Among the principal neurofeedback venues, the Winter Brain Conference has had perhaps the best shot over the years at attracting newcomers to the field with the diversity and vitality of its program. The pricing threshold was always too high to attract casual interest, however. This year, pricing was reduced along with the length of the conference, but the decline in attendance only continued. Hemmed in by proximity to the turn of the New Year and the early AAPB Conference in Monterey, the meeting failed to attract many of the usual speakers and attendees. We were also caught in Palm Springs’ brief winter, so even the jaccuzzis were not being frequented. With all of the conferences in California this year, perhaps this was the year for Winter Brain to move back East. Even the Biofeedback Society of California is combining its efforts with the AAPB and ISNR this year rather than staging a separate event.Whenever a meeting like this goes counter to the organic growth that is propelling the field forward, one is tempted to slide back into self-criticism. At times like these, I take solace in the fact that people such as Karl Pribram seem to thoroughly enjoy themselves at these affairs and feel like that they have finally found a congenial crowd. Pfurtscheller said the same of the Winterthur conference a couple of years ago. Continue reading “Report on the 2007 Winter Brain Conference”
Category: Neurofeedback
A Year-End Reflection
The film “An Inconvenient Truth” with Al Gore is a chilling example of what can happen when scientific findings clash with political objective and entrenched economic interests. The science can be made to disappear even when it is impeccable and even when unanimity has been achieved within the scientific community itself. We saw the same phenomenon at work when it came to the dangers of smoking cigarettes, and on numerous occasions over the years with various other environmental issues.
The controversy here is not about needing better science to resolve the outstanding ambiguities, contrary to what is claimed. The science will never be good enough for the critics because the findings will not cease to be inconvenient. Al Gore happened to have a ringside seat to Roger Revell’s early measurements of atmospheric CO2, which already raised caution flags back in the late sixties. The evidence has only gotten more solid since. The whole opposition is clearly policy-driven from start to finish. Continue reading “A Year-End Reflection”
Report on the BSC Conference
It was my hope that the Biofeedback Society of California Annual Conference would offer a favorable climate for the cross-fertilization between peripheral and EEG biofeedback that now badly needs to occur. In actual fact, the rather large program made for considerable fragmentation and splintering of the audience, as nearly everyone gravitated to their own traditional priorities. Tribalism won out again, an opportunity lost. Sue and I were almost the only ones who actually addressed the main topic of evidence-based practice, but nevertheless our audience was mainly neurofeedback people.
The program did, however, offer some real gems that have broad implications for healthcare. Robert Gorter, MD, who is both Associate Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine and head of oncology research at a Berlin hospital, talked of new perspectives in cancer research. Gorter is also involved with anthroposophical medicine in Europe, which attempts to practice more naturalistically and comprehensively. The thrust in cancer research is toward strategies of immunomodulation, with cancer largely seen as an immune deficiency condition. Our immune systems are conducting a perpetual campaign against tumor formation. That is the steady state. When that process fails, boosting the immune system should be invoked as a remedy. Continue reading “Report on the BSC Conference”
Passing Judgment on the Verdict
Los Angeles has been riveted over the last few months by the trial in Santa Monica of an elderly driver who mowed down numerous bystanders at an open-air farmer’s market, killing ten people and wounding nearly 70, many of them seriously. His car traveled over 1000 feet through the market, managing to avoid all encounters with parked vehicles along the way and hitting only people. The driver, George Russell Weller, was at a loss to explain what happened, but laments “his contribution” to the deaths. At the time of the tragedy, he was 86 years old, having first learned to drive in a Model T.
There was controversy around whether there should be a trial at all, that it would be difficult to find such an elderly person morally culpable. Weller himself may have opened the door with his own behavior after the event. Weller did not testify at the trial, so one must resort to his early utterances to police after the incident. He sounded “contrite, bewildered, and uncomprehending.” The defense contended that he had one grand, monumental senior moment in which he hit the gas rather than the brake, and in his panic was unable to correct himself. Continue reading “Passing Judgment on the Verdict”
Some Belated Reflections on the 2006 ISNR Conference
The 2006 ISNR Conference was held in a congenial setting in Atlanta with some 350 in attendance. That’s more than fifty percent of the membership, which is a good turnout. On this occasion, BrainMaster celebrated its ten-year anniversary with a festive evening. The overall attendance notwithstanding, many of the talks were only sparsely attended. One reason was parallel sessions. One wonders if it isn’t time to rethink conference organization in view of what is now possible with web-casting and inexpensive mass storage media.
The highlights of the conference among the programs I attended included the continuing work of Rob Coben with the autism spectrum using both HEG and EEG neurofeedback, and documenting change with a variety of assessment instruments. Rob is now training at low EEG frequency if the coherence anomalies fall in that range. He compared coherence-based training with inter-hemispheric training. The inter-hemispheric bipolar training yielded better outcomes on attentional measures than the coherence-based training, but all other measures tended to favor the coherence-based protocols. The frequency range employed here fell into the range of 7-14 Hz, the range over which the deviations were greatest. Continue reading “Some Belated Reflections on the 2006 ISNR Conference”
Promoting Research in Neurofeedback
The Quietmind Foundation Institutional Review Board There’s been a great deal of discussion taking place of late among practitioners at all levels in the field seeking clarity on the basic science behind various models of neurofeedback training. Within this discussion there are many calls for ‘where’s the data?’ The most notable critiques of neurofeedback refer to the paucity of class 1 research that involves randomized double-blind designs with substantive sample sizes conducted by non-practitioners. Many views are being promoting about the underlying mechanisms of action that determine the functional and behavioral changes we see every day in our consulting rooms, agencies, schools and homes where neurofeedback is employed. These unanswered questions reverberate in the critiques from other disciplines that expect to see peer-reviewed studies involving large samples with randomized controlled designs as convincing evidence of clinical efficacy.
The Quietmind Foundation has chosen to respond to this situation by creating a specialized Institutional Review Board (QMFIRB) to support relevant, safe and ethical independent research efforts within the field by neurofeedback professionals who are not affiliated with a university or agency with its own IRB. All major journals especially in the health and neurosciences require IRB approval before they will consider a study for publication. This lack of IRB approval may have prevented important information about the efficacy of neurofeedback from reaching the broader professional community. Continue reading “Promoting Research in Neurofeedback”