Biofeedback is where someone is taught how to control the psychophysical responses of his or her body. These responses are in the voluntary system such as skeletal musculature, or in the involuntary, or autonomic nervous system, such as heart rate (pulse), vascular responses (peripheral temperature), sympathetic discharges (galvanic skin response-GSR), and muscle tension measured across the forehead frontalis muscles using electromyograph EMG  (M. Shmavonian, 1992).

For over 25 years, Drs Cassel, Meyer and Costello refined computerized biofeedback techniques to a point where training and psychological computer-assisted guidance programs in the privacy of one's home became a reality. It was not long before people realized through training they could vizualize biofeedback without being connected to machines.

Patients at Dr Costello's Mornington clinic were mainly interested in common sense applied psychology and how it worked. They were given biofeedback training for stress reduction. "Normal" people suffer stress and this is not unusual in our "pressure cooker" society. Entering biofeedback training or assessment did not mean a person was psychologically maladjusted and needed psychotherapy.  

And while Biofeedback first commenced in the 1950s with the work of Elmer Green at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, is was not before long that NASA realized its benefits through Dr Pat Cowing's originative programs.  

Computerized Biofeedback Training In Brief And How The Brain Works

This is a beautiful process whereby a person interacts with his physical responses to create a specially designed psychological state. When this state is achieved in a mental/emotional area for the individual, a corresponding physical change occurs in the body. The neural personality cluster resides here when achieved (Murphy, 1951).   Feedback is designed to assess what is the status in select areas of the body, when undergoing these changes. When biofeedback instruments are interfaced with a computer, neural measurements (areas of physical functioning) may be taken and processed to represent personality clusters. The biofeedback is seen to dance up and down on the monitor, represented graphically. During the guided imagery session, changes in the four neural functions are continually displayed on the monitor identified for the individual measurement involved:

(G) emotions or EDA (Galvanic skin response measurements - frontalis)
(E) muscle tension or EMG (Electromyograph measurements)
(T) the temperature/sympathetic pattern (Thermistor readings),
(P) is the pulse (Heart rate monitoring)
 

The person is able to view in rapid fire fashion, changes being implemented unconsciously and consciously through guided imagery and the computer-like system of the brain (reticula formation in conjunction with the lymphatic system). Through these changes in biofeedback responses an individual trains himself into controlling his physical output. This can be conditioned in any self-directed individual through viewing responses on the monitor. Printout for each twelve minute biofeedback training session is provided. Similarly, audio tapes using either guided imagery or progressive relaxation may be used when people find it difficult to gain control over the nervous system.

An Introduction To Stressful Thought Stopping

If we consider that the brain can be preoccupied with some thoughts say for example concerning a pleasurable or distracting memories, then possibly it will not be able to focus on other nasty experiences. The mother in excruciating pain during child birth, suddenly when seeing her child suffers no pain whatsoever. The pain almost disappears completely. This remarkable miracle cannot be easily understood but has continued to dismay and puzzle everyone from time immemorial and the phenomenon is taken for granted. How is it that terrible pain can somehow temporarily, disappear? Psychologists once considered the notion of pain and pleasure centres of the brain but this idea is questionable. However we know that the brain is capable of doing a multitude of things at the same time, even when distracted. Computerised biofeedback training is an appropriate way of learning a type of self-control that is scientific, in a way translating meditation into measurable data through contemplation.

How The Brain Works

Frequently, even the most ordered mind is continually interrupted by constant distractions. We tend to worry about things or people and react by thinking in spiraling circles with one thought evoking another and then another. Each thought tends to bring up another, like cross referencing. The brain, as the most beautiful complex computer, works on biochemical energy like a battery or motor. On first view it is a sloppy mass that looks like an enormous walnut with a right and left side (hemispheres). It weighs about three to three and a half pounds. Most of us have seen one but hesitate to understand the complexities of how it works. The brain is an exquisite precision instrument, perfectly organized and profoundly constructed. It is a neural road map of intricate detail, a paragon of reason and emotions.

Our brain transmits nervous impulses at a rate of seven billion per second between left and right hemispheres. Who indeed could imagine the amazing thought processes that occur while reading these notes or when we are worried and even while sleeping. Sometimes, thought patterns can be uncontrollable. Just considering one event engages other memories that spring to mind, often without voluntary permission. Whenever we focus on a particular problem that is worrying us, there are also other related thoughts that come to mind. All of these thoughts are connected in the brain's nervous system so that when one is remembered, others are recollected, automatically. Frequently, when we remember enjoyable thoughts, many other pleasurable events come to mind. The reader can experiment by thinking of one thought which will then present many others. Thoughts produce feelings and thus, we may experience enjoyable pleasurable feelings associated with these memories or alternatively, painful feelings as well.
As a practical experiment to demonstrate this theory, you are invited to remember three particular enjoyable experiences, perhaps from an early age up to the present time. Once you have considered one of these experiences, other memories will come to mind and these hopefully, will be enjoyable also.

