Thomas F. Feiner

In my own practice I worked with many children with ADD, ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia. I looked for ways to assess their difficulties more precisely and to support them specifically. In the process I developed worksheets and practice materials for learning therapy, continued my own education and gave training courses on learning and attention disorders.

Even in those years my therapeutic work connected with another passion: software development. My first own software was called Senso-X. It was created for training auditory perception and central auditory processing. I was fascinated that I could translate an idea from practice into a tool other people could work with.

Teaching also took a firm place in my life early on. From 1999 to 2004 I taught in occupational therapy training at Schmid-Döpfer in Schwandorf. From the early 2000s I expanded my continuing education work further. As a child I had always wanted to become a teacher. Now I noticed how much joy it gave me to explain connections and to see others find their own path with that knowledge.

On a trip to the United States I read an article about neurofeedback in an American professional journal. The idea of measuring brain activity and enabling a learning process through feedback fascinated me immediately. I sensed that this approach could significantly broaden my work.

I wanted to understand better which neurophysiological processes were connected with my patients' difficulties. Neurofeedback opened up the possibility of including measurable aspects of brain activity alongside observable behaviour.

At an international conference I got to know the method more closely and had the privilege of meeting pioneers such as Barry Sterman, Joel Lubar and Joe Kamiya in person. Learning from people who had decisively shaped this field was something special for me. These encounters encouraged me to engage intensively with neurofeedback.

As one of the early neurofeedback therapists in Germany, I was nevertheless uncertain during the first applications. I had experience as an occupational therapist, but here I had to learn a great deal anew, observe closely and review my decisions.

What gave me courage were the changes I saw in my patients. Some developments I had not seen in my previous therapeutic work. In addition there was feedback from doctors and teachers. That changes were also noticed outside the practice meant a lot to me.

Of course neurofeedback is not the only method, and not everyone responds in the same way. But these experiences motivated me to keep learning. Quantitative EEG, or QEEG, became increasingly important. I wanted to understand brain activity in a more differentiated way, recognise measurement errors and artefacts, and justify my decisions better professionally.

Intensive further training, international exchange and my qualifications as a BCIA-certified neurofeedback therapist and QEEG Diplomate of the International QEEG Certification Board followed.