Description

About this Workshop

In this three-part workshop, Drs. Mari Swingle and Brendan Parsons take a deep dive into addiction in the 21st century. They examine newer forms of process and content addiction (screen addiction) alongside classic substance and behavioural addiction, and explore the relative value of our tools in assessment, in intervention, in identifying compounding crossover, and in reducing the likelihood of recidivism and relapse.

The workshop identifies key EEG dysregulations that develop with excessive interactive screen use, as well as the phenotypes and societal factors that increase vulnerability to screen addiction. Dr. Swingle will review her pivotal research, which laid the groundwork over a decade before the issue was widely recognized. She will re-introduce the normative and clinical EEG identifiers that have remained stable over time, and discuss the shifts that have made identifying excess, and treating it, more nuanced. These include markers of homeostatic disruption such as global and site-specific hyperarousal, alpha dysregulation and anomalies in the posterior dominant rhythm (PDR). Participants will also learn the relative effects of exposure by age, sex/gender, age of introduction versus level of immersion, and content versus process, and how to select and pair protocols based on the EEG. Barriers to success are addressed directly.

The workshop then broadens to all forms of addiction: process, content, substance and behavioural. Drs. Parsons and Swingle will integrate findings from clinical and normative assessment, examining distinct markers and phenotypes. Dr. Parsons will then focus on 19-channel qEEG assessment and normative intervention: key qEEG markers across addiction types, what comparison with normative databases adds and where they fail, and how findings guide protocol selection. Critical determinants of success, and markers associated with relapse, are a central thread.

The final part of the afternoon is reserved for discussion and participant case review. Participants should bring a 5-point ClinicalQ assessment and/or a de-identified 19-channel EEG exported as an EDF file. 

Interventions reviewed include neurofeedback/neurotherapy and biofeedback: active feedback loops, audio-visual brain driving, HRV biofeedback, electrical stimulation and home devices.