NeuroFeedback, NeurOptimal and Electroencephalography

I agree with Ant22, SlavaOn, there's just a huge amount of information in this thread of how and why it works. Lots of forumites have been sharing their experience, plus a lot of additional information has been posted so we can all understand what NO is all about. Your post kinda reminded me to those articles going around about how cocount oil was so "evil," or soo many other things about nutrition etc,.

So I would also recommend jumping a bit deeper into all the discussion that has been going on here on NO. There's also the excellent interview the hosts from the H & W show did with Val Brown.

Interview With Dr. Valdeane Brown - Nonlinear Dynamic Thinking With NeurOptimal Neurofeedback
 
I agree with Ant22, SlavaOn, there's just a huge amount of information in this thread of how and why it works. Lots of forumites have been sharing their experience, plus a lot of additional information has been posted so we can all understand what NO is all about. Your post kinda reminded me to those articles going around about how cocount oil was so "evil," or soo many other things about nutrition etc,.

So I would also recommend jumping a bit deeper into all the discussion that has been going on here on NO. There's also the excellent interview the hosts from the H & W show did with Val Brown.

Interview With Dr. Valdeane Brown - Nonlinear Dynamic Thinking With NeurOptimal Neurofeedback


Agreed Marina9. Scientific evidence is not something that can be relied on and blindly trusted. Similarly to coconut oil being harmful, there is plenty of scientific evidence that fluoride is good for our teeth, chemotherapy cures cancer and saturated fat is unhealthy.

A quick search on SOTT returned a number of links showing that scientific research is largely based on pursuit of money, not pursuit of truth:

Peer reviewed 'science' losing credibility due to fraudulent research -- Sott.net
It's past time to start questioning our trust in peer-reviewed research -- Sott.net
Corrupt Science: Cancer Research of 10 Years Useless: Fraudulent Studies, Says Mayo Clinic -- Sott.net
Big Pharma's Ghostwriters: Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted? -- Sott.net
UK's top universities producing hundreds of fake research studies -- Sott.net
 
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Beau, I want to agree with you. But, following that argument, all quack (medical) science was capable to produce some benefits in the patients. Why would no one is looking to purchase snake oil or fresh pig urine to treat their maladies anymore?

Probably because snake oil and fresh pig urine didn't solve the maladies that people had which led to them buying said products. I wouldn't say that NO would be effective if it cleared up a rash, because that's not what I bought it for. Any old benefits from the product is not what I'm talking about. People using NO are finding that it's doing what they bought it to do. Why cynically see this as a greedy money grab when people are seeing real benefits?
 
Sorry for raining on neurofeedback's parade, but so far no scientific evidence has been produced, that supports the practitioners' claims...
Read this before paying $100s for neurofeedback therapy

The interest of this article seems to be clear to me: Keeping people in the flock, so they continue to decide to let themselves being hooked up to pharmaceuticals against conditions that could also be treated with neurofeedback. Neurofeedback might be more expensive in the short term, but it doesn't have those side effects pharmaceuticals or psychotropic drugs usually seem to come with (and taken all that together would create more expenses in the long term than NF). And it does bring good to excellent results, according to the experiences not only of people here, but also outside of the forum (that link being just one example).

Of course it is based on experiences of 'non-scientific' sources. But can you say, a site like the one linked above takes a scientific viewpoint if it formulates a suggestive headline and takes a couple of aspects that could be questionable regarding some neurofeedback approaches and/or practitioners and extrapolates them to the whole of neurofeedback? Or if it picks some aspects and twists them? Sorry, I can't take
such a site seriously.

I for one do miss neurofeedback with NeurOptimal, as it provided a lot of benefits and long-held infestations of certain issues began to being cracked open due to it. That's my experience, so I really hope I can continue with that sometime in the future.

The history of the development of the NeurOptimal system on the web page of its founders also has many insights on how the system works. It's quite an interesting read, how different systems and approaches were tested and led to the development of the present one (NeurOptimal) with constantly working on further improvements.
 
I coudn't agree more with what others have said, I would like to add, from my own experience that N.O. has most definitely helped with my overthinking, anxiety and resilience.

I had my 32nd session yesterday. I must say, it certainly does help with the grief and mixed emotions, feeling much more centered and focused today. Also, more positive, I tinnk I may stick with a weekly session for a while, just until I get back my balance.
 
