Category: Application of Neurofeedback

Impulse Control

If one leaves aside for a moment the horrors that are unfolding in the Gaza strip and in Iraq, the memorable image of the past week was the headbutt by Zinedine Zidane during the World Cup final between France and Italy. Until the moment of Zidane’s ejection from the game, France had to have been content with the way things were going for them in the overtime. One can only assume that in reflection on his loss of poise Zidane would very much have wanted to rewind the film and replay the scene.

From our perspective as neurofeedback practitioners, one can easily sympathize with the dilemma faced by Zidane. Players in his league are surely distinguished from their lower-ranked compatriots in their physiological reaction time, among other criteria. They compete in that zone where many of their reactions are almost reflexive. In our offices we get to measure this every day with our continuous performance tests, and we get to witness that domain of rapid decision-making that is just at the threshold of voluntary control. With neurofeedback training, we get to witness the emergence and consolidation of inhibitory control that makes even rapid responses subject to volition. The pure reaction time measured in an impulsive error becomes the choice reaction time that we had intended to measure. Continue reading “Impulse Control”

Addressing the Problem of the Homeless with Neurofeedback

The current issue of The New Yorker features an article by Malcolm Gladwell on the problem of the homeless. The title of “Million Dollar Murray” sets the theme: It may be a lot more expensive to manage homelessness than it is to solve the problem. Murray Barr was a homeless person in Reno, Nevada, until he died recently of intestinal bleeding attributed to his alcoholism. If all of the free medical care that Murray received over the years, and all of the time spent by police and ambulance teams picking him up for emergency medical services were added up, he may very well have had the highest total in medical services since Howard Hughes decided to take up residence in Nevada–quite possibly reaching a total of $1M.

And yet there was a time not long ago when Murray was successfully placed in a job, and he was staying sober. Some time later–he had accumulated some $6,000 in personal savings by that time–he was terminated out of the program in an act of bureaucratic necessity, and immediately resumed his prior street life, which then proceeded to cost the State ten to a hundred times as much as it had been costing to maintain him in sobriety and usefulness. Continue reading “Addressing the Problem of the Homeless with Neurofeedback”

Service Delivery Models

There has been a lot of discussion round and about with regard to professional ethics in the last few months, mostly as a reference standard for judging who may rightly deliver neurofeedback services. Essentially all of the relevant ethical criteria refer to the relationship of the clinician and the client. The only social dimension in these ethical constraints relates to those situations where that cocoon of mutuality can be broken and the professional may be mandated to report someone who may do injury to another, who may be responsible for ongoing child abuse. The other social dimension relates to the obligations the professional may have vis-à-vis other professionals.

This is somewhat similar to what we have in law, where the attorney-client relationship is privileged in such a manner so as to protect the client. The attorney is, however, also an officer of the court and as such bears responsibility for the integrity of the legal process. So most of the obligations prescribe the relationship to the client, but there is also the social dimension.

Consider, by contrast, the implicit obligations of the soldier in Iraq. Here there are very few individual rights whatsoever. The officer in charge can order to soldier to do virtually anything–even at the risk of his life–that it is somehow connected to the enterprise of war. The soldier’s obligations are entirely in the social realm. He is laboring on behalf of the society at large under circumstances in which his individual rights almost disappear. He has no personal interest in being in the war theater. Continue reading “Service Delivery Models”

A Neurofeedback Service Delivery Model

Last week the discussion was about a service delivery model of neurofeedback that allows access by those who most need it, namely the poor. Most neurofeedback clinicians probably have no contact with the poor at all, so that message may not resonate, least of all as a way to sustain a practice. But the model also applies more generally, in a manner that hopefully touches us all.

We increasingly see “self-regulation practice” as becoming a life-long preoccupation, even for those who consider themselves quite functional. If neurofeedback is to be a part of that, then it cannot be on the standard fee-for-service basis. In that regard, our own situation was rather unusual. We originally paid something like $15,000 in 1985 dollars for neurofeedback services for our son Brian, but the need there was obvious, as was the substantial benefit derived. There was no option but to proceed. Sue and I have each done many neurofeedback sessions over the years since, and that would never have occurred if we had had to pay for every session. In our larger family, there is also the example of Sue’s father, who did neurofeedback daily for a number of years prior to his death in the early nineties due to progressive supranuclear palsy. And currently Sue’s mother is doing daily neurofeedback in her own home at the age of 94, taking a NeuroCybernetics system through its paces largely by memory. For most people, this could not happen if services were charged on a retail basis. Continue reading “A Neurofeedback Service Delivery Model”

A Commons Without Tragedy

It was back in 1968 that Garrett Hardin published his famous piece, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in Science (162, pp 1243-1248, Dec. 13, 1968, American Association for the Advancement of Science). The example of over-grazing of lands held in common was given as an exemplar of a universal truth, namely that assets held in common by a large population inevitably end up over-exploited. This follows from the ineluctable workings of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, in which each individual acts in his own interest. He derives the whole benefit from his own exploitation of the commons, whereas the costs are distributed among all, so he bears only a fraction. As the population grows, the ratio of concentrated benefits to distributed costs only grows, and the incentive to exploit only escalates with it.

The sense in which Hardin uses the word tragedy is that of Alfred North Whitehead: “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.” Of course such workings out of irresistible trends results in unhappiness, and we require unhappiness to give the futility of escape dramatic poignancy. Says Hardin, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” So, unhappiness portends–and not only unhappiness, but ruin as well. It would be best to take notice. Continue reading “A Commons Without Tragedy”

What Does Psychology Have to Do With It?