Software and Games for neurofeedback training.
Software
BioExplorer
You can download BioExplorer from: http://www.cyberevolution.com/download.htm
Don’t insert the HASP until you get to the part of the BE installation that installs it.
Video Drivers, etc.
After installing DScaler, you need to go to BioExplorer menu: Preferences and click the DVD tab. Make sure Dscaler shows in both the audio and video codec fields.
You might also try, while playing one of your videos in BE, testing different CD Audio Volume devices and Synthesizer devices in the Audio tab.
Flash
There is a bug between (at least) the latest version of BE and Flash. The result is that you RIGHT-click on the Flash window to change the game you want to use and BE immediately crashes. Meanwhile there’s a very simple solution. In the design, click the Window menu and choose Signal Diagram. On the Signal Diagram page move to the right and find the Flash Player object/box RIGHT-click on THAT and you’ll be able to click the little “…” button to choose a different flash file. Close out of that and return to Instruments 1 or 2. The new game will be loaded and BE should work fine.
Video
If you want videos to run in the Video Player designs, they will run any mpeg, avi, most windows media videos.
Windows 7 issues
For any laptop, if you’re using Windows 7, you’ll want a minimum of 2 Gig of RAM; 3 or 4 is better. I don’t use BrainMaster software any more, but, depending on how many of the various unlock codes you have bought (for DVD players, music, etc.) it’s always a good idea to get something with a video card that has some built-in Video RAM. This doesn’t need to be the largest fastest card available–cards made for gaming–but it will help process the video feedback. You won’t be able to buy a computer without a large hard drive, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Hasp Drivers
When installing on Windows7, I’ve had several experiences installing the software, then putting in the hasp and having Windows ask if I wouldn’t like to install a newer version. DON’T do it! If you stay with the one installed by BE, it works fine. The new one not. You can go to the Device Manager, find Universal Serial Bus Controllers and uninstall all the hasps, then uninstall BE from the Control Panel and reinstall. Plug in the hasp and DON’T accept Windows’ thoughtful offer to update the driver.
Missing Documents
I’d try first to do a search on your computer for the file name of one of the ones you’ve saved and see if it shows up. If you are using Windows7, Microsoft has “protected” you (whether you wanted it or not) by allowing you to save files in the BioExplorer folder inside Program Files (x86), but it may not let you actually SEE them or use them. You need to create the folders for sessions and exports in your My Documents folder (as stated in the first section of the instructions) Sometimes when you start to record, you may not pay attention to which folder the files go into, and BE will try to put them in Program Files. Once you have navigated once or twice to the Sessions folder in My Documents, that will become the default, but if you don’t do it the first time, they may go in the old place.
There actually is a way to get to those files going to some far away address in the guts of Windows where the O/S hides the real file while keeping empty links where you thought you saved them, but I tried it a few times without ever getting there.
Try opening one of the epochs files and re-artifacting it, then saving it into My Documents. If you can see it there but can’t find it where you thought you saved it the first time, you get to practice your artifacting–a good motivation never to make THAT mistake again!
Windows 8 issues
BioExplorer works in Windows 8 (as well as anything does…). You need one of the 1.6 versions of the software for it to work, and you can forget about using DVD feedback for brightness or size, since as of yet there is no video codec of which I’m aware that works with Windows 8 that will drive the DVD player in BE.
BxShadow seems like the way to go. You can use it (I assume it works in Windows 8) with streaming video, DVD player (NOT inside BE, though BE controls the degree of shadowing), games (on your computer, not just those for BE, etc.)
DVD issues
Use K Light codecs. They are compatible with windows 8.
Settings
For data collection
If the dongle is plugged in and blinking, RIGHT-click on the place in the black status bar where it says EEG Pendant on COM and choose Properties. In the window that opens, click the arrow for the drop-down menu for COM port and choose the last option on the list.
Make sure the Baud rate is 38400, Parity is None, Byte size is 8 and Stop Bits are 1 (nobody should be messing with these).
The flashing red CH1 and CH2 indicators most often suggest that you have a connection problem, NOT an emf problem (that’s more likely to result in Sync Errors). Making sure your electrodes don’t have spots where they are discolored, which may mean they are losing their plating, or that they have intact wires or that they are well connected to the scalp would be the first troubleshooting here.
For Designs
Timing Sessions
If you go to Sessions: Timer in BE, you can click the box to play sound when the time is completed. Uncheck the Use Timer box at the top to remove the timer function.
