Rewiring the Mind

At NeuroField Neurotherapy, Dr. Nicholas Dogris and Dr. Tiff Thompson offer noninvasive neurotherapy techniques to enhance cognitive function and treat psychological and debilitating conditions.

By Maddy Sims

Photography Michelle Lauren

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice. But at NeuroField Neurotherapy, a neurotherapy clinic in Santa Barbara, it did. The more you hear about how Dr. Nicholas Dogris and Dr. Tiff Thompson found their way here, the more it begins to feel like something else was at work.

Neither Dr. Nicholas Dogris nor Dr. Tiff Thompson set out to work in neurostimulation. Today, they lead a practice focused on noninvasive techniques designed to improve cognitive function and address psychological and neurological conditions. Their paths into the field were anything but linear—led by a series of moments that, in hindsight, read less like coincidence and more like course correction.

The first strike of lightning appeared for Nicholas Dogris, Ph.D., BCN, QEEG-DL, CEO and co-founder of NeuroField, a technology company that manufactures hardware and develops software for neurotherapy, after the birth of his eldest son. Premature and diagnosed with hypoxia—a deprivation of oxygen that affected his brain—his son was later diagnosed as autistic. Dr. Dogris, who trained in neurofeedback under pioneer Dr. Margaret Ayers, understood the existing interventions. None felt appropriate for an infant. He wondered if the brain could be stimulated more gently, using lower frequencies.

The idea came before the method. The design followed after what he describes as a moment of clarity: a four-channel frequency generator. Building it was another matter. Days later, he encountered a radio frequency engineer who also had an autistic son. They developed a prototype and began testing. 

The results were immediate. Dr. Dogris’s son moved from the lowest percentiles of functioning into the median range. Something had switched on.

Across the country, Tiff Thompson, Ph.D., QEEG-DL, BCN, LMFT, R.EEG.T, founder and CEO of NeuroField Neurotherapy, was moving in a different direction. On paper, her life was stable: a senior role at a wind energy company, financial security, and upward momentum. But she felt something was missing. In her earlier academics, she had trained in marriage and family therapy, but left it as a backup career, unaware she would later be needing that very degree and license.

She discovered neurotherapy on a trip to Hawaii, trying a discounted session on a whim. “It was like getting hit in the head with a frying pan by God,” she says. “This is the thing I’ve got to do. I’ve got to do this.” She left her corporate role, took on debt, and started over as a psychology intern in a small Goleta office. “It was a huge leap of faith,” she says. “I was thinking to myself, ‘What have I done?’” But what followed reshaped that doubt. “I found that the results with my patients were exponentially better and more impressive,” she says.

Dr. Dogris, meanwhile, had intended to step back, grateful for what the technology had done for his son. But a colleague argued he had an ethical obligation to share it. He agreed.

The two eventually met, pulled together by some invisible string. They joined forces and began expanding the clinic. Soon after, they launched The School of Neurotherapy. “The hope was to prevent the incredible bushwhacking that it took for me to get my chops in the field of neurotherapy,” Dr. Thompson says. “It was just piece-mealing and cobbling together. It’s not an easy discipline to get into.” The School offers certification programs designed to formalize a path into a relatively new field. “That’s what makes this exciting,” she says. “We’re at the forefront of clinically-applied neurostimulation, and what we do is different.” 

Rather than treating symptoms in isolation, they map brain activity and build individualized, multimodal neurostimulation protocols. “People are complex,” Dr. Thompson says. “There is your run-of-the-mill anxiety or your peak performer, but many people have two or three or four things going on. The magic here beyond the multimodal approach is the customization.”

There is no standard protocol for anxiety, she explains. “We’re looking at the entire picture and determining how we want to address the regions that are showing the greatest issue,” she says. Historically, the protocol for treating mental health conditions hasn’t changed much: a little psychotherapy and a lot of medication. Dr. Dogris saw the limitations of conventional treatment firsthand during his years working in a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles. “33 percent of those people that went into the hospital would come back within three months because they needed help again,” he says. “It just wasn’t working.” At NeuroField, Dr. Dogris and Dr. Thompson focus on the root of the problem rather than the symptom. “Psychotherapy is an awesome modality that treats the emotions,” Thompson says. “You can do a lot of that work and still suffer from symptoms. We’re addressing the physiology that expresses as the symptoms.”

