Testimonials and Personal Stories

ADHD, Attachment Issues

"Have you looked into HEG? My daughter is ADHD rather than autistic but many are using HEG with autistic children. HEG has definitely has helped in our case. I credit it with relieving my daughter's attachment issues.

Additionally, she now will hold eye contact whereas before her eyes were constantly darting. HEG is easy to use. Hershel Toomim, the HEG inventor and a participant on this list, will help you get started. With the Pocket Neurobics A3 and the HEG headband, you can use HEG independently of the computer. The A3 also supports EEG."
Adonice Hereford



"HEG was firmly established by research in Thailand, where a Princess of the realm was so impressed with the results on her child that she funded training of all the autistic children in Thailand, 149, as I recall. I have personally used HEG since it became available (and have used EEG training since 1959, daily since 1974) and very satisfied with the results. It is entirely safe, reliable, simple to use and can be applied at home. I just completed 4 weeks of training a six year-old autistic brain injured child from England, whose results were impressive. The combination of EEG/HEG has been well proved to be of benefit to autistic youngsters."
Dr. Von

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ADHD, Hyperactivity, Impulsivity

"We are successfully working with a 5 year old who cannot tolerate any other form of neurofeedback and are getting terrific results with his hyperactivity and impulsivity."

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Attachment Disorder, ADHD, Hyperactivity, Aggression

"I am working with an experienced foster mother who is caring for a 4 year-old and his 8 month-old brother. She has had them since June 05. The 4 year- old has suffered severe neglect and physical as well as suspected sexual abuse, the infant appears to have been saved from most of the terrible stuff. Parents are borderline IQ and pretty low functioning as well as probable substance abusers. Foster mom has been doing a very commendable job but we are realizing that his difficulties (endless need for total attention all the time, little connectivity, little emotion, hyperactivity, aggression towards brother, destruction of all brother's x-mas toys) are probably a severe reactive attachment disorder. Foster mom is at her wits end, considering the pros and cons of continuing to care for this sibling pair and trying to make a decision about the best thing to do. I am a novice in this group and have had minimal experience with HEG but in reading the several reports in the recent past devising a protocol for this little fellow and working with him. I would like to present this to Columbus Children's Services, as bottom line, the most economical plan (always the prime consideration) for the care of this young man, realizing that he will be their agency's responsibility for him until 18, then moving on to another state agency, corrections or mental health. This is an excellent placement for him and renewing the mom and providing some hope will go a long way."

Thanks for any suggestions

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Attention Training

"Inability to maintain focus is a hallmark of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Neurofeedback to date has not been focused on this particular facet of this disorder. Rather correction of brain electrical activity has been the norm. Training graphs of Hemoencephalography (HEG) reveal failures of attention as they are happening. Queries of the trainee about thoughts at these times reveals the wandering thoughts that invade attention and prevent continued focus.

Brain plasticity studies reveal the tremendous capacity of the brain to meet a repetitive focused demand for behavior change. With repetition these changes become habits requiring no conscious attention.

Classical EEG neurofeedback meets the ADD challenge by repeated sessions devoted to changing brain electrical activity. One clear behavior demanded by this training is repetitive focus on a prescribed activity for many sessions. This may well be habit forming!

HEG, on the other hand, lends itself to behavior training where focus is constantly measured. A new attention measurement has been devised. This measurement is continuously presented for maximization by the trainee. At the end of each trial a final score for attention is recorded, graphed, and presented for progress evaluation.

Clinical trials show this to be an effective method whereby focus becomes better session-by-session."

It's a Gold Mind!
"I was aware that I was "different" as early as third grade. Although I excelled in spelling, mathematics was a mystery. I achieved consistent honor status in high school. I graduated from University and was propelled into perpetual "studenthood" with information and the ability to process it. Forty years past college with accomplishments, and an M.A. in Psychology, I still doubted my abilities. Long-range memory had deficits in recalling facts. I used coping skills to maneuver through life. Working memory was greatly impaired.

When books on ADD such as I'm Not Lazy, Crazy or Stupid and Driven to Distraction became available, I was stunned by the clear description of my life experience. Spacing out and missing parts of conversations was my experience since childhood. This year I discovered the miracle of how HEG restores function to those whose lives have been colored by ADD.

The first segment, in ten sessions of brain exercise, documented by before and after testing clearly demonstrated gains in every category. Old telephone numbers and random bits of the past reappeared, reassuring me they were retrievable from the bottomless black hole of my mind. I no longer write everything down to remember.

The second session allowed me to find a solution to a problem not previously apparent and spark new directions in conversation with my husband. After 10 sessions I began to feel happy most of the time for no reason. I am enjoying interaction with others more than ever.

