There are no joysticks. There are no control panels to manipulate, steering wheels to churn or buttons to push. You play this video game with your mind. More specifically, with your brain waves. The object is to move a Pac-Man-like figure as quickly as possible through a given maze on a computer screen while hooked up to a couple of electrodes that measure brain waves. Beep! Beep! Beep! The faster that yellow face gobbles up dots, the more focused and centered you are. And that's where you want to be. All the time.

Biofeedback can help.

"You're playing a game and training your brain for a new pattern. It's sort of like lifting weights for the brain," said John Finnick, MA and certified biofeedback technician in Tahoe City. This type of EEG neurofeedback is just one way to monitor, measure and help train biofeedback patients to become aware of their physiological processes.

Finnick uses neurofeedback to treat individuals for a wide range of problems including learning disabilities, chronic pain, migraines, depression, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, sleeping disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome and premenstrual syndrome, among others.

According to Finnick, EEG neurofeedback is a relatively new type of biofeedback that can improve problems and chronic conditions often caused by the brain not working properly.

And all you have to do is lounge in a recliner with an electrode attached to your scalp, a sensor on each ear lobe and stare at a television screen in front of you. There are no drugs to be injected, pills to pop or solutions to swallow. The only foreign substance a biofeedback patient encounters is a little swab of conductive paste on the scalp to ensure proper functioning of the electrode.

"It's a very simple training with very sophisticated equipment and it's not invasive at all," Finnick said. "It's about central nervous system stabilization. I try to have people find the most effective place for their brains to operate in their awake and sleep states."

Finnick does this by monitoring a patient's brainwaves while they're playing the video game. When a patient is doing well and PacMan is zooming through a particular maze, he or she is focused, centered and operating at an optimum level. This period of sustained, well-focused activity helps re-train the brain to work more efficiently on a regular basis.

"Once this pattern becomes familiar and an individual has access to this pattern at any time the skills acquired can be generalized and used for all facets of their life," Finnick said. "It gives a person more self control, it's about helping people help themselves."

According to Finnick, the human body responds very well to habit and individuals sometimes experience chronic pain because the brain has been trained to feel pain. It's habitual.

"I've had people come in with 25 years worth of a headache. We want to re-train the brain and put a new tape in, helping the body to re-adapt to a more healthy state," Finnick said.

Since Finnick began practicing biofeedback four years ago, he has treated a number of different individuals suffering from a wide range of conditions. Because Finnick is also a school psychologist and has been for 15 years, he often uses EEG Neurofeedback to treat children with attention deficit disorder (ADD).

"Working as a school psychologist, I was constantly confronted with parents frustrated with their child's behavior," Finnick said. "They gain self esteem with the training and a more mature central nervous system so they act their age. A lot of these individuals are not good at expressing themselves and there's no talking involved in this treatment."

According to a Tahoe City woman who wishes to remain anonymous, her grandson has been successful with neurofeedback training.

"It's one of the greatest things that can happen for children," the woman said. "He had dyslexia and a visual problem, but his grade points have gone way up and he's doing great. It's a wonderful thing and should be used more than it is."

Besides treating ADD, Finnick has also had success with individuals suffering from chronic pain often due to lingering effects from car accidents.

He said he treated a man in his 20s who was still suffering from problems relating to a car accident that occurred four years before.

"He was very dysfunctional and fatigued," Finnick said. "He quit his job, quit school and could barely function independently."

On the neurofeedback treatment program, however, Finnick said the young man began to feel like he used to prior to the accident.

"He's now re-enlisted in college and he says he's gotten his life back," Finnick said. "Those are the types of dramatic things that are very exciting. It never ceases to amaze me what people come back and tell me."

Although the number of neurofeedback sessions suggested vary from patient to patient, Finnick recommends sticking with the training for about a year.

"I like people to return once every five or six weeks so they go through the seasons with this. Most people do about 20 to 40 sessions that last between 30 and 40 minutes each," Finnick said. Biofeedback may be a relatively new form of treatment, but Finnick believes it will gain momentum in the next 10 years.

"It's a strong bridge between biological medicine and psychotherapy or counseling. It makes other forms of health care work more efficiently, bridging that mind body connection. I think in the next 10 years it will be very prominent in the field of medicine."