Two Monitor Use
To reattach the windows once you have separated them for two-monitor use (or by accident), look to the upper left side of each detached window. There is a menu (Instruments). In that menu choose Attach.
Help for Objects
If you double-click on any object in the BE Signal Diagram–or select it in the Objects menu–you’ll open its properties window. Each of those has a help button at the bottom right which should answer many/most of your questions. Don’t forget to click the link in the name of the window for additional information if it is set as a link.
For Training
Whenever you open a Design/Protocol in BioExplorer, you should have three windows opening:
The Signal Diagram (the flowchart of what happens to the signal in that protocol)
Instruments 1
Instruments 2
The two instruments windows are where all the objects on the signal diagram appear. You can put them all on one window or spread them among both. You can also easily move items between the two windows by right-clicking on them and choosing Switch Window.
Many folks put the displays THEY want to track–the oscilloscope or raw/filtered waveforms, the spectral display or brain mirror, the threshold devices where targets are tracked and controlled, the meters which show the level of a particular signal or the points being scored or the percent of time scoring, etc.–on Instruments 1. They place all the client-oriented feedback objects on Instruments 2. These could include the DVD or video screen, bar graphs that show the client specific training measures, point meters, etc. This allows you to use the old EEG Spectrum approach to having a trainer’s screen and a client screen.
You can go to the Instruments window and select Detach when you have any window (generally Instruments 2) in the foreground. This will separate that window from the others. Once this is done, if you have two monitors active on your computer, you simply drag the detached window onto the second monitor and you’re ready to go. The detached window will have a menu in the upper left corner which allows you (among other things) to Attach that window back to the others in the design. Note that when you Detach a window from the Design in one design, that same window will be detached from all your designs. When you re-attach it in one, it will be re-attached in all.
You can set up a second monitor on a laptop by clicking in any blank area on the desktop and right-clicking to get the drop-down menu, where you select Properties. In the Settings tab you’ll find the image of two monitors and you can make your selections there to use one or two and whether you want them to operate as an extended desktop (i.e. when you drag a window off one, it appears on the other.)
Tones
With Bio-Explorer I can set up multiple sounds in the same (or different) keys and in different voices, so they are all reward sounds. For example, in one of these protocols, there is a kind of drone chord in the key of C which plays louder or softer when alpha is higher or lower, so that is on most of the time. Then there is a higher, soft sound which is pitch variable that plays whenever theta is higher than alpha (crossover), kind of like drops of subconscious thought, and there is a deep rumbling sound which comes on (rarely) when 2-5 Hz activity rises too high. All are in the same key, so they fit together, but they are very different voices, so the brain easily distinguishes them.
BioReview
BE records the raw waveform data, which can be output in various ways from BioReview (which comes with BE). You can save time, mean, SD, min and max values for a variety of defined periods, or you can output the sample data for whatever frequencies/ measures you choose, but those only output in txt format (comma, tab or space delimited).
Phase angles
Phase angles would ideally be at 0 degrees, but for practical purposes we consider phase between -45 and +45 degrees to be in phase. The positive or negative sign indicates which of the curves is leading the other.
TLC7A
The TQ assessment is not normative. It is descriptive. If you have studied the material in the Level 2 workshop about frequencies and brain states, you might expect that the level of beta in a brain would relate to one’s degree of dependence on rational/logical/sequential processing, that the level of theta would suggest the degree to which a brain depended on creative or intuitive processes. And, of course, the assumption underlying all of this is that a slow brain is slow and a fast brain is fast. In fact, the most useful thing in a brain, from my point of view, is its ability to shift from one state to another and sustain each as appropriate for certain types of tasks. Zen meditators may show high degrees of alpha synchrony consistent with the work they have done to develop that state, but it’s not uncommon for me to see a client with tons of alpha, even synchronous alpha who cannot block it effectively who cannot process effectively and who may be very anxious–the opposite of what one would expect of a Zen meditator.
The ability to produce one state with eyes closed and another with eyes open and another at task is desirable. What areas will activate at task ideally will be dependent on the task. You probably should pursue QEEG instead of TQ, since that approach is oriented toward creating hundreds or thousands of “norms” (e.g. means and standard deviations) for brains at a specific age. What should the value be for 2 Hz with eyes closed at P4 in terms of absolute amplitude? The brain-trainer approach is a pattern recognition approach. Is beta higher on the right side of the brain or the left? Is theta more than 2 times higher than beta with eyes open at a site, and how does the relationship change when a task is performed? Those show us something about how an individual brain is working and helps us, ideally, identify patterns which may be related to specific training issues the client wishes to change. So TQ isn’t going to give you much help in identifying a “standard, balanced brain” toward which you can train everyone. The goal of the brain-trainer approach is to train individuals to become more fully and completely themselves.
