This article provides a good overview of some of the applications commonly associated with Neuro and Biofeedback. PPT can provide training for these applications as well as our own unique Peak Performance Training. Here are some of the topics discussed in this article:

While it is common to think of body function being altered only by external agents such as medications or surgery, or by physical activities such as exercise or massage, we each have the capacity to regulate our physiology to a far greater extent than is generally known. The staff of the Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health are pioneers in the application of biofeedback to mental and physical problems, as well as in the support of accessing particular states of consciousness associated with concentration or creativity. The procedures we use with particular disorders are:  

Stress-Related Disorders
These include most instances of high blood pressure, migraine and tension headaches, and peptic ulcer as well as many other problems. It is commonly estimated that 50-80% of physician visits are motivated by symptoms of stress-related illnesses. These problems can usually be prevented or treated effectively by learning to regulate the autonomic nervous system, the musculature, and the central nervous system.

Autonomic Control --
The autonomic system is composed of the sympathetic branch (active in response to stress), and the parasympathetic branch (active during relaxation and digestion). Self-regulation of sympathetic nervous system activity is accomplished with hand- and foot-warming and with control of palm sweating. In a general way this may be thought of as quieting the emotions.

Breathing --
Everyone assumes they know how to breathe or they wouldn't be alive, but there are different breathing patterns. Those who have learned to sing or play a wind instrument have often been taught diaphragmatic breathing, but many others are uncertain about this healthy form of breathing. With diaphragmatic breathing, when a person exhales with a hand on the stomach, that hand moves toward the backbone. With inhalation, the stomach area expands like a balloon filling with air. Many people with asthma breathe exactly opposite of this, while many other people do not move the stomach at all. The first pattern is known as "reverse breathing' and the second one as "thoracic breathing." Neither of these patterns is as healthy as diaphragmatic breathing which allows the air in the bottom of the lungs to be efficiently scavenged out to be replaced by fresh air. 

Muscle Relaxation --
Muscles are activated in response to stress as part of the fight-flight pattern. When muscles are active they use much more energy than when relaxed. When muscles are relaxed, messages are sent to the brain to the effect "everything is OK." This helps to relax both the sympathetic nervous system and the central nervous system. Muscle relaxation can be thought of as quieting the body.

Addictive Disorders
A new understanding of the biology of addiction has emerged in the past ten years. Individuals with addictive problems often have inherited a deficiency in brain function -- a relative absence of slow brainwaves -- that limits their ability to experience satisfaction from everyday life events. The use of addictive substances then represents an attempt to self-medicate that is doomed to long-term failure as more and more of the substance is required to "feel good," or even feel OK.

In contrast, a new treatment, Neurofeedback Therapy, is proving effective for these problems; it involves learning to correct for the inherited deficiency in slow EEG activity by increasing the presence of alpha and theta brainwave activity.

Neurofeedback Therapy for Addictions
This new treatment for addictive disorders actually uses two forms of biofeedback (noted below) to correct for the deficit in slow brainwave activity. Neurofeedback Therapy results in very low relapse rates compared to conventional treatment. This is, in part, due to the fact that it seems to function as a "mental antibuse." The treated individual who attempts to use addictive substances experiences flu-like symptoms over a couple of days. While this effect of treatment has not yet been explained it seems to be fairly consistent. After treatment, addictive substances also tend to lose their ability to instill a "high." These two effects of treatment together result in greatly reduced relapse behavior. The longest followed individuals are now seven years post-treatment, with none of the treated individuals currently engaged in substance abuse.

Attention Deficit Disorder & Closed Head Injury
Neurofeedback Therapy can also be used to activate the brain in a person showing relative surpluses of slow EEG activity, and relative deficits in fast EEG activity. This pattern is commonly seen in ADD, ADHD and Closed Head Injury. Predominance of slow-wave activity is associated with a day-dreamy (but creative) unfocusedness. Predominance of fast-wave activity is associated with alert, focused (but somewhat compulsive) behavior. Flexibility in which one meets situational demands with appropriate levels of central nervous system activity is the most adaptive approach, allowing for either creative thinking or focused thought as needed.

Depression and Anxiety
An estimated 17 million Americans suffer from clinical depression, with fewer than half of these in treatment. Over 50 million Americans suffer panic, anxiety and phobia problems. These problems are often considered to result from run-away brain chemistry, and yet it is not commonly recognized that by the choices we make and the actions we take we are constantly adjusting brain biochemistry in significant ways that affect these problems.