When areas of the brain work well, memory, recall, information processing, and action are effortless and natural. My mind feels like it's waking up from a deep sleep. I'm beginning to like and respect myself.

I know there is more to gain. My heart is grateful to Al Shore, Ph.D. for telling me about this process and to Hershel for lighting my mind and accomplishing it with such loving care and support. There is inspired genius successfully at work here."

Barbara McRae, M.A., MCC
Colorado Springs, CO

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Autism

"For the past month I had the pleasure of helping a 6 year-old English girl. The child's mother's mother is St Lucian, the father is an English ne'er do well with minimal involvement with the child. The mother, the child's foster father, and child were here for four weeks, and learned to train the epiliptic child on the Play Attention (PA) and the Toomim HEG (nIR). My experience with children similar to S.K. is that at least 200 half hour EEG sessions of training will be needed.

S.K. had a complex history of infantile autistic features complicated by infective disease at age 4 which knocked her developmentally back to infantile emotions, learning, memory and behavior.

Just before leaving England to consult me, SK was assessed by a neurologist as developmentally 18-24 months. Of course, IMO the highly qualified MD did not spend an adequate amount of time with the child herself; but, its nice to get such a low start line so that when I finish my own work I seem so much more competent. Mother was advised by multiple professionals to warehouse the child, no hope offered. My own assessment, and that of a qualified assistant was that the child was developmentally at least 3 years old. Of course, I spend a lot of time crawling around the floor with the child.

We applied Play Attention. We initiated training by having Mother model training for the child, and we initially denied S.K. access to the helmet. (put, WHY DID THE KIDS PUT JAM ON THE CAT? into google if you don't understand why). Father bought a bike helmet and had the child swimming, eating, playing whilst wearing the helmet - good behaviorist! We also applied nIR (Toomim's) HEG with the helmet over the headband sensor.

Initially the child was ignoring the monitor so we used my own preferred screen (an xy graph) and father simply hummed when the blood flow was increasing (the graph going up).

The child's very limited vocabulary (Hello. How are you? What are you doing? - to which mother continually made the elegant response, "I'm loving you.") began to grow, her first new word was "EXCELLENT." This reflected my own obsessive use of "Very Good!" "Very Good!" "EXCELLENT!!!"

As usual IME in a very short time the combination of EEG and HEG was followed by substantial positive development. God Bless Mary Cover Jones! and all other pioneers in the healing of children.

I find that when children are exposed to my eight different systems (Play Attention (PA), BioComp, F-1000b, Neurocybernetics, Pocket Neurobics[PN] (using Bio-Explorer), Brain III (Deymed), A620 Autogen, and EBT at 11 stations (I have two each of the F1000b, PN and PA); subsequently they typically choose the Bio-Explorer [PN] and the PA. I run every child on all 8 systems and change the locations of the devices - I do have one highly preferred and two significantly more preferred stations among my 11 instruments."

S.K. and her parents have returned to England bearing a PA and a pendant HEG from Hershel with hope bright in their hearts.

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Autism - A Parent's Dilemma

"Your lament is so clear. On the surface you must live with this child no matter what. I answer because I have also had such relationships with poisoned children after they have grown up. It helps to have an adult child to help understand the problem. As I now see it the child has no other way to express feelings that are there nevertheless. There is a missing or underdeveloped connection from the emotional center, the amygdala and the understanding brain. So the child doesn't understand the felt emotions and then doesn't understand the feelings of others. With no speech this is doubly frustrating.

I answer because there is some help by exercising the brain area responsible for each disability that contributes to this behavior. This is not a drug, nutrient or anything you may have heard of. It is pure brain exercise, very much like the brain exercise we usually call learning. It is known as hemoencephalography. This means the study of blood flow in the brain. I hope you will have a look at my web site www.biocompresearch.org where much of this science is explained. I am afraid it is highly technical. I do hope it will get the message across."
Hershel Toomim

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Brain Damage

"We have had good results with young kids using HEG. Believe it or not, we had a 4-1/2 year-old female client who almost drowned in her swimming pool and had severe brain damage.

She presented with an inability to control her bowels and had no apparent contact with the outside world. EEG training proved to be non-productive but pIR HEG proved to enhance her eye contact and her ability to gain control of the HEG. After 10 HEG sessions, her incontinence was significantly improved and she was making regular eye contact. After 20 HEG sessions, she was free of incontinence and maintained steady eye contact. This was amazing to both parents.

