What is Over-Learning?

The safest way to approach training is to “overlearn” or “overtrain.” Don’t stop as soon as symptoms begin to resolve. Keep training for at least 5-10 more sessions, so your brain learns the changes more permanently. Consider reducing the neurofeedback training gradually by going to sessions once every two week, and then once a month, to see if the symptom improvement holds.

Why is that important? Here’s an example of overlearning: let’s say you took piano lessons to learn “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” After the 5th lesson, you played it once perfectly with no mistakes. So you quit – you’ve done it. But 2 years later, you sat down to try and play the song again. Chances are, you struggled. If instead, you kept taking lessons and practicing until what you learned became habit, you’ll likely sit down 3 years from now, or even 10 years from now, and play it pretty well.

Let’s say you quit neurofeedback right after your symptoms improve. If 3 months from now or 9 months from now the symptoms reappear, you’ll probably say neurofeedback didn’t work. But neurofeedback is fundamentally learning. Don’t quit until you’ve overlearned. Otherwise, you could end up throwing your money and time away. Repeated practice is needed for the learning to stick.