you hang out in here?
And that was the birth ofthe idea of Z-score training.

Friederike Fabritius (12:37):
What I would like to do is to, do an entire
episode with you just on that,because I think there's so much there.
And it's an approach that really puzzlesme because back when I first got in touch
with neurofeedback, that was in 2010 whenI got certified and I actually worked with
executives and did amplitude training.

(12:57):
And back then it was abit of a crazy thing.
Like everybody looked at me when Icame with my little suitcase and before
people had these like wearable devices,you know, to measure any kind of, so
it was like pretty wild for people.
And now I kind of have returned tothat world and everything has changed.

(13:17):
It's like, uh, there hasbeen a real paradigm shift.
So I would say, in the next episodewith you, I would love to really
explore the world of like QEEGand Z-score and what has changed.

Penijean Gracefire (13:31):
Absolutely.

Friederike Fabritius (13:31):
Are you up for that?

Penijean Gracefire (13:32):
Absolutely.

Friederike Fabritius (13:34):
Great.
So thank you for today, Penijean.
Thank you so much.