Unfortunately I can not do NO but I just want to say this: Science is one thing, the experience of people is another thing. The best example I have is from Homeopathy: the majority of Science says that it is a joke. But the experience of people taking homeopathy is just the contrary. Money is behind all these lies. Science works for the status quo. And the status quo says: be sick till your death.
 
Sorry for raining on neurofeedback's parade, but so far no scientific evidence has been produced, that supports the practitioners' claims...
Read this before paying $100s for neurofeedback therapy

Sorry, but reading that piece of garbage article made me chuckle. What evidence does the author himself provide? Nothing. It's just an opinion, basically, disguised in "proof" because he quoted a few "studies". Well, nowadays you can find a "scientific study" for anything, and authors like this one, while possibly well intended, don't realize that they are actually are doing WORSE than those they are criticizing. They have nothing to back up their claims, while their targets have hundreds or thousands of people whose experience speaks for itself, regardless of whether it complies with the prominent scientific agenda or not.
 
I want to share a recent case from my friends with NO machine. A woman, colleague of one of them, had to overwork and fell into thought loop about her work. She just couldn't stop thinking about stuff she has to do. She had just one NO session and this condition resolved. After the session she said: "I was trying to think about my work [during the session] but the machine wasn't allowing me to do it!" Who needs science to prove NF is a real thing? Personally I find NO really helpful. When you accumulate stress and negative emotions it just grounds them, and you get filled with serenity.
 
I'm somewhat dumbfounded at your conclusion SlavaOn. Not only is there a plethora of research in this thread, but we have (most likely) some of the most conscious people around testing out NO. The type of people you can bet your wallet are aware of cognitive biases and placebo effects, and basically everyone is noticing some astonishing improvements. Not to be rude or anything but we're witnessing chaos all around and through us, so getting your thinking straight would really help you ride what's happening and not get dragged under.
 
The type of people you can bet your wallet are aware of cognitive biases and placebo effects, and basically everyone is noticing some astonishing improvements.

I would also add to that is the opposite - not really believing that it would do anything or expecting nothing to happen and still noticing effects. I went into it rather skeptical and was pleasantly surprised by the overall positive effects it had on me. I've also been told about things I hadn't noticed at all but others have.

Reading the article, I didn't find his argument all that convincing and read as more of an opinion as well. I'll give him that he's right 'there's no consensus' on it, however that can be said about almost every other modality in medicine. It's really a non starter. It's easy to cherry pick studies to prove a point one way or another and lot of those articles you see today are generally full of confirmation bias. Apparently however with many of these studies he quoted, there are issues with their methodology in how they setup the sham NF - from this paper:

The Fallacy of Sham-Controlled Neurofeedback Trials: A Reply to Thibault and Colleagues (2018). - PubMed - NCBI

[...]

Learning Methodology Matters

Table 1 summarizes the methodology and findings from six sham-controlled trials treating ADHD. Although each study acknowledged NFB is based on operant learning, their methodology violated established learning science by using either automated or manually adjusted EEG reward thresholds to maintain an “about 80%” level of reward across sessions and subjects. This procedure is contrary to basic learning principles. First, operant conditioning targets a response followed by a stimulus-event to make the desired response occur more or less frequently and then plots the target response’s occurrence over time to document whether or not learning has occurred. In these studies, the target response was not consistently calculated, monitored, plotted, and presented to NFB subjects. Therefore, it is not known what response (if any) was conditioned. Second, the studies do not reference the effects of practice in the experimental process. Subjects in both groups engaged in the same set of behaviors during sessions (e.g., maintaining stillness and focus, reducing muscle and eye-movement artifacts, relaxation, posture, and breathing). If subjects did not engage in these practiced behaviors, their EEG data were riddled with artifact and worthless. Third, operant conditioning of the EEG requires that these core concepts are strictly adhered to demonstrating the operant behavior has been learned and such documentation of learning should occur before examining outcome measures of interest (Cannon, 2015).

In these studies, every reset of the EEG reward threshold delivered operant consequences to subjects’ brains antithetical to the goal of training. As Pigott and colleagues (2017) note, if the targeted EEG was strengthening, reinforcement was withdrawn and reset down to 80% thereby punishing participants for learning to self-modulate. Conversely, if the targeted EEG was decreasing, participants were reinforced up to 80% thereby rewarding them for decreasing its strength. (p. 897)

At every reset of the reward threshold, NFB subjects therefore were either rewarded for not learning to self-modulate the targeted EEG or administered a Type 2 punishment for the beginnings of success.

