January 24, 2009

AATA Review: EEG use during Art Therapy

Recently, the AATA journal published a study in which an investigator connected a client up to an EEG machine while they created art work. Click here to read more.


Related to using EEGs with clients during art therapy, there is a field of neuro-feedback that offers training on using EEG machines to control states of mind. Just as Art Therapy has an international yahoo chat group (AiT) - so too neuro-feedback practitioners share information over yahoo e-mail under the group name: Braintrainer. I signed up for their e-mails and discovered that there are specific brain signals which correspond to creativity, namely: theta.  An interesting site on brainwaves can be found at this link.

Apparently, the brain can be trained to produce a higher frequency of certain brainwaves. I'm curious if art therapy could facilitate this training. There has been a rise in popularity of using EEG machines in therapy

Some claim that artistic ability can improve through neurofeedback. There is even a BBC article describing how brain training can improve musicianship.

EEG machines vary in cost may be bought second hand. Chat groups, like the one mentioned previously would be an ideal place to find a used machine.

This video will give you an idea of what neurofeedback is and how it is used: 

1 comment:

Seth Sanford said...

I’m writing to suggest an Art Therapy web resource for your website visitors… www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/art-therapy.html

This page is a great resource for those wishing to learn more about art therapy. In addition, the whole website of www.allpsychologycareers.com is a pretty good informational resource for various psychology related fields.

Hope this is helpful.

Seth Sanford