Procedures

Alpha-Theta Biofeedback EEG Training --
EEG biofeedback is a procedure in which brainwaves are measured and turned into sounds or visual displays that inform the individual when particular brainwaves are present. For example, a low-pitched tone may indicate the presence of theta brainwaves (4-8 Hz or cycles/second). A higher pitched tone may indicate the presence of alpha brainwaves (8-13 Hz). Using these indications, the individual can learn through trial-and-error to increase the presence of these brainwaves in order to enhance relaxed, pleasurable states. Such states tend to enhance creative imagery and reverie as opposed to logical, linear thought processes.

Attentional Challenge --
While not yet commonly used by treaters working with ADD, we use attentional challenge in the later phases of treatment to aid generalization of learned skills to the classroom or other distracting environment. In attentional challenge, the treater tells the trainee, "No matter what I do, don't pay any attention to me--stay focused on the training task." The treater then engages in a series of distracting maneuvers during the training process. Challenge periods alternate with regular training periods until the trainee can do as well or better under challenge than without it.

Autonomic Control --
This procedure relies primarily upon self-regulation of thermal behavior of the hand and foot, and upon self-regulation of palmar sweating using skin conductance feedback. Information based on measurement of these modalities may be presented visually and/or auditorily using a computer, or simple stand-alone devices may be used. Any thermometer with a range of at least 70 degrees F. to 100 degrees F. can be used. Radio Shack has a small skin conductance monitor for around $15 that can be used to learn control of that autonomic index. Generally one works toward more relaxed levels (warm, dry hands).   

Beta EEG Brainwave Biofeedback --
This procedure uses computerized visual and/or auditory feedback to provide the individual with information about the presence of brainwaves within the beta range (nominally 13-20 Hz). For example, we often represent the amplitude of beta activity with a circle that gets larger as the size of the beta increases, together with a tone that represents these changes. Using this feedback, an individual can typically begin to make changes in brainwave activity readily easily, and in doing so, to make changes in associated behavior (focused attention). 

Biofeedback --
A procedure in which biological information is measured from the body of an individual and then presented ("fed back") to the individual. Until recently, we have not been able to measure things going on inside the body in a sensitive and accurate way that would allow us to control these processes. Now that is possible, usually through the use of electronic instruments. Once you can "see" what is happening inside the body in an immediate and continuous way, it is possible to control it. So far, nothing that can be observed in this way is impossible to control, from a single motor neuron (the nerve cell that controls a muscle fiber), to processes such as circulation or secretion of stomach acids.  There is nothing mysterious about this. Everything that we learn is learned through feedback, from the time that we first find our mouth with our hand as a baby. Biofeedback simply involves applying these same learning processes that we use in putting on makeup or driving a car to inside-the-body events. It is "mind over matter," but in that it is no different than our filling a glass with water--that also is mind over matter. 

Breathing --
There are actually three breathing skills we find useful: (1) Diaphragmatic Breathing, (2) Extending the Breath Cycle ("triangular numeric breathing"), and (3) To Stop Breath-Holding. Each of these skills contributes to stress management and health. For example, breath-holding is a common feature of most cardiac arrhythmias and other cardiovascular problems such as essential hypertention. 

Delta EEG Brainwave Biofeedback --
This procedure uses computerized visual and/or auditory feedback to provide the individual with information about the presence of brainwaves within the delta range (nominally 2-4 Hz). While delta waves are observed below 2 Hz, those in that range are usually greatly enhanced by body movement and are best regarded as an artifact of motion rather than as an index of deep brain relaxation and unfocused attention. Delta occurs naturally for most individuals in the first stage of deep (Stage IV) sleep before the first dream period of the night. It's absence during this time is associated with suppression of growth hormone, as in chronic fatigue syndrome. Growth hormone is necessary to repair the connective tissue in order to prevent aches and pains.

Delta is also seen after a head injury or other insult to the brain (e.g., after a migraine headache). Suppressing delta activity through Delta Brainwave Biofeedback results in an alert brain and supports improved focus of attention. 

Diet --
We make recommendations for the most immune-enhancing diet that we are aware of including both foods and supplements, occasionally aided by detoxification procedures. We help individuals make choices that fit their body's requirements and their preferences and lifestyle.

