Tatler Magazine (excerpt)

“I also enrolled at an amazing place called Brainworks. I was here for the QEEG technique, which maps your brainwaves. I sat in a super-comfy chair, staring at a TV on a blank wall, wearing what looked like a bathing cap attached to the mains on my head. The session comprised a series of games that were not really games at all. I stared at an Atari-style race car on a winding track – sometimes it moved, sometimes it didn’t. I focused intently and nothing happened – apart from my eyes beginning to dry up. I blinked intently and the car refused to move for minutes on end. I couldn’t really figure out what the technician Christina was doing at her desk behind me, but I could hear her clicking her mouse and seemingly editing my responses.

This neurofeedback technique is frequently used to treat post-traumatic stress for soldiers in the US. It has had successes in both brain-damaged patients and children with behavioral problems. The machinery recorded brainwaves and the information can be interpreted and used by experts as a clinical tool to evaluate brain function.

Christina picked up a very active level of brain function in me, which I interpreted with relief, until she pointed out that this made me very scatty with concentration issues. Perhaps here we were getting to the root of the problem – if I had never been able to focus and apply myself properly, perhaps I didn’t give my brain enough scope to actually absorb information. Over the next weeks I attended 10 sessions with Brainworks and again, although the change seemed imperceptible, I did feel my concentration improving and, as I moved my revision up a gear, I found that, remarkably, I seemed to have retained the odd fact or two.” …

… “I not only passed the exam but also gained a little self-belief in a part of me that I had less faith in 30 years earlier.”