Software for TQ. The TQ7 assessment works with Infiniti and BioExplorer. The new one will as well, though the latest version of the Infiniti software doesn’t gather the phase data. Everything else will work.
Reverse Lateralization. I don’t know of any way to make the TQ compatible for people who have reverse lateralization, since the only way I’ve ever been able to recognize them is by training and seeing backward reactions. It’s likely the Report page, which will include data from the Client Report, will indicate that the person is left-handed and thus may have this response, but it remains very unclear as to whether even those who use the right hemisphere for language are backwards in terms of the emotional valence of alpha and beta reversals.
Set-up
Whichever channel you put electrodes from the left side of the head into is the left channel. Could be CH1 or CH2 or both or neither, depending on where you have placed the electrodes on the head. Of course you always plug the first channel you are training into CH1–NEVER into CH2 with nothing in CH1.
If you are doing an assessment, the electrode over what should be the faster site (F3, C3, P3, T3 and Fz) goes in CH1; the other sites go in CH2.
Ground
There are two major functions performed by the ground. One is to provide a safe exit for electrical charges (e.g. static discharge) without frying the amplifier (for which reason you are supposed to always attach the ground and plug it in first). The other is to provide a comparison signal which can be compared with the active and reference lead(s) in order to help identify environmental artifacts.
I’ve heard that ideally the ground should be equidistant from the other electrodes, though that is often not followed. To the best of my knowledge, there is no reason not to put it at Fpz or Cz or the back of the neck or on an earlobe or mastoid or even on a wrist-strap.
Lead Wires
The color of the wires means nothing at all. The key is what you are using the electrode for and where you are plugging it into the amplifier. Your amplifier should identify channel 1 (you always use channel 1 first, regardless of where on the head you are training and what frequencies), and it should indicate + and – or Active and Reference plugs. The Ground (in some amps called the Ref) should also be identified.
Key is to plug the Ground in first, then you can plug the others in. Use the colors of the wires to help you keep track of which electrode is where on the head and plug it into the proper plug on the amplifier.
In most cases, especially in a one-channel protocol, it really makes no difference which of the two non-ground electrodes goes in Active and which goes in Reference. A1/C3 will give you the same signal as C3/A1. If you will ever be doing coherence or synchrony or symmetry protocols (2 channels), then it’s a good idea to become accustomed to putting your lead from the main area you hope to train on the head in Active and your reference (especially if using a relatively inert site like A1 or M1) in the reference.
Collection
Connections
When the CH icons are red on the upper right-hand side of the BioExplorer screen, that usually indicates a poor connection. If it is happening on various Pendants, it certainly indicates a problem with connection quality.
Client Observation
Lots of clients get tense during the assessment. Part of the trainer’s job is to make sure that they don’t clench their jaw or tighten their shoulders (or blink their eyes a lot) so the assessment data is valuable. I always suggest that clients leave their mouths slightly open or even hold their tongues lightly between their lips–especially in the temporal recordings. Whenever you see lots of surging slow activity, you should verify the eye activity, and whenever you see lots of very fast, you should try to get the client to relax before going ahead and recording the assessment.
Locations
I rarely assess at Fp1 and Fp2, since it is so difficult to get decent data there.
Jumpers
Jumpers should always be used for assessments. Otherwise a difference in reference signals can cause there to appear to be a difference in Active electrode signals that is not truly present (since we ASSUME that the references will be equal to one another). They should also be used in some specific types of training. Symmetry training, coherence training and synchrony training are examples. Any training that compares two signals and trains the comparison will benefit from comparing the two (or more) signals against the same reference. In most other types of training, the jumpers are not necessary.
Designs
4-Channel Designs
The brain-trainer Design package has a whole set (and growing) of 4C designs including: multiband coherence up or down options which can be trained with EC or EO; they play tones for each of the 8 bands being trained to increase slow-wave or decrease fast-wave coherences indicated out of range by the assessment, plus they play silent video with the chords when all the targets are in or moving toward targets.
There are 4C Alpha, Gamma and Alpha Gamma synchrony which train between CH1/CH2, CH3/CH4, CH1-C3 and CH2/CH4 with EC or EO.
