Written and Submitted by: Tato Sokhadze, PhD, BCN, President of FNNR
Our foundation celebrated its 11th year anniversary during the Denver ISNR conference.
During over the more than decade of existence, our foundation applied efforts to promote advancement in neurofeedback, neuromodulation and qEEG for research and clinical applications. We conducted several pilot research projects, put together teams of clinicians and neurofeedback specialists to submit for grants, some of them being resulted in federal funding (e.g., CNP project), pursued other form of fundraising (ISNR members’ donations, vendors’ donations, named mini-grant sponsorship, legacy donation, silent auction, fundraising dinners, etc.).
During this year we went through substantial reorganization, changed address of headquarters, hired new administrative coordinator and publishing coordinator, opted in new board members and advisors and became more focused on our primary activities such as fundraising (silent auction, donation solicitation, bequest, etc.), funding students c/o our mini-grants program (during last 6 years we funded 12 mini-grants and have more funding cycles every year), plus we extended out book publishing program (published 9 books and have more in our portfolio).
This year we published 2 new books: a book titled “Autism Spectrum Disorders: Neurofeedback, Neuromodulation and Sensory Integration Approaches” edited by Tato Sokhadze and Manuel Casanova and “Becoming Certified in Neurofeedback: A Guide to the Neurofeedback Mentoring Process for Mentors and Mentees” by Robert Longo and Richard Soutar. Previously published FNNR books such as “Doing Neurofeedback” and Alpha-Theta Neurofeedback in the 21st Century” continue to be bestsellers. Several more books and booklets are in preparation for publication.
We awarded this year one mini-grant to post-doc researcher Rajnish Gupta from National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India for the proposal titled “TBI Rehabilitation: The Efficacy of EEG-Neurofeedback Training and its neuroimaging correlates: A comparative study” and another one to Jessica Gregory, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX for her project titled “Predictors of Neurofeedback Outcomes Following qEEG Individualized Protocols for Anxiety”. New cycle will be announced with deadline set as early Spring 2020. This year we supported with $100 travelship students who presented (or coauthored presentations) at the ISNR conference. We continue supporting student attendance at society conferences and plan to announce a new $300 travelship named after Gerald Gluck.
Among other foundation efforts is soliciting and reviewing nominations for BrainMaster’s Joe Kamiya First-Person Science award. In 2019 the winner of this award was Ron Bonstetter. We continue fundraising for a new named award for research aimed at prevention of cognitive decline in elderly – Tom Budzynski award – to recognize his legacy, as we already have part of funds donated for this purpose by the MindPlace company.
In our new version of mini-grant contract we strongly encourage winners to publish in Neuroregulation journal. So far our winners already published 5 papers and several abstracts in Neuroregulation and J. of Neurotherapy journals already, did a book chapter, and published 5 articles in high impact journals. They were active at presenting their research at ISNR and AAPB meetings.
Our silent auction was successful this year, we raised twice more funds than at the previous year auction, and we are very grateful to our donors and bidders. We appreciate support of our efforts by the ISNR Board of Directors and value contributions of our supporters and donors. Please continue supporting our mission to promote neurofeedback research. Visit our website www.thefnnr.org for more information about our activities.