2007 FNAN Neurofeedback Award to John Gruzelier and Tobias Egner for Performance Optimization Studies
In 2007, the Foundation for Neurofeedback and Applied Neuroscience presented its second annual award recognizing the year’s most significant contribution to the advancement of the field of neurofeedback during the previous year. This prize was for an article that represents a compendium of the work conducted by the authors and their associates over the past six years.
The recipients of the award, which included a one thousand dollar (US) cash prize, were John Gruzelier of Goldsmiths College of the University of London, Tobias Egner of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, and David Vernon of Canterbury Christ Church University for their article “Validating the efficacy of neurofeedback for optimizing performance,” which was published on October 27, 2006 in Volume 159 of the journal Progress in Brain Research, and for the overall body of work which underlies it.
Neurofeedback – also known as neurotherapy or EEG biofeedback – seeks to change an individual’s cognitive functioning, affective state or overall performance level through operant conditioning of the patterns of electrical activity within his or her brain. Electrodes are placed on the head of the person who is to be trained. These electrodes allow the clinician who oversees the training to monitor the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in a selected area of the trainee’s brain. The trainee is then rewarded for making patterns of brainwave activity at particular frequencies that are thought to be most appropriate to the task at hand. The reward process is accomplished through a combination of audio and visual feedback, most commonly presented in the form of changes in a video game that the trainee is watching. Because neurofeedback involves “teaching” the brain new patterns of neural activity, it is reasonable to assume that these patterns – and the changes in behavior that are associated with them – might be expected to be retained once they have been “learned.”
While much anecdotal data and a growing number of studies lend strong support to the existence of the hypothesized relationship between operant conditioning of brainwaves and behavioral change – particularly in terms of reduction of the symptoms associated with attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – there has been an effective lack of studies establishing a direct correlation between the ability to enhance EEG performance at a particular range of frequencies and the presence of resultant changes in behavior and cognition on the part of the subject.
Beginning in 2001, Gruzelier, Egner, Vernon and their associates sought to address this problem through a series of studies - summarized in their award-winning 2006 article – that sought to document whether rewarding EEG activity at certain specific frequency ranges constituted a valid mechanism for improving attention, mood, memory and performance in healthy subjects.
In the first of the studies, conservatory students received ten 15-minute neurofeedback training sessions in which they were rewarded for enhancing EEG activity both at 12-15 Hertz (SMR) on the right side of their sensorimotor cortices and at 15-18 Hz (beta1) on the left side. The subjects’ attention was measured before and after training by means of a computerized continuous performance test (CPT). Subsequent to neurofeedback training, the subjects showed a significant reduction in errors of commission based on the test. Furthermore, this error reduction was positively correlated with how well the subjects were able to enhance their level of SMR activity during training. Improvement was also seen on a “d-prime” (d’) scale which compared the ratio of the “hit” rate to the false response rate. The beta-frequency training was found to be associated with increments in the subjects’ P300b event-related brain potential (ERP) when they were asked to respond to tasks that required active monitoring and detection of auditory target stimuli. (The P300b is thought to reflect the neuronal activation that takes place when information in the working memory is updated in response to some specific stimulus.)
The results of the first study were replicated in 2004, this time comparing groups of conservatory students separately trained in SMR and beta with a control group. All three groups were again measured using a continuous performance test as well as a more complex divided attention task instrument. SMR training was shown to reduce errors of omission and reaction time variability, as well as improving d’ performance. Beta training led to a reduction in reaction on the simpler CPT test and increased P300b amplitude.
In a 2003 study, students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group was rewarded for enhancing SMR activity while inhibiting beta activity in the 18-22 Hz range together with activity in the theta (4-8 Hz) range. A second group was rewarded for theta activity while suppressing activity in the alpha and delta ranges immediately above and below it. The third group of students served as a control. Subjects were measured using a continuous performance test with a two- or three-digit sequence target and a semantic working memory test in which words were presented randomly or in semantic clusters.
There was clear evidence of operant control on the part of the subjects who received the SMR training during the course of the study. The SMR-trained subjects also showed highly significant reduction in both errors of omission and errors of commission with two-digit CPT tasks and achieved positive results with semantic working memory tasks. SMR training did not, however, appear to improve error rates for the three-digit tasks. Underlining the need for specificity in reward selection, students who received the theta training were not able to achieve operant control of their EEGs, nor did they exhibit improvement in performance of CPT or semantic working memory tasks.
A growing number of performers, athletes and business executives have come to rely on neurofeedback as a tool for optimal performance training. This frequently involves rewarding subjects for increasing the ratio of their theta activity to that of their alpha (8-12 Hz) activity while sitting in a comfortable position with their eyes closed. The authors investigated this technique in studies published in 2002 and 2003.
In the first study, music conservatory students were divided into three groups. One group received a mixture of neurofeedback that included beta, SMR and alpha/theta training. A second group received neurofeedback combined with mental skills training and aerobics. The third group served as control. The results were evaluated by a panel of expert judges who were blind to the training techniques that were employed with the students they were evaluating. Of the three, only the group that received neurofeedback by itself showed significant improvement in terms of their musicality, creativity and quality of performance. Neither the control group, nor – surprisingly – the group that received neurofeedback together with other training showed significant improvement. Also, although participants in this study received more than one kind of neurofeedback training, it was only the index reflecting the subjects’ ease at raising their theta activity over their alpha activity (alpha/theta training) that showed a positive correlation with improvements in their performance.
In the second study, the music students were divided into six groups – one each for beta, SMR and alpha/theta neurofeedback training, a physical exercise group, a mental skills program group, and an Alexander technique group. Of the six groups, only the group that received alpha/theta training showed significant improvement when they were evaluated post-training. The average improvement shown by students who had received alpha/theta training was reported to be equivalent to two academic grades under the conservatory assessment system, and certain participants showed improvements in excess of 50% in some criteria.
Although further research is clearly indicated, the results of these studies, when taken as a whole, lend substantial support to the proposed correlation between response to neurofeedback training and improvement in cognitive and neurophysiological performance.
The Foundation for Neurofeedback and Applied Neuroscience, Suite 100, 21601 Vanowen Street, Canoga Park, California 91303.