There are designs for training asymmetries in alpha or beta or both with EC or EO.
There is a 4C Squash EC or EO to quiet the brain in general, several Squish protocols that train to reduce specific bands (e.g. low frequencies, middle frequencies or high frequencies), again based on what the assessment shows. All can be done EC or EO or even at task, if desired. And there is a 4C windowed squash with inhibits high and low frequencies and increases 6-13 Hz middle bands with EC using two different melodies produced by the brain as its own feedback.
There is a 4C bipolar design I like, which uses C3/C4, T3/T4, F7/F8 and Fz/Pz, training to reduce 2-38 and reward 12-16 Hz in each (generally done with EO). These could be used with any combination of bipolar montages.
Our philosophy of 4C training is that it is ideal when the brain has a generalized strategy (e.g. it’s slow everywhere, fast everywhere, fails in general to block slow alpha, is general high fast-wave coherences, etc. We can train a larger area to do the same thing, including improving symmetry or synchrony.
Games
Games like PacMan are feedback. You can use them to raise beta, lower beta, change coherence or whatever you want to train. The brain-trainer design package works with the BioPLAY games, some of which do involve the client interacting via the mouse or arrow keys, though others do not. There are a number of designs that provide various types of feedback using these games running in the Flash player. Even those games that do involve the client interacting physically with the game are based on his success in meeting thresholds with his brain activity.
I’ve always been kind of split about the use of games in training. In my early days on the A620 there were some basic games, one of which I really liked and used with lots of clients. It was a puzzle game that included several different levels of difficulty (number of pieces) ranging up to, as I recall) 256. Each time the client scored a point, one of the pieces flipped over. One game we played was to see how many pieces it took the client to figure out what the picture was. Another was to see the shortest time it took to complete a puzzle with 64 or 256 or however many pieces.
I should also remind readers that I absolutely don’t believe in a session made up of games. The message of that kind of training is (at some level): “this is about entertainment.” That’s not a message I like to give to clients–especially with the entertainment-oriented culture in which most kids grow up today. There’s no way to compete! I prefer that the client and I–even a very young client–understand what we are hoping to see get better in his/her life as a result of the training. A great trainer is a great motivator, and I like to use the games (or the DVD or video) for motivation, not for entertainment. So I might break a session into multiple segments of different lengths with different tasks for each segment. One of those, near the end, perhaps the longest–or the one which, when it’s done, the session is over!–is the DVD or video or the game.
Coaching session with games–especially interactive ones–requires that the trainer help the client to recognize that remaining calm and relaxed and still is an important part of success. Clients often, especially in the beginning, try to use “body English” or sharp movements as they might in a standard game, but these block performance. My mantra of “don’t think, don’t try,” is especially valid here. It’s an excellent way to teach a client the Zen concept of focusing purely on the process and staying in the moment without regard to outcome (final score). When they begin to recognize that the less they worry about the scores, the higher scores they achieve, it’s a positive breakthrough that can have an effect both in the games and in real life.
Games have come a long way since those days in the early 90s, in graphics, some in interest, and certainly in price. You can create them yourself with something as simple as a point counter and a set of “fly-over” videos. The client plays for 3-5 minutes at a time, trying to see how far he can get through the playlist and how many points he can score.
But the really cool ones cost a good deal more–some more than the whole BioExplorer program! Here are some thoughts on some of the ones currently available for BE users (many also for Infiniti, BrainMaster and other platforms as well).
Brain-trainer HeadGames
LIFE is the game specifically for nIR HEG training that allows you to train to increase the activation ratio, or decrease it, or learn to alternate. The clients I have used it with so far have found it intriguing. The more obsessive/compulsive/anxious/intellectualizing they are, the more they have to work on reducing the ratio (Diving, in the terminology of the game). The more inattentive, uncontrolled, unmotivated, depressive they are, the more they have to work on increasing the ratio (Climbing). Learning to shift states back and forth and extend the distance between the idling and working states has worked in a few cases like doing HEG and HRV together.
As with all the HeadGames, LIFE has a control panel screen on the Trainer’s window and a separate Flash screen on the client window. You can use two monitors, controlling the game from the trainer screen while the client sees the game.
The game includes a Playback option, that allows the trainer and client to run the screen through the session to discuss what happened in various parts of the game. It also includes the ability to output and graph sessions over time in Excel.