We have had stunning success training HEG at Fpz, Fp1, and Fp2, as well as T5. Training was 2x week for 2 weeks, then we switched to weekly training. I've seen him for a total of ten sessions. We began training for three minutes per site, and have worked up to 8 minutes. Written letter and number reversals are no longer a problem - handwriting is easy to read. He no longer struggles with character reversals when he reads, either (those were less of a problem for him initially because he was using a lot of contextual cues in his reading). His writing is still slow, and this is partly because he uses atypical letter strokes - but they're all facing the right direction! He has responded well to retraining on the strokes for writing his numbers and we may tackle the alphabet too, but he's still thinking that over. It's a matter of efficiency, not correctness." (Until now, he has needed to write his letter/numbers from the bottom, up, using the line for a spatial anchor.)

Swimming pool accident (4 1/2 year-old girl)

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Developmental Delay (Premature Birth)

"I am using HEG as a component of my work with a nine year-old boy who was born prematurely. He presented with dyslexia, the most conspicuous problem being persistent letter and number reversals.

(He's finishing third grade, so clearly this wasn't going to resolve on its own.) "Lots of left/right confusion, not sure where to start writing and which way to go. Illegible handwriting. Poor visual tracking, anxious, disheartened, but an amazing work ethic and a generous spirit that was being challenged by insensitive classmates. Family history positive for both mood disorders and anxiety, also with what sounded like tic disorder but not Tourette's. My client has a history of minor tics, mostly eyes, and periodically some compulsive counting on tough days at school" (parents were unaware of this, and he only mentioned it stopped, probably because he didn't recognize it as atypical).

Parent of 9 year old boy born prematuraly now in 3rd grade

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Drugs - Adverse Effects of Ritalin

Who killed Matthew Smith? Last March, while skateboarding like any other 14-year-old American boy, Matthew fell over and died. What happened? His death touched off a controversy as Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic, in spite of pressure to "find some other explanation," announced that the boy's death was caused by heart damage from 8 years of Ritalin use.

What followed was an Associated Press article carried by multiple newspapers careful to include the quotes of two psychiatric professionals - and no cardiologists - claiming that side effects of Ritalin are "not significant and do not include death" and even that Dragovic's conclusions and diagnosis were "unfounded."

According to Dr. Dragovic, upon autopsy Matthew's heart showed clear signs of small vessel damage -- the type caused by stimulant drugs such as amphetamines and cocaine. The boy did not have a pre-existing heart defect or disease. The boy had not been taking other drugs, prescription or illegal. The boy's complaints had not been ignored by his parents.

Dr. Dragovic describes his job as law enforcement. He is in the business, he says, of "calling a crow a crow, and an elephant an elephant. This is where the buck stops." He said that the type of damage he observed in Matthew's heart indicated small blood vessel changes that are caused by long-term stimulant medication. He explained that this is nothing like the artery blockage in older men with high cholesterol and heart disease. This is a particular type of damage seen commonly in people who have abused cocaine or other stimulants. He explained that stimulant drugs affect every part of the body that has adrenergic receptors. Once the changes occur, you are left with a heart that cannot respond to sudden increases in functional demands. These changes seen in the blood vessels that supply the heart muscle are not reversible.

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Drug Free

"Thanks Hank, its good to know. My son has asked to do the HEG more frequently and I have encouraged him to wait as I wanted him to receive the full benefits when he did train with it. He raves about how much it helps him and is eager to use it, often when digging into a large H.W. assignment."
~Karen
HEG is painless, non invasive, and fun – children like it.

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Drug abuse/brain damage before and after 17 HEG neurofeedback/HBOT sessions.

Improved Processing Speed & Increased I.Q.

"I want to write in to report some exciting developments with one of my cases. Adolescent male, 15 years, IVA attention quotient placed his general attention at 1st percentile. Auditory attention much stronger than visual, but still impaired. Unable to hold eye contact well. Many factors are working to his advantage, I would say - he essentially has the disposition of a golden retriever. He is in good health; no evidence or report of drug/alcohol use. He did have some early language delay, and received pre-school speech therapy, which was deemed successful. Also, he was noted to have been clumsy as a young child - always covered with bumps and bruises, plenty of them to the head. Currently he exhibits a healthy explanatory style, and is able to separate school performance from personal worth, though, of course, discouraged because his persistent efforts to achieve academically have not met with good results."

Prep high school student

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Improved I.Q.

"This boy is highly motivated to improve his situation, and he has very supportive parents. As you know, those two things are good prognostic indicators. This client has really been able to take the ball and run with my suggestions, so we have addressed several different areas over the weeks. Here's the list of other actions on my part that have been helpful…advocacy, stress reduction, assertiveness skills, remedial instruction, increasing positive self-talk, and evidence-based confidence boosting, all in conjunction with regular HEG training. Oh yeah, and a boatload of that old standby, unconditional positive regard."

