Certification path
Board Certified in Neurofeedback, BCN, is awarded by BCIA, an independent certifying body in the United States. BCIA writes the requirements, reviews the application and runs the examination. We teach two of the five steps below.
The five steps are a sequence, and the first four each produce a document that BCIA reads together with the others. A didactic course on its own is one step of five.
The sequence
Before any of them there is an entry condition: outside the United States and Canada, BCIA asks an applicant to hold a government-issued licence or credential that regulates clinical health care practice. BCIA publishes the requirements and revises them when it decides to, so read its current wording before you plan dates or a budget.
Step 1
We teach this step
The full BCIA Blueprint of Knowledge, all ten domains, online, in person or hybrid. You finish with a certificate of completion that counts toward the didactic requirement.
Step 2
A university or an approved provider
A comprehensive course in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology or physiological psychology, or one that gives a sound basis for the brain and how it functions, taken within the last fifteen years at a regionally accredited institution or a BCIA-approved provider.
Step 3
A BCIA-approved mentor
Twenty-five contact hours with an approved mentor, at least two of them face to face, documenting ten personal self-regulation sessions, one hundred client sessions and ten case presentations. Your mentor submits the essential skills list.
Silvia Fois and Tanya Morosoli are both BCIA-approved mentors.
Step 4
BCIA
You apply directly to BCIA, pay their fees and sit a proctored multiple-choice examination. BCIA publishes the current fees and rules on its own site.
Step 5
BCIA
Certification is held for four years and renewed with continuing education and a recertification submission.
Our part
Steps one and three, taught and supervised by BCIA-certified clinicians.
Step 1
All 10 domains of the BCIA Blueprint of Knowledge, with the hours BCIA sets for each. Taught in English, Spanish and Italian, online, in person, or as a hybrid with the theory days online and the clinical days in the room.
Full attendance earns the certificate of completion you submit toward the didactic requirement. The course is written for psychologists, physicians, psychotherapists and neuropsychologists.
Step 3
Silvia Fois and Tanya Morosoli are both BCIA-approved mentors.
A mentor works through your own recordings and your own cases with you, documents the hours as you complete them, and submits the essential skills list to BCIA at the end. The hours count only when the mentor holds BCIA approval, so check that before you book time with anyone.
Mentoring is arranged case by case, because it follows your caseload and your working language. Write to us with where you practise and in which language you work.
Outside our scope
We teach neither of these and earn nothing from them.
Step 2
A comprehensive course in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology or physiological psychology, or one that gives a sound basis for the brain and how it functions, taken within the last fifteen years at a regionally accredited institution or a BCIA-approved provider.
Two things BCIA states plainly and that catch candidates out. A neuroscience degree is not reviewed as a substitute. BCIA asks for a course. And although the thirty-six hours include a review of neuroanatomy, a separate university course is still required, so this step is not covered by what we teach. BCIA decides what counts and publishes the current wording on its site; check your own course against it before you apply.
Step 4
You apply directly to BCIA, pay their fees and sit a proctored multiple-choice examination. BCIA publishes the current fees and rules on its own site.
The examination is sat through BCIA's online proctoring service, on your own computer with no travel. It runs to a three-hour limit and about a hundred multiple-choice questions, with no penalty for guessing, and it is offered in English only, whichever language you took the course in.
It is built from the same Blueprint of Knowledge as the thirty-six hours, and the number of questions drawn from each area follows the hours given to it.
We have no part in the application, the examination or the result, and we publish no figure for what BCIA charges, because BCIA revises them. Read them at the source.
Where to read the requirements
Where to start