Working with children, Dr. Dogris saw changes quickly. “They’d become more functional, they’d be able to interact with adults in different ways, and they would be able to start to learn differently,” he says. “And for me, it was the most gratifying, satisfying thing in the world to see a child start to function and feel better.”

The approach is noninvasive and drug-free, with no pain, downtime, or negative side effects. Interest grew quickly, drawing not only patients seeking relief but also those focused on performance. “You don’t have to have something wrong with you,” Dr. Dogris says. “We get a lot of people that are really into wellness or peak performance who want to be their best selves.” Professional athletes and business executives come in for what he describes as a mental tune-up. “They’re able to be fully on their game,” he says. “It feels awesome, like you’re firing on all cylinders.”

He points to emerging data showing measurable clinical effects after an average of 10 sessions. “We're actually measuring the organ that we treat, and we take a comprehensive, thoughtful look at it,” he says. “We can point to the origin of the symptom and get it to perform better, so we can get really fast responses out of people.”

The technology itself is subtle: a mild tingling sensation, far removed from earlier shock-based therapies, which were designed to force the brain into a seizure-like reset. “We’re not forcing the brain to do anything,” Dr. Dogris says. “We’re the treadmill for the brain, and we ask it to hop on. When it hops on, we set the speed to a reasonable level. We hit go, and the brain runs with us for a period of time and it gets in shape and it gets stronger.” The effect builds over time. “It’s like going to a gym,” Dr. Thompson says. “It’s a cumulative build. It’s different from medication in that way.”

After roughly ten sessions, she says, patients often see a 25 to 75 percent reduction in most symptoms. Additional sessions reinforce those gains. “We are breaking down deviant patterns, old paths of least resistance that are no longer serving the individual—like trauma, for instance, or any sort of stuck patterning,” she says. “And then we’re supplanting it with what we want the system to do… It’s like learning to play an instrument or building muscle. Over time, there’s a new pattern that’s instantiated, and then it will hold.”

Most patients don’t return regularly, though some choose to. High performers often schedule periodic sessions. Others come back for a tune-up and “brain brightening” or simply because they prefer how they feel post-treatment. Dr. Dogris recalls one student who initially came in for ADHD. The issue resolved within six months, but the student continued treatment long after.

That same adaptability, he says, extends to aging brains. Patients often arrive assuming cognitive decline is inevitable. Neurostimulation, he argues, challenges that assumption by increasing blood flow and supporting brain function. “When you give the brain this kind of stimulation, it takes out the garbage, it cleans the room, it gets everything functioning again,” he says. “All you have to do is give it a very, very gentle tickle.”

Beyond neurotherapy and psychotherapy, the clinic offers additional services, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy and bodywork such as cranio-pelvic integration. Still, the core focus remains the brain and what the technology they’ve developed makes possible. “There's a tremendous amount of research on neurostimulation,” Dr. Thompson says. “But the clinical application of it isn't being done, really. And we're at the tip of the spear.”

What drives them, ultimately, is less about innovation than impact. “The environment was my first crusade, but that pivoted quickly to humans,” Dr. Thompson says. “You have to really care to do this kind of work.”

That sense of purpose comes through in the stories they tell—patients who regain function, break long-standing patterns, or simply feel like themselves again. The most personal example remains Dr. Dogris’s son, who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science in archaeology.

“ For me it was watching people get better,” he says. “It motivated me. Person after person after person. And it continues to. What a righteous path to take.”

It’s tempting to call what brought them here chance: a premature birth, an unlikely encounter, a discounted session, a leap of faith. But when considered together, the pattern is harder to ignore. Two careers rerouted. Two parallel searches arriving at the same answer. And, eventually, at each other. However you define it, the result is the same. A shared practice built on the belief that the brain can change, and that people can, too.

For more information, please visit neurofieldneurotherapy.com.