Thanks Bernard for inviting me on your forum, and for all your hard work helping those with epilepsy.
As you know, my brother's epilepsy is what brought us to this field of Neurofeedback, so I feel very passionately about helping others who suffer with Epilepsy.
Regarding the questions about finding a Neurofeedback therapist, I tell people that the most important thing is that you relate well to your therapist. This is therapy after all, and you want to know you are working with someone you relate to, and who understands you and is willing to work with you and improve and adjust the training to get the best possible outcome for you. I highly encourage people to shop around and call several different clinicians and ask them about their experience and the populations that they like to work with. The right clinician for one person might not be the right clinician for someone else.
You are correct in saying that protocols for epilepsy are well established and easy to get your hands on, and there is a great deal of research eeginfo.com/research/epilepsy_main.html – If epilepsy did not respond so readily to Neurofeedback, this whole field would probably not be here today. The first work of this kind was at UCLA by Dr. Barry Sterman, and he discovered that cats, after doing Neurofeedback, became seizure resistant when exposed to poisonous chemicals. The discovery was unintentional as the cats from the Neurofeedback research simply ended up in another study, and then turned out to be far more resistant to seizures as compared to other cats. The Neurofeedback that they were doing then on the cats, and subsequently on human patients, was a lot more crude as compared to the techniques and computer technology that we have today, now 30 years later.
So put another way, I might say that even a very new and unexperienced clinician is going to have a good chance of having success with most Epilepsy cases with Neurofeedback. But then there are the tougher cases. If you are not getting the results you want from Neurofeedback, start asking your clinician if they adjust the training for different clients and use more than one electrode placement with their clients. Also, do they use different frequencies? There is also interesting new work adjusting the frequencies much lower.
It's also good to ask if the professional is a Licensed professional, and/or has Certification in Neurofeedback.
Kurt Othmer
EEG Info, Inc.