My brain, before & after — and what the maps actually showed.
Two QEEG brain maps, six weeks apart, book-ending a round of neurofeedback. This walks through Dr. Hill's own read of them — pairing every point he made with the real map from my studies, translated into plain English. Flip the Annotations switch any time to see exactly where on the head he's pointing.
First — how to read one of these.
A QEEG turns your brainwaves into color maps of the head seen from above (nose at top, left ear on the left). Color = how far each spot sits from the age-matched average, on a Z-score scale. Green ≈ typical. Blue = less activity than expected in that band; red = more. Every comparison here is Nov 10 (left) vs Dec 19 (right).
The 5 frequency bands
Each map is one rhythm, slow → fast:
- Delta — deepest sleep, restoration.
- Theta — drowsy, daydream, deep internal states.
- Alpha — calm, idling, the "gear between."
- Beta — focus, executive work, being "on."
- High Beta — intensity, worry, over-drive.
Two conditions, two montages
Eyes closed vs eyes open
EC shows the resting brain; EO shows it under load. Dr. Hill flips between both.
Laplacian vs linked-ears
Laplacian localizes a spot; linked-ears shows how regions talk to each other.
The color scale
Same scale on every map: roughly −3 to +3 standard deviations from normal.
What a full page looks like
Here is one real page from each study — eyes-open absolute power, all five bands. Turn on Annotations to see what to look at. Everything after this zooms into one row or one head at a time.
Eyes open · absolute power · Delta → High Beta
Laplacian montage
What we set out to fix.
Before the maps, the symptoms. In the review Kevin described a brain that ran tired — one that had to be forced into gear. Dr. Hill's read: not a habits problem, a regulation problem.
Kevin's own words
- Having to "amp up" just to get the brain engaged and clear.
- A mid-sentence "pause" — the brain locks, then finds the word and kicks back on.
- Years of barely-treated sleep apnea; micro-sleeps behind the wheel (now apnea fully treated, oxygen good all night).
- Sleep that doesn't go deep or restore.
What Dr. Hill aimed at
- Auditory system — burning out, getting reactive.
- Left-side beta — the shared engine for staying focused and staying asleep.
- Mood / motivation in the frontal lobes.
- Alpha timing — the word-finding "handoff lag."
"It's probably not your habits and behavior, it's probably your brain's ability to regulate the sleep… you kind of brute-force your executive function, you white-knuckle it a little bit, and that means you're not letting go of it when you're asleep."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 17:20The listening brain, waking up.
The clearest change in six weeks. On the maps it shows as beta returning behind the ears (temporal cortex, strongest on the left — the C3 side). On the attention test it shows as auditory stamina and persistence jumping.
Eyes-open beta · behind the ears
Laplacian · left ear = left of image
"When the left gets better, we get better at listening to people in a busy room, at parsing out auditory. When the right gets better, we get better at the subtlety and nuance and emotion in people's voices."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 07:31"There's an auditory performance issue. It's mostly in raw power — like energy and speed, and sticking with it versus burning out… it's a big change in one of the very few deficits."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 05:35One left-sided engine for focus and sleep.
The map's most stubborn feature: a C3 / left-central signature — too much slow activity, not enough beta. Dr. Hill's key insight is that locking into focus and dropping into deep sleep draw on the same left-side resource. It's improving, but it's the main work left to do.
The left-central signature
eyes-open beta (focus) & eyes-closed delta (sleep)
"This left side, C3, still making lots and lots of beta waves… this tells us you have an opportunity to deepen your sleep and to be more focused. Locking in with focus or staying asleep is the same left-sided resource."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 08:01 & 13:34The frontal "M" breaking up.
A change Dr. Hill didn't expect this fast: the frontal lobes carried a blue upside-down-horseshoe / "M" shape in theta and alpha — a low-drive, flat-mood signature. Six weeks later it's fragmenting, and the left ("approach") side is lifting.