"This the first case for which I've used HEG in my practice, so I'm kinda making it up as I go along, trying to find the best way to integrate the HEG within my general framework. Maybe not the best approach for purposes of research, but from a clinical standpoint I'm greatly encouraged. My young client behaves and carries himself as though he's been given a new lease on life. When I consider the probable trajectory of his previous path - I think that maybe that really is what's happening here."

"Thank you all for your interest in my case. 7/3/05"

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Improved Memory

"Poor memory has also been traced to these episodes of inattention. Significant memory improvements have been a hallmark of HEG training. Tests of memory normalized to 100 points for the age and education of the population are routinely given before each 10 sessions."

"These tests, averaged over a group of 28 subjects, show a linear increased memory score of 1.2 points per session. This amounts to a highly significant gain of two standard deviations in 30 sessions."

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Impulsivity

"We are successfully working with a 5 year old who cannot tolerate any other form of neurofeedback and are getting terrific results with his hyperactivity and impulsivity."

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Migraine/Headache

The thermal images shown to the right were taken before and after a single HEG training session. Brighter colors are hotter - you can see heat resulting from the brain's increase in activity. Learning to voluntarily stimulate your brain's growth will produce long lasting benefits.

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RAD, ADHD, Hyperactivity, Anxiety

"I have a 7 yr. old client who is a state ward in foster care - also severe RAD. He has responded well to nirHEG at Fp1 Fp2 FpZ. Hyperactivity tamed. Rages extinguished. Now redirectable. Still highly anxious, but is more cuddly with foster mom."

"After being with the foster family for two years, he actually uttered the words "I love you." He's having a highly successful year in 1st grade after having been retained in preschool for wholesale developmental lag, essentially due to lack of exposure. Due to a variety of factors, he has not received HEG treatment for the past couple of months but his gains are holding quite well. He still has some pretty major problems, though, and we're about to embark on another round of training. I don't provide case supervision, but I'll be happy to chat with you if you want to call me after Jan. 28th. Interestingly, this child was referred to me by an adoption agency specifically because of my willingness/capability to provide HEG."

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Toxic Brain Damage

Mercury Related Brain Damage
A new study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, a peer reviewed journal, by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier examined two independent databases maintained by the government – one national and one state. The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and the Californian Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) database each showed the same downward trend for the period from 2002 through 2005. According to the study "[t]he results indicate that the trends in newly diagnosed NDs correspond directly with the expansion and subsequent contraction of the cumulative mercury dose to which children were exposed from [thimerosal-containing vaccines] through the U.S. immunization schedule."

The study examined the trend for cases of autism during the period beginning 1994 and ending 2002 compared with the period from 2002 to June, 2005. The trends for increases and decreases of cases of autism found in the VAERS national database were consistent with the trends found in the CDDS California database. Most significantly, in each database the increasing and decreasing trends correlate with the time that the exposure to thimerosal through the immunization schedule was increased and then decreased after removal of mercury containing vaccines. "The consistency of the effects observed for the spectrum of NDs, including autism and speech disorders, and the agreement between the observations from two separate databases, support the conclusion that the effect is real and not a chance observation." The study found that the magnitude of the change in the decreasing trend of cases was significant after removal of mercury from vaccines. Data from the U.S. Department of Education, a third database, showed a recent decrease of autism diagnoses that is consistent with the findings in the two databases.

The authors show that the biological plausibility of their statistical findings is supported by recent toxicological and molecular studies that reveal the mechanism by which mercury from vaccines can cause damage to the developing brains of children. A recent study by researchers at the University of Washington has shown that ethylmercury from thimerosal in vaccines can cross from the bloodstream into the brain in toxic amounts which can remain in brain tissue for many years. This finding contradicted the untested view about the toxicity of ethylmercury in vaccines that prevailed in public health for 75 years. Other researchers have shown that minute concentrations of mercury, far lower than previously believed and far less than other toxins such as lead, can destroy neurons and damage DNA within hours of exposure. Such low levels of mercury, which likely are reached in infant brains via vaccine thimerosal exposure, can disrupt cell signaling and metabolic pathways necessary for normal brain development. Studies in mice, rabbits, monkeys, rats and other animals support these findings. Further studies in children have found evidence of mercury toxicity, metabolic disruption and oxidative stress that is consistent with the author's statistical findings that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism and developmental disorders.

The authors point out that their finding that the VAERS and CDDS databases show strong associations between thimerosal containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders completely contradicts the 2004 findings contained in a report published by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences – which was based on data controlled exclusively by the Center for Disease Control's National Immunization Program and unavailable to outside researchers. In arguing that their study's findings justify additional research the authors point out that the handling of vaccine safety data by the Centers for Disease Control has been called into serious question in a 2005 report published by the Institute of Medicine.

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