NeuroPuzzles
NeuroPuzzles is a favorite of mine, since it allows the client to put together puzzles by scoring points in a number of different types of protocols–and the images used in the puzzles can be any JPG image provided by the client, so the training is very personalized.
NeuroPuzzles is a single-variable game that allows you to use any jpeg image (you can create personal folders for each client with their own images) and turn it into a puzzle. The pieces turn over each time you pass the threshold. It has sound feedback that can be turned on or off, and the training can be controlled by neuropuzzles (to pause, for example, every 3 minutes to show a comparison of scoring in the most current training segment vs previous ones, then to restart automatically after a defined period) or by BE (to pause when the session timer in BE is set).
I’ve sometimes given clients the assignment to take pictures of things that make them feel happy or safe or calm and we use those in the sessions. Some bring in digitized photos of themselves from other days and times.
Somatic Vision Games
Somatic Vision offers what are clearly the graphically most sophisticated of the available options: Inner Tube, Particle Editor, and Dual Drive Extreme. Each of these costs $395, but they are probably most like what your clients are accustomed to seeing. There are very good graphics, multiple options and levels and the ability to add interactive control through joystick or keyboard.
Inner Tube offers a series of levels of flying various designs of space ships (I guess) through a variety of environments that appear to be maybe alien intestines or weird tunnels. Depending on how the client does with the training challenge, the tunnel gets darker or lighter (or more or less transparent), the ship goes faster or slower, and the steering works better or worse. Throughout the tunnel there are shapes hanging in space which give you points when you fly through them. At higher levels there are shapes you want to get and others you want to miss. There is, for old guys like me, the option of just letting the program handle the steering, but for many clients the pleasure comes in steering the ship. The few times I tried that, I alternated between scraping the ceiling and the floor and the walls of the tunnel, managing to miss almost all the points. You are timed on your flight, gaining time or losing it depending on your performance.
Dual drive extreme is a racing game which offers a variety of cars and environments to race through, with the option of racing against the clock or against another racer. I never tried having two clients compete, but lots of kids like racing against the computer. You can set level of difficulty to make the computer racer drive like your grandmother up to the level of, say, a Formula One racer. The cars can flip over, run into obstacles, etc. and, as in Inner Tube, you can have a sound track and/or music or turn them off.
Particle Editor is probably the most “adult” of the games, with colorful displays and mood music–not so much the race against time feel as the other two games. I haven’t used it personally, but I’ve seen clients use it and it has, like the other Somatic Vision games, a lot of options and great graphic and sound environments.
It should be pretty obvious what the benefit of the Somatic Vision offerings is: they look and feel much more like video games than most the other options. From the trainer’s point of view they offer nearly endless options for setting up the various elements of the feedback. In Inner Tube, for example you can set different measures to control the level of fog in the tunnel, the exhaust from the ship, the steering control, the brightness in the tunnel, level of transparency, speed, etc. In fact, if you spend the money for one of these games, be prepared to spend some time getting comfortable with implementing them in your designs (they come with a help manual.). They use the Server object as their interface to BioExplorer, so you can send a variety of signals (yes/no, like the pass/fail output from a threshold or percentage values from the Ratio output, percent scoring, etc.) into the server and then define in the game what each controls. This is very cool once you get the hang of it and have set up your server objects in a variety of your designs.
It also brings me to, from my point of view, the downside of the games: the relationship between the brain activity and the feedback is so complex and multi-faceted that I never really got the feel for what I was doing that made the game work. There is a school of neurofeedback which says that doesn’t matter and that the brain can figure it out. I adhere to that school when I’m talking about raising or lowering, for example, temporal high beta and getting MIDI tone feedback. But I do find myself wondering how the brain makes the connections between the multiple feedback elements and the various signal measures that “control” them. I suspect trainers who have used the games more than I would have a better sense of that and probably would develop more or less complex strategies for setting up all the options (I often found myself using the same input to control various of the feedback options to keep it relatively simple).
These games are definitely for computers with solid graphics cards and plenty or RAM. The older processors may have difficulty keeping up with their demands, but most newer computers should be fine with them.
Bottom line, if you are working a lot with sophisticated gaming kids or young adults, the Somatic Vision offerings may well be worth their stiff price-tag because of the beautiful implementation of their concepts. Just don’t step into them with the expectation that setting them up will be like choosing PacMan in a Flash Player. They require a commitment of trainer time and attention to how clients seem to respond best to them in order to really work up to their potential, but my best guess with the experience I have with them is that they very likely reward the investment.