Left And Right Brain Paradox

The conscious (dominant brain) and unconscious (non-dominant) is like a permanent memory record where everything is indelibly printed and can be remembered. Sometimes, and without warning, we will remember events from many years ago as though they happened just yesterday. The unconscious has no "time dimension" and often replays certain events or speaks through a personalised language of dreams.
Those who practise meditation are familiar with this process, sometimes bringing particular thoughts forward to pacify the mind. For example, one may contemplate on a pleasant scene or perhaps a person or an object that produces pleasing familiar feelings. These thoughts will distract the mind from thinking about obtrusive or painful memories.
Distraction is an old fashioned way of moving our minds onto other things. You may remember someone once saying to you, "Just try not to think about it! ". It is very difficult not to think about some things that preoccupy our mind but when considering something else, the distraction is easier. When giving injections to children, an old distraction technique was to ask the child to wiggle his toes. When preoccupied, the child somehow feels less pain.
Computerised biofeedback facilitates direct focus and self-control through training.

Pain Control and Management:

Through using biofeedback training we learn consciously to control our body's physical stress and tension. The more we are relaxed, the better control and management of pain is achieved.
When powerful thoughts preoccupy us, we find it difficult to think about other things. A special example of this is the soldier who may have been critically hurt but does not feel any pain. The same painful experience may occur in a football game, when a player might suffer a broken ankle or arm but continues to play on, without apparently feeling any pain. The soldier is distracted by an overwhelming desire to live or to protect others. The sportsman is preoccupied with a will to win or is fixated intensely on the game. Normally, an individual could not continue when suffering such excruciating pain but because the distraction is so strong and the interest so fixated, only later does the person fall into a syndrome of shock.
Presumably, there has been a protective rush of brain-made biochemical, such as the B-endorphins; a release of powerful helpful pain stopping agents.
Sometimes indeed, this does not occur at all and one suddenly looks at the question of pain control medication as a realistic alternative. The mind however already possesses in its own biochemical warehouse of drugs, many of which we have not discovered, let alone named. This is not to suggest that when suffering pain, we have the ability to immediately blot it out but with practice, distraction will weaken its powerful impact.

The Brain's Biochemical Work:

The brain is the very centre of human consciousness and unconsciousness. It works on biochemical and electrical energy, just like a battery and requires nutrients to work properly.
A computer the size of one cubic mile would not adequately perform the tasks that our brain performs every 24 hours. Even the distribution of various nutrients through digestion, transporting vitamins and minerals to parts of the body through chemical analysis, would take a team of 1000 biochemists a week. When we consider a battery and electrolyte (the fluid through which current passes) the mixture can be enriched or weakened. The addition of too much sugar or salt in the bloodstream will alter the way the brain works, that is by transmitting messages from one part to another. Various drugs will inhibit or accelerate thought processes as well as producing mood changes. We know the powerful effects of alcohol on the brain as a stimulant and then as a sedative, slowing up our reactions and motor co-ordination. Too much oxygen will not only produce feelings of well being or euphoria but also alter a person's state of consciousness. Other gases like nitrous oxide will produce humorous feelings. An excess of carbon dioxide will produce drowsiness, when we are in a closed room without good ventilation. Hallucinogenic drugs were once considered mind altering and expanding drugs but in fact they produced uncontrollable responses, often resulting in chronic psychosis.
The brain's outer covering is called the cortex and it is like a grey bark covering made from billions of nerve cell (neuron) endings. We refer sometimes to the brain as "grey matter". Neurons are tiny. Their length varies from a fraction of a millimetre to over a meter in length. The head of the neuron is white and it's tail is grey. Heads and tails inter-connect like spark- plugs. The network of connections works in strange and mysterious ways. Because the dominant brain holds the power of veto over the non-dominant brain, and because basic communication within the brain works on electrical impulses and chemical change, neural measurements can be taken with biofeedback.
In a recent booklet entitled "Men and Boys" by Mr. Richard Fletcher, who lectures at the University of Newcastle, he explains some statistical differences between males and females. Admittedly, most of the research shows that the male and female brain is relatively the same. Some British studies show however that only the shape and size of the Corpus Callosum is slightly different.
Mr. Fletcher explains that, "in any one day in Australia there are 1 1 00 boys and 200 girls in custody. More than four times as many young males compared with young females will commit suicide and more males will be murdered". Other data from his booklet states that, "(1) More males are overweight in every age group; (2) Males are more likely to have high blood pressure than females, but they are less likely to have their blood pressure checked; (3) Males use less sun protection than females; (4) More males die in road accidents than females; (5) Males are more likely to be killed at work than females; (6) Males make less use of health services generally than females; (7) Except for Physiotherapists and Osteopaths, males are less likely to consult other health professionals".