Training the brain to stop worrying

I found this article in News Wales

May 29, 2006 New research by psychologists at Swansea University, England, is looking at ways to help people reduce anxiety in everyday life - by teaching them to control their brain activity. The research, in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth, has been made possible thanks to the funding grant from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Experience of anxiety can be extremely debilitating, preventing people from living fulfilling lives, but through a process called neurofeedback, people can reduce their anxiety and get rid of intrusive and ruminative thoughts. Neurofeedback is also known as EEG Biofeedback, as it is based on the brain's electrical activity, the electroencephalogram (EEG). It is a painless, non-invasive method, which helps people to modify their brainwave activity to improve attention, concentration, reduce impulsivity, and to control hyperactive behaviours.

Essentially, the technique trains the brain to regulate and adjust itself to function more efficiently. During neurofeedback training people learn, over a number of sessions, to control a computer game or produce sounds by changing specific aspects of their brainwave activity. Psychologists apply electrodes to the client's scalp, which picks up their brainwave activity. The monitored brain activity is processed by a computer, which extracts information from the brain signals about certain brainwave frequencies. Changes in the brain signals are fed back to the client by the computer, either visually to a monitor in front them or as sounds through a headset. If the client's brain activity changes in the direction specified by the neurofeedback trainer, a positive reward feedback is given to the client.

Dr Soren Andersen, of Swansea University’s School of Human Sciences, said: “Neurofeedback has been around for about 30 years, and has successfully been applied to conditions such as ADD/ADHD and epilepsy but the technique is relatively unknown here in the UK." Ultimately, we are trying to develop a neurofeedback treatment for anxiety which has its roots in over 40 years of theory and research - the end result will be a non-drug based intervention, which has a sound, scientific basis," added Dr Roger Moore, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth.

Professor Philip Corr, also of Swansea University’s School of Human Sciences, said: “This is an exciting new application of recent advances in our understanding of how the brain controls emotional experiences; and shows how knowledge of fundamental brain systems can have very real benefits in terms of reducing distressing psychological states of worry and anxiety.” This is likely to be only the start of a whole new technology that allows individuals to learn to regulate their own brain states and, thereby, control the emotions controlled by these brain states. For further information on neurofeedback, please visit www.peakmind.co.uk. PeakMind is a Swansea University spinout enterprise, which has been awarded a grant from Finance Wales and receives support from the Department of Psychology at Swansea University. Swansea University has been voted the UK’s Best Student Experience in the 2005 Times Higher Education Supplement Awards.