BioPLAY Games
BioPLAY Games from Itallis are the latest and most successful of several previous attempts to port old arcade games over to Flash and link them to BE (or BrainMaster or Infiniti). The graphics are good–what you would expect from the original PacMan or Space Invaders–simple but accurate. There are 3 packages available: two 5-packs of games, one with simple-to-moderate difficulty, the other with moderate to high. The third pack combines the first two. Each of the 5-packs are just under $200 and the 10 pack is $375. Most of the games are interactive, using mouse or keyboard arrow keys, though some are just for watching.
I won’t go through the list of the games, other than to mention a couple that I really enjoy using with clients:
Ghost Man For any trainer/client who has gotten good and tired of the “pacman” maze that comes with BE, this is a breath of fresh air. You control the PacMan’s direction, eat the dots to gain points, try to stay away from the ghosts, eat the special dots that allow you to kill ghosts for a short time and can make it through various levels–or be wiped out early.
Space Invaders is a great arcade game, firing your weapons at the rows of invading ships as they move back and forth across the screen, staying away from their rays and trying to shoot down the mother ships that cross the top of the screen.
The BioPLAY games also come with a pdf manual full of examples of how to implement them in BE designs. Each game has 3 inputs, two which are on/off pass/fail types and a third which uses relative values such as percentages. Each of these controls one of the three game elements. For example in Space Invaders, you can set your Pass/Fail to control whether your guns fire or not. When the client is not Passing the threshold, you can move your ship, but you can’t shoot anything down. Another controls the point values of your targets and the third controls the strength of your ray, from a light one which shoots down the bottom invader you hit to a powerful beam that wipes out everything above it in the line it hits.
While you will want to spend a little time getting the hang of using these options, they are simpler to implement and seem (to me at least) to be more directly connected to performance. There are three colored ovals on each screen (for Inputs 1, 2 and 3) which go on or off to show when you are achieving your targets or not.
The BioPLAY games don’t try to compete with the high-end graphics of Somatic Vision, but having seen my 6 year-old grandson and my 22 year-old step-son spend hours playing Super Mario Brothers on a Wii, I can’t argue with the power of the old games. They certainly are a lot cheaper to produce, and the lead time to getting them to market is significantly shorter. They are very processor friendly, and it’s hard to imagine a computer today that would have difficulty with them.
The fact that for about the price of one of the Somatic Vision games you could get 10 BioPLAYs is a plus, and with even 5-6 games that would appeal to most different clients, there are a number of sessions that could be spent trying to achieve new high scores.
In summary, if you are working with clients who are engaged by challenges (probably not anxious or obsessive folks), these games offer a broad range of options that can be added to your existing system and will give you an excellent tool to use in your sessions.
BxShadow
One point I wanted to make about BxShadow is that it does not work “inside” BioExplorer or any other program. It creates a shadow box that you can control and that is linked to BioExplorer’s feedback. You can size and place this box over a whole screen or anything on it–not just a BioExplorer window.
For example,
1. Instead of using the DVD player in BE, use your standard DVD player and place the shadow window over it. The DVD will play in Windows…but the shadow will adjust the brightness based on what the client is doing in their training design. Sound is also adjusted based on the feedback.
2. Stream a video of interest to the client on your computer, and have the brightness and volume controls adjust its brightness and volume.
3. Download a game like Tetris or another that the client enjoys and place the shadow window over that on the client screen (no need for the BioExplorer window even to be there!), and the game brightens and darkens and volume of game sounds change based on brain performance.
4. Open a Kindle book or a digital graphic novel on the screen and place the shadow window over that so reading becomes easier or harder to follow based on what the brain is doing.
5. Surf the net on your favorite browser with the shadow window over it.
Use your imagination! The point is that the program makes whatever is on the screen under the shadow window a part of the training. You can adjust the brightness settings, and you can choose to have high/low brightness levels that switch back and forth, or you can use variable brightness with gradation.
Rah has produced a video that shows you how to install and use the tool, and we are available to help you get started.
She has also set up designs in the brain-trainer designs package that will work with BxShadow. I’ve asked her to set up a package just with those designs, so those of you who are updated can download just the ones you want for BxShadow.
The software, at $250, looks expensive at first, until you begin to consider the alternatives. And best of all, your payment is a donation to the Quiet Mind Foundation, which supports various projects researching brain training, so it’s tax deductible.
It works with any version of Windows, so anything that will run BioExplorer will run BxShadow.