Frontal theta — the "M" lifting
eyes open · Laplacian
"The frontal lobes had this blue, upside-down horseshoe — M shape — and now it's really broken up on the right, even the left is lifting… your approach system appears to be waking up and being more interested in stuff around you."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 10:16Approach vs avoid
Dr. Hill's shorthand for the frontal alpha balance:
- Left = the happy little kid — the approach system that wants to go outside and play.
- Right = the grumpy old man — the avoid system that says "that's gonna suck, go away."
Both sides shifted: the grumpy old man relaxed, and the happy kid needs less of a kick to get going.
Frontal alpha
eyes open
The "someone hit pause" moment.
Kevin's mid-sentence lock-ups map to alpha — the rhythm that hands information between regions. When the two hemispheres' alpha drift too far apart in timing, you get tip-of-the-tongue blanks. On the linked-ears maps this lives in the coherence and phase-lag rows (how well, and how in-sync, regions connect).
Alpha connectivity — coherence & phase lag
eyes closed · linked-ears · all bands
Kevin: "Almost like somebody hits pause in the middle of conversation, and my brain locks up, then I find it, and it kicks back on."
Dr. Hill: "Within one hemisphere it should be roughly the same. This is too much of a spread… that produces word-finding issues, tip of the tongue."
The numbers behind the story.
The IVA-2 is a 20-minute performance test. Scores are like IQ — 100 is average, each 15 points is one standard deviation. Kevin was already a high performer; the story is in the auditory response-control subscales that were dragging.
Nov 10 → Dec 19 · key scales
Where this goes next.
Training
- Finish the current block, then another ~20 sessions before a clinically meaningful re-test — roughly 6 weeks out.
- Home placement shifts to the vertex (C3 / Cz) to bracket the left-central site.
- Keep hammering sleep + executive beta; a later "lap" opens up flow-state / alpha-theta work once sleep and focus are balanced.
"There's no optimal brain — there's just your brain and your goals, and we try to get you to that place."
Dr. Andrew Hill · 31:36Lifestyle & support Dr. Hill suggested
Daily
- Anchored concentration (not just relaxing) + movement — walking, yoga, tai chi.
- 5 sun salutations before caffeine, to set circadian rhythm and burn off morning cortisol.
- Early time-restricted eating — stop eating ~2–4 hrs before bed; "skip dinner, not breakfast."
- Keep the daily resistance training; consider a physical flow yoga (ashtanga).
Nootropic / nutrition (his mentions)
- CDP-choline (citicoline) — for word-finding & short-term memory; possible remyelination.
- Lysoveda (LPC-bound DHA/EPA) — a brain-targeted omega-3.
How this shows up in your life.
Strip out the jargon. Here is what each brain change is meant to feel like day to day — the same story, for anyone.
You listen better and don't fry out
The sound-processing tissue woke up and stopped burning out mid-task. Expect: easier to follow one voice in a busy room, more tuned to tone, less "brittle" and reactive by the end of a long day.
A higher gear without flooring it
The same left-side engine runs focus and deep sleep. As it strengthens: you shift into "on" without having to amp yourself up, and you hold deep sleep instead of surfacing. Still the main work in progress.
More get-up-and-go
The flat, low-drive frontal pattern is breaking up. Expect: a little more motivation, joy and follow-through — the "approach" side needing less of a kick to engage, the "avoid" side less clenched.
Fewer mid-sentence blanks
The tip-of-the-tongue "pause" is a timing gap between brain regions. It's re-syncing — not all the way yet — and should keep easing as deep sleep improves.
The one-line summary
Six weeks moved a tired, blue brain toward green — biggest wins in listening, stamina and mood; the deep-sleep / left-focus engine is improving and is the target for the next block. On paper Kevin tested healthy; the maps showed where the real leverage was.
The underlying material.
Everything here is drawn from Kevin's own studies and Dr. Hill's recorded review, all in the Peak Brain Drive folder.
Next: the blood-flow story from Amen Clinics.
Next: SPECT · Amen