EEG-neurofeedback for optimising performance. I: a review of cognitive and affective outcome in healthy participants

Abstract

A re-emergence of research on EEG-neurofeedback followed controlled evidence of clinical benefits and validation of cognitive/affective gains in healthy participants including correlations in support of feedback learning mediating outcome. Controlled studies with healthy and elderly participants, which have increased exponentially, are reviewed including protocols from the clinic: sensory-motor rhythm, beta1 and alpha/theta ratios, down-training theta maxima, and from neuroscience: upper-alpha, theta, gamma, alpha desynchronisation. Outcome gains include sustained attention, orienting and executive attention, the P300b, memory, spatial rotation, RT, complex psychomotor skills, implicit procedural memory, recognition memory, perceptual binding, intelligence, mood and well-being. Twenty-three of the controlled studies report neurofeedback learning indices along with beneficial outcomes, of which eight report correlations in support of a meditation link, results which will be supplemented by further creativity and the performing arts evidence in Part II. Validity evidence from optimal performance studies represents an advance for the neurofeedback field demonstrating that cross fertilisation between clinical and optimal performance domains will be fruitful. Theoretical and methodological issues are outlined further in Part III.

Keywords: Affect; Cognition; EEG; Elderly; Neurofeedback; Optimal performance; Validity.