The current status of behaviorism and neurofeedback.

Abstract

Neurofeedback, (also called, EEG biofeedback or brainwave biofeedback,) is one of several techniques, so-called because of their intended direct influence on brain processes. At the time of this writing, it still lags behind medication as the modern western or scientific method-of-choice for developing greater brain self-regulation, but the number of clinicians providing this intervention has grown yearly since the early 1980s. Language for describing the intended outcome of neurofeedback appears to be similar across clients, practitioners and researchers (and teachers, family members and journalists) who uniformly identify this outcome as or simply learning. It is in the description of the underlying process, the how it works section of the manufacturer's or clinician's explanation, that great differences are seen. These differences may be due, in part, to lack of standardization in neurotherapy training and therefore great differences in practitioners' conceptual models of learning, and in part to the relative crudeness of the data that provide the feedback. These data consist of faint electronic signals that are present on the cortical surface, trickle through the skull and skin to a grounded sensor at a specific location. They are then amplified and filtered into a variety of frequency bands or wavelengths, and presented to the client in a stimulating graphic and auditory format. Each behavior of an individual has a unique neural structure, discharged through a set of unique frequency patterns (measured in milliseconds), employing any number of cortical and subcortical regions. Behaviors, whether overt motor functions or covert operations, are not conditioned so much as particular brain states and the general self-regulation of brain states, through reinforcement of the amplitude of selected frequencies relative to other frequencies. Many distinct behaviors are frequency-specific, and neurofeedback, when successful, strengthens the relative amplitude of frequencies that facilitate target behavior. For the behaviorist, behavioral descriptions trump cognitive (he knows...) phomenological (she is much better at ...), humanistic (he wants to ...), educational (she has learned that ...) and broad clinical (it effectively changes his ...) explanations of behavioral change. O'Donohue and Kitchner (1998) pointed out the behaviorisms that currently exist all have principles and language in common. The behavioral mainstream is a field formally recognized as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA involves a conceptual structure that encompasses both broad and specific outcomes--and outcome measures, in terms that are related to the components of the identified problem. Any or all of these components may be addressed by interventions particularly suited to changing the parameters of problematic behavior so that they resemble the parameters of the goal or specified outcome. It is a prolonged lament by many behavioral practitioners (including this author--see Fultz, 2001) that the nature of a particular learning process or behavior change event such as neurofeedback training, is unnecessarily obscured by a sloppy explanation. In a utopian therapeutic environment one's language would merely reflect the worldview--or perhaps the cosmology--of the person, but one suspects it often indicates a lack of understanding of ABA concepts. The primary intent of this article is not to dismiss the above-mentioned epistemologies, but to argue for the superiority of behavioral explanations of neurofeedback processes and outcomes, then to temper this hubris with caveats about one's audience and appropriate levels of analysis and explanation. Manufacturers and marketers of neurofeedback equipment tend to emphasize outcomes in broad terms having to do with better grades, better behavior, better relationships, more positive emotions, and--conversely--fewer problems. …