> In this "treatment" the client's EEG is displayed to the client in the
> form of a computer game in real time. Certain "signatures" of
> pathology, obtainable in QEEG, usually show a distribution of excess
> fast or slow wave activity in various regions. EEG sensors are placed
> over these areas and the client is asked to either upregulate the slow
> activity or downregulate the fast activity using a clinical
> neurofeedback system and protocols now well established.
This works, but it is not clear that it is useful. The waveforms are
likely more of a symptom than the cause of the problem, so fixing them
might be just "cosmetic" (of course, this depends a lot on what
problems we are talking about; there are likely a few dynamical
problems we could really use it for - hmm, what about ECG for
self-defibrillation?). Overall, it is very hard to say how a healthy
EEG should look like (epileptic spikes and such things shouldn't be
in there, but the rest?).
It is quite easy to train oneself to produce alpha waves, but that
doesn't necessarily make you more relaxed (even if thinking it does
will, of course, be quite helpful).
> That includes
> things like depression, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit
> hyperactivity disorder, traumatic brain injury, post-stroke syndrome,
> and other enduring problems for which allopathic approaches have readily
> observable limits.
Sentences like this really makes my bullshit detector chime. There are
some biofeedback treatments that have beneficial effects, but this
seems to be utter hyperbole. So this form of treatment does not have
any observable limits? Maybe it can treat brain death? ;-(
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y