Ecological validity of neurofeedback: modulation of slow wave EEG enhances musical performance.

Full Abstract

Biofeedback-assisted modulation of electrocortical activity has been established to have intrinsic clinical benefits and has been shown to improve cognitive performance in healthy humans. In order to further investigate the pedagogic relevance of electroencephalograph (EEG) biofeedback (neurofeedback) for enhancing normal function, a series of investigations assessed the training's impact on an ecologically valid real-life behavioural performance measure: music performance under stressful conditions in conservatoire students. In a pilot study, single-blind expert ratings documented improvements in musical performance in a student group that received training on attention and relaxation related neurofeedback protocols, and improvements were highly correlated with learning to progressively raise theta (5-8 Hz) over alpha (8-11 Hz) band amplitudes. These findings were replicated in a second experiment where an alpha/theta training group displayed significant performance enhancement not found with other neurofeedback training protocols or in alternative interventions, including the widely applied Alexander technique.

Author information

Author/s: Egner, Tobias (T); Gruzelier, John H (JH);

Affiliation: Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behaviour, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK. t.egner(-atsign-)imperial.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Validation Studies

Journal: Neuroreport (Neuroreport), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 14 (issue 9) : pp 1221-4

Dates: Created 2003/06/25; Completed 2003/09/23; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12824763, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

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