Exercise -- Programs are individually tailored to the abilities and preferences of the client, stressing improving flexibility, muscle tone, and general fitness and health. 

Heart Rate Training --
This procedure uses measurement of pulse activity to provide the individual with the basis for self-regulation of heart rate. This is an especially important modality with those who maintain high resting heart rates (90-120 beats/minute), as well as in treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.

Muscle Awareness and Strengthening --
This procedure can best be enhanced with muscle (EMG) biofeedback in which the neural activity of the neurons controlling the muscles is measured and turned into auditory and/or visual displays that allow the person to assume control of this variable. This training is useful with urinary incontinence through increasing general tone of the pubic floor musculature. It is also useful in other cases where it is desirable to increase muscle tone and activity, as with paralyzed muscles. 

Muscle Relaxation --
This procedure also uses muscle (EMG) biofeedback in the interest of decreasing muscle tension. This training is useful for stress management, tension headache, back and neck pain, and connective tissue pain problems. 

Neurofeedback Therapy for Alertness and Focused Attention --
This treatment procedure utilizes other elements noted in this home page including Beta EEG Biofeedback (Enhancement), Theta and Delta EEG Biofeedback (Suppression) and Attentional Challenge.

Self-Regulation --
This is the general term for procedures using biofeedback (when the variable to be changed can be measured directly) or imagery and visualization (when it cannot). Self-regulation proceeds best when the individual has the intention to regulate some variable, but then remains "easy" about whether it changes or not. This is exactly like the attitude that is helpful in sports, where the intended result is visualized, but not too much stress is placed on the actual outcome.   

Skin Conductance Training --
Electrodes are placed on the tips of two fingers and the conductance of the skin is measured electrically. Skin conductance increases with the wetness of the skin, which in turn increases with cholinergically mediated sympathetic activation. This index of sympathetic activation is typically turned into a sound that lowers in pitch as the individual relaxes. Control is felt by most people to emanate from a center high in the belly--the same center that becomes prominent on a roller coaster. This training is helpful for monitoring imagery, for reducing panic, and for eliminating gastrointestinal symptoms such as Crohn's disease, colitis and peptic ulcer. It is also seen to be high in some instances of high blood pressure. 

Thermal Biofeedback --
The temperature of the hands and feet are a good index of autonomic relaxation. This is true because all of the stress hormones--adrenalin, noradrenaline, beta endorphin, etc.--are vasoconstrictive in the hands and feet: they cause the hands and feet to cool.

Hand and foot temperature can be measured with any thermometer, but effective thermal feedback requires a relatively sensitive and accurate thermometer that tracks changes in temperature relatively quickly (has a short time constant). 

We do hand-warming with the hands together, index fingers opposed to the little fingers of the opposite hand, and ask the individual to attempt to feel anything that would indicate that the hands are warm or warming. This could be the sensation of warmth itself, a dull tingle in the hand, or pulsing in the fingertips. When such sensations are observed, the individual is asked to allow these sensations to get stronger. The results of doing this correctly can be seen on the thermometer. 

Our goal is to get the fingertips to 97 degrees F., and to hold that temperature for 10 minutes once per day for at least five times per week. That is sufficient practice to ameliorate or prevent many stress-related problems. Over time, less and less practice is required to maintain results as the hands stay warmer most of the time.   

Theta EEG Brainwave Biofeedback -- This procedure uses computerized visual and/or auditory feedback to provide the individual with information about the presence of brainwaves within the theta range (4-8 Hz). Increased theta activity is usually associated with states of reverie that have been known to the creative people of all time.

For example, when Thomas Edison had a problem to solve, he would often attempt to "fall asleep" at his desk with ball bearings clutched in each hand. Just as he was about to "drop off," the ball bearings would fall to the floor activating him, and he would often return from the drowsy state with an image of the problem solution. Theta occurs in abundance in that delicious state just on the verge of sleep that most of us a familiar with. It is often difficult to recapture the images that occur in association with theta as we move to normal waking consciousness, yet it can be useful to develop this skill.

Visualization & Imagery -- We distinguish between Imagery which allows an individual to make contact with the body and get indications of its condition in various areas, and Visualization which allows an individual to communicate to the body an intention of a a particular desired change. The power of these techniques in sports is well known, but most people are still not applying these techniques regularly in the interest of their own health.