Ask Slashdot: Neurofeedback At Home, Is It Possible?

New submitter sker writes "Mind hackers, self-help junkies, even regular people have heard wild promises of the power of neurofeedback — namely the process of watching a visual representation of your own brain's activity to influence what your brain is doing. Folks are using it to cure ADHD, PTSD, or even to supposedly improve mindfulness meditation. Previously the sole domain of costly hospital and research equipment, the necessary EEG equipment is making its way into the home. From newagey Deepak Chopra-endorsed kits to the for-engineers-only OpenEEG project, the options are rapidly getting unwieldy for curious bystanders to make sense of. Have you had experience with EEG or neurofeedback at home? Do you have advice?"

Comments

Re:That reminds me a lot of

[Anonymous Coward]

Biofeedback seems to work for a lot of things, including ADHD, anxiety, chronic pain, epilepsy, constipation, tempromandibular joint dysfunction, and female urinary incontinence.

My guess is that for problems where a lack of awareness of what's happening is the primary cause, this sort of thing can be extremely helpful. In other cases (for example, if a shark is chewing on your leg), watching a visual representation of your brain isn't going to help much.

No, like with just about everything, a practice will produce some beneficial results - like lowering one's blood pressure and people then extrapolate thinking that it will solve ALL their problems. It becomes a panacea

For example. Herbert Benson in the Relaxation Response found that Transcendental Mediation (TM - Really it is) will reduce hypertension.

Jon Kabot-Zinn has done quite a bit of research on Mindfulnes and Yoga and it's benefits on dealing with stress.

Unfortunately, many folks then think mindfulness, meditation and yoga will cure a bunch of other stuff and make a bunch of other outlandish claims.

Then other folks go to the other extreme and think, "Well, see! Meditation didn't cure cancer so therefore it's all hooey!"

It's a huge problem in the Buddhist community - a lot of folks enter the practice thinking it'll make them happy and healthy and do whatever other magical things they mistakenly think meditation can do and get quite disappointed when it "doesn't work". A Zen Master - Suzuki IIRC - said that meditation won't cure neuroticism.

And then there is a lot of survivorship bias in meditation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard - folks stuck with it for years and are really happy, but I have to ask, did the practice make these rare individuals happy, or is it that the practice makes them happy because they just like sitting around meditating - in other words, would they have been just as happy playing cards if that was what they really enjoyed.

I did biofeedback as a child

[p00kiethebear]

When I was 13 ADD was causing significant problems in my academics and social life. We did the ritalin thing for a bit but my mother wanted to try something else to help since the drug didn't seem very effective.

The program involved me sitting in a dentists chair while I had electrodes on my head. I played a dumbed down version of pac-man with my mind.

The basic way it works is when your brain is creating the ideal waves for 'focus' the pacman moves through the maze. The idea is that the child will focus on the pacman moving and through practice will learn to move the pacman through the maze without stopping.

Eventually we ended the program because it just made me so tired I would fall asleep in the chair. Booooring as shit. I suspect something like this would probably work better for an adult who cares more and has the focus to do it. I think I was too young at the time to really care to put more effort into it.