Neurofeedback is a rewards-based system. The idea of rewarding the brain for making changes in the direction a person wants it to go can be a tough concept to grasp, but in practice, it’s pretty simple.

Our brains are designed to detect novelty in our environment. It’s a primitive survival mechanism, because we humans need to notices changes in the world that might endanger our lives—think of noticing the movement of a venomous snake or the driver who suddenly decides to cross four lanes of traffic to make a turn.  It’s a part of our daily lives, and when it comes to noticing sound, I like to use the example of an ambulance siren.  There is a fire station not too far from my office, and emergency vehicles drive down the street in front of my building every day.  If I’m with a client, they continue to pay attention to our conversation or work, but a part of them notices the siren with an internal monologue that goes something along the lines of “Hey, what’s that?  Oh, I bet it’s an ambulance.  I wonder if there was a car accident?  I hope everyone’s okay.”

Neurofeedback is a bit like the ambulance siren. We believe that the brain notices the reward tones that the computer sends the same way it notices the siren:  as a novel change in the environment.

At the same time, we believe neurofeedback works much like the process of teaching a dog to sit. A puppy receives a reward in the form of a bit of tasty food every time its hind quarters go anywhere remotely in the right direction of a sitting position.  Eventually, the dog doesn’t need the treat to be able to associate the command with sitting.  Similarly, the brain gets the reward of novelty any time the sophisticated computer software determines that the brain is going anywhere remotely in the right direction of the electrical energy pattern the trainee hopes to achieve.  Like the puppy, eventually the person doing brain training no longer needs the tones as a reward for going the right direction, and the brain can use that new pattern when appropriate.

I use the expression “we believe” because neuroscience researchers have not yet proven the theory that neurofeedback is education for the brain, but in real life, the explanation seems to fit: a person comes for training with goals to achieve, the computer rewards the brain for learning the pattern associated with the goal, and the brain eventually can do it on its own without rewards.  It’s exciting every time I watch this pattern unfold, because it means that people are using technology to regulate their bodies by teaching themselves, all in a non-invasive and generally pleasurable way.