Why Neurofeedback?

by AnnBanks

So what is neurofeedback? And what's in it for us? Neurofeedback is a form of brain conditioning that is being used to enhance the performance of everyone from musicians and athletes (including the World-Cup-winning Italian soccer team) to business executives and NASA pilots. It also has been documented to help children with ADD and other learning disabilities.

I first heard about "brain brightening," as neurofeedback is also sometimes called, in Steven Berlin Johnson's Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (Jim Robbins' A Symphony in the Brain is another good primer.) Both authors explain that although neurofeedback has been around for decades, it picked up New Age associations that made scientists wary of studying it. This has changed; there are now dozens of well-designed studies documenting neurofeedback's clinical effectiveness. None of these studies was designed to explore neurofeedback's potential for brightening middle-aged brains. Yet it seemed to me that this could be a promising application of the technique.

According to Mind Wide Open, the latest buzzword in brain research is neuroplasticity, the notion that the brain is not fixed in adulthood, as was long thought, but is capable of change. That is where neurofeedback comes in. It works roughly like this: When people are made aware of their brainwave patterns through instantaneous computer feedback, they can learn to alter them. Think of this cognitive reconditioning as akin to retraining a movement pattern in physical therapy.

So, I wondered, is there something here for forgetful baby boomers, as I had imagined? I take my questions to Leslie Prichep, baby boomer and brain scientist, who conducts research on the physiology of the aging brain at NYU Medical School. Can neurofeedback help baby boomers turn back the clock, cognitively speaking?

Her answer is an enthusiastic maybe.

There have been no long-term studies using neurofeedback to stave off "Age-Associated Memory Impairment," she tells me. "But the data on optimizing brain function are very impressive." I hear this as "Why not give it a try?" And so I am.