Given their flawed methodology, it is not surprising that all six studies found:
  • No evidence NFB subjects learned to self-modulate the targeted EEG;
  • No separation between NFB and sham feedback on any outcome measure; and
  • When assessed, the vast majority (71% to 75%) of NFB subjects thought they received sham-feedback—correctly determining the NFB they received was often false.
Intriguingly, four of the studies also found significant improvement in both groups, leading Thibault and colleagues among many others to argue that these beneficial effects are due to placebo phenomena versus any specific effects from NFB. Two points in response below:

First, flawed methodology prevented NFB subjects from learning to self-modulate the targeted EEG and therefore no specific effects should be expected since each study compared two forms of false-feedback. Second, both groups participated in an active intervention. Ninaus and colleagues (2013) found multiple cortical regions of the brain are activated when blinded subjects were told to focus and try to control randomly moving bars during five 20-s rounds. In contrast, no such changes occurred when subjects were instructed to merely watch the moving bars. Subjects in sham-controlled trials are commonly instructed to sit still, focus, and use their brains to increase positive feedback. Similar cortical regions therefore likely underwent a vigorous workout during subjects’ 30+ sessions sitting still and trying to control that which was uncontrollable. This is hardly a “placebo” intervention as traditionally understood and likely only had positive effects because subjects were deceived into believing they had a 50% chance of receiving accurate EEG feedback. Transparency eliminated the brain activation found by Ninaus et al. as it likely would in all false-feedback trials.

Thibault and colleagues’ (2018) claim that NFB is a placebo is not supported by the referenced data. Their referenced studies compared two forms of false-feedback—not operant conditioning of the EEG. NFB has a 75+ year history of scientific inquiry documenting operant conditioning of the EEG in cats (e.g., Wyrwicka & Sterman, 1968), primates (e.g., Schafer & Moore, 2011), and people (e.g., Jasper & Shagass, 1941), including a 40-year history of research treating ADHD children (Lubar & Shouse, 1976; Shouse & Lubar, 1979). The authors though dismiss this extensive research history asserting that “Following the results from recent double-blind studies, we can now add EEG-nf for ADHD to this list of placebo therapies that masquerade under other biomedical labels” (p. 2). In contrast, it is our assessment that it is these double-blind studies themselves that are the masquerade since they did not compare operant conditioning of the EEG with a sham-control but rather two forms of false-feedback.

[...]

Finally, the NFB field and its detractors continue to conduct research that violates behavioral principles, and both sides cite such substandard research when it supports their 8 Journal of Attention Disorders 00(0) viewpoint. This practice must stop. Evidence of learning trumps all, and if there is no evidence of learning, operant conditioning of the EEG did not occur.

This was a question I had in my mind: what exactly were they measuring and comparing it to? To simply do the experiment and have people report on whether behaviours have changed with respect to their symptoms doesn't seem too robust to me. It reminds me of those food questionnaires where they have people self-report on their diet and ending up with silly stories like this. Here's another one I found interesting:

Placebo hampers ability to self-regulate brain activity: A double-blind sham-controlled neurofeedback study. - PubMed - NCBI

Abstract

It is still poorly understood how unspecific effects peripheral to the supposed action mechanism of neurofeedback (NF) influence the ability to self-regulate one's own brain signals. Recently, skeptical researchers have even attributed the lion's part of therapeutic outcomes of NF to placebo and other psychosocial factors. Here, we investigated whether and by which mechanisms unspecific factors influence neural self-regulation during NF. To manipulate the impact of unspecific influences on NF performance, we used a sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as active placebo intervention suggesting positive effects on NF performance. Our results show that the expectation of receiving brain stimulation, which should boost neural self-regulation, interferes with the ability to self-regulate the sensorimotor rhythm in the EEG. Hence, these results provide evidence that placebo reduces NF performance, and thereby challenge current theories on unspecific effects related to NF.

[...]

