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A Theory of Alpha/Theta Neurofeedback, Creative Performance Enhancement, Long Distance Functional Connectivity and Psychological Integration

Professionally significant enhancement of music and dance performance and mood has followed training with an EEG-neurofeedback protocol which increases the ratio of theta to alpha waves using auditory feedback with eyes closed. While originally the protocol was designed to induce hypnogogia, a state historically associated with creativity, the outcome was psychological integration, while subsequent applications focusing on raising the theta–alpha ratio, reduced depression and anxiety in alcoholism and resolved post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). In optimal performance studies we confirmed associations with creativity in musical performance, but effects also included technique and communication. We extended efficacy to dance and social anxiety. Diversity of outcome has a counterpart in wide ranging associations between theta oscillations and behaviour in cognitive and affective neuroscience: in animals with sensory motor activity in exploration, effort, working memory, learning, retention and REM sleep; in man with meditative concentration, reduced anxiety and sympathetic autonomic activation, as well as task demands in virtual spatial navigation, focused and sustained attention, working and recognition memory, and having implications for synaptic plasticity and long term potentiation. Neuroanatomical circuitry involves the ascending mescencephalic-cortical arousal system, and limbic circuits subserving cognitive as well as affective/ motivational functions. Working memory and meditative bliss, representing cognitive and affective domains, respectively, involve coupling between frontal and posterior cortices, exemplify a role for theta and alpha waves in mediating the interaction between distal and widely distributed connections. It is posited that this mediation in part underpins the integrational attributes of alpha–theta training in optimal performance and psychotherapy, creative associations in hypnogogia, and enhancement of technical, communication and artistic domains of performance in the arts.

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Optimizing Microsurgical Skills With EEG Neurofeedback

 By enabling individuals to self-regulate their brainwave activity in the field of optimal performance in healthy individuals, neurofeedback has been found to improve cognitive and artistic performance. Here we assessed whether two distinct EEG neurofeedback protocols could develop surgical skill, given the important role this skill plays in medicine.

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Treatment of Anxiety Disorder with Neurofeedback: Case Study

The objective of the present study is to report the effects of beta-increase and alpha- increase EEG feedback training along with alpha-theta biofeedback training in two patients diagnosed with anxiety disorder. The,Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-mR) and patients’ self reports were used as objective measures of treatment efficacy. Following 30 sessions of EEG biofeedback within a three-month period, patients reported a significant reduction in anxiety-related symptoms. At one-year follow-up, results of SCL-90-R showed all clinical scales within normal range. In addition, self-reports confirmed that the patients were symptom free. In general, the current study findings demonstrated that neurofeedback was an effective treatment for anxiety disorder.

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Replication of Elite Music Performance Enhancement Following Alpha/Theta Neurofeedback and Application to Novice PPerformance and Improvisation With SMR Benefits

Alpha/theta (A/T) and sensory-motor rhythm (SMR) neurofeedback were compared in university instrumentalists who were novice singers with regard to prepared and improvised instrumental and vocal performance in three music domains: creativity/musicality, technique and communication/presentation. Only A/T training enhanced advanced playing seen in all three domains by expert assessors and validated by correlations with learning indices, strongest with Creativity/Musicality as shown by Egner and Gruzelier (2003). Here A/T gains extended to novice performance – prepared vocal, improvised vocal and instrumental – and were recognised by a lay audience who judged the prepared folk songs. SMR learning correlated positively with Technical Competence and Communication in novice performance, in keeping with SMR neurofeedback’s known impact on lower-order processes such as attention, working memory and psychomotor skills. The importance of validation through learning indices was emphasised in the interpretation of neurofeedback outcome.

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Theories of the Effectiveness of Alpha-Theta Training for Multiple Disorders

This chapter discusses the theories of the effectiveness of alpha-theta training for multiple disorders. Alpha-theta neurotherapy has demonstrated that causing the brain to generate theta activity daily over a period of time seems to have enormous benefits, including boosting the immune system, enhancing creativity, and triggering or facilitating “integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological well-being.” The protocol seems to transcend the patient's lack of motivation to change, initial incapacity to create internal visual imagery, and disbelief in the effectiveness of the treatment. Frequently, a patient's experience and results far exceed the goals targeted. Alpha-theta EEG state of arousal seems to create a link to a subconscious realm where a wider vision of the self without its ego adaptations is contacted. This link may be associated with concepts of context and state-dependent learning and memory.

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Alpha-Theta Brainwave Training: Instrumental Vipassana?

Seventy years ago, though details were lacking, most physicians and psychologists knew that localized areas of the cerebral cortex were instrumental in proper functioning of perceptual, motor, and intellectual processes. Then, sixty years ago, it began to be suspected that the sub-cortical brain complex now called the limbic system was associated with specific emotional processes, and Papez eventually wrote his ground-breaking paper titled "A Proposed Mechanism of Emotion." 1 MacLean followed with his seminal paper titled "Psychosomatic Disease and the 'Visceral Brain'" and began developing his theory of the triune brain, the cortex (for intelligence), the limbic system (for emotion), and the hypothalamic-brain-stem complex (the reptilian brain, for physiologic functions).

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New Research Regarding EEG Neurofeedback and Musician

Researchers from Imperial College London and Charing Cross Hospital have discovered a way to help musicians improve their musical performances by an average of up to 17 per cent, equivalent to an improvement of one grade or class of honours. The research published in this months edition of Neuroreport, shows that using a process known as neurofeedback, students at London's Royal College of Music were able to improve their performance across a number of areas including their musical understanding and imagination, and their communication with the audience.

 

 

 

 

Alpha-Theta Brainwave Neuro-Feedbackfor Vietnam Veterans with Combat Related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPl) was used to assess personality changes in Vietnam combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After either traditional medical treatment (TC) or alpha-theta brainwave neurofeedback therapy (BWT). Application a brainwave training for thirty 30-minute sessions resulted in decreases in MMPI T-scores on clinical scales labelled hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviant, masculinity-femininity, paranoia, psychosthenia, schizophrenia, hypomania, and social introversion-extroversion. The traditional medical control group showed decreases in T-scores only on the scale labeled schizophrenia. All fourteen BTW patients initially receiving psychotropic medication reduced their dosages after treatment, but only one of thirteen TC patients reduced dosage. A thirty-month follow-up study showed that all fourteen TC patients had relapsed. In contrast to only three of fifteen BTW patients. These flndings indicate that application of alpha-theta brainwave training is a more efficacioustreatment modality in the treatment of PTSD and prevention of relapse.

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