Coming back to our initial question whether it is necessary to perform real NF using expensive equipment or whether cheap technological fake equipment might have the same outcome due to placebo effects, we conclude that in the case of SMR up-regulation placebo stories seem to be counterproductive. Our results provide evidence that the expectation to reach better NF results due to a placebo intervention might increase large-scale coherence in the brain and consequently disturb the ability to up-regulate SMR activity during NF training. Prior SMR-based NF studies claiming that NF is just a placebo probably found no effects of real NF because they have disturbed the ability of their participants to increase SMR during NF training by placebo suggestions (Schabus et al., 2017; Thibault et al., 2017). The present results are in line with previous research showing that strong expectations such as high subjective control beliefs are deleterious for the NF success (Witte et al., 2013).

[...]

Concerning factors influencing successful SMR modulation, the present study provides evidence that (i) placebo diminishes the NF performance (SMR up-regulation) and (ii) adequate explicit instructions on how to regulate SMR up or down are mandatory for successful SMR modulation. The present findings show that the unspecific effects of the placebo treatment hampered the ability to up-regulate one's own SMR activity. A better understanding of such unspecific treatment effects on NF performance might help to better understand NF outcomes. According to Thibault et al. (2017) “insights from the science of placebos … would be necessary to unlock the nuances of therapeutic outcomes” (Thibault et al., 2017). With regard to SMR-based up-regulation NF training, placebo seems to be counterproductive.


Again, it comes down to what exactly are they measuring? In terms of well-designed studies I don't think there is much out there and it is something I would like to see more of, ideally from 3rd parties without any vested interest in proving one or the other. Although with the scientific domain still generally 'averse' to real and honest inquiry (and rather dogmatic when it comes to challenging its beliefs) it's likely not to happen anytime soon. Then there's the wealth of anecdotal evidence out there - which to me can also be as valid as an indicator of an effect as that of science-based evidence.
 
I would also add to that is the opposite - not really believing that it would do anything or expecting nothing to happen and still noticing effects.

Exactly. For me, nothing happened the first 2-3 sessions. But by the 4th one, yes indeed! Things happened. It has helped, and I didn't expect it to.

But then, that's how we generally approach these things. Sure, you can get all excited based on this research or that, but ultimately, the proof is in the pudding.

And NO is a tasty chocolate pudding with whipped cream on top! :whistle:
 
I agree with Ant22, SlavaOn, there's just a huge amount of information in this thread of how and why it works. Lots of forumites have been sharing their experience, plus a lot of additional information has been posted so we can all understand what NO is all about. Your post kinda reminded me to those articles going around about how cocount oil was so "evil," or soo many other things about nutrition etc,.

SlavaOn's claim that there is "no scientific evidence" for the effectiveness of NO is a perfect example of the giant hole genuine medical practiciners and scientists find themselves in.

There is an approach called "evidence-based medicine". Apparently it has been in use only for the past 20 years. And despite the fact that it is supposed to make medicine and science in general more objective and accurate, in reality it became a power tool in the hands of Big Pharma.

According to this approach there are "levels of evidence". It is a ranking system that is used to describe the strength of the results measured in a clinical or research study, where randomized double blind controlled trials or meta-studies rank at the top, and case-control studies rank much lower. In this gradation system expert opinion of an individual doctor, or a group of doctors, or years long professional experience (with a large number of cured patients) carry NO VALUE what so ever! Simply because the results weren't collected in the controlled environment. According to the evidence-based medicine it can't be considered evidence, but is no more than biased information.

So that's how the evidence-based medicine supposed to work. But as usual, "all expert opinions are equal, but some expert opinions are more equal than others." If the paper or expert opinion were published in The Lancet, for example, then it is considered to be up to par with evidence-based medicine standards. No one is going to look close enough by whom exactly the study was funded. And then there are sites like Psychology Today that rewrite these studies and present it to the public in a more simple/"pop culture" language.

Sure, there are definite benefits to such a ranking system. It can be particularly important when dealing with serious or intensive care drugs, when obtaining objective information is crucial, instead of relying on subjective personal feelings of the doctor or the patient. And in many cases it does work. But as we know, in many cases it is being used for nefarious purposes as well. There is also no room for the "law of three" (the right , the wrong, and the specific situation).

It seems stupid, if not negligent, to deny professional experiences of many doctors, simply because they didn't do controlled trials. It's like the situation I described in another thread with my colleague. Vets that are following evidence based veterinary medicine often call her a quack, but then transfer their patients to her because they have no idea how to cure them. She cures them, and they still see her as a quack, because her methods are strange, and are not up to par with the evidence-based vet. medicine. This is a really absurd situation. Despite its good intentions, this system appears to kill creativity and medical profession as it is supposed to be.
 
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