User:Petelobo/sandbox/Whole-Brain Training

Whole-Brain Training Since the 1960's, with the advent of digital EEG based on the Fast-Fourier transform, the field of brain-training (neurofeedback or EEG-biofeedback) has developed with the goal of providing individuals a tool that allows them to adjust the stable electrical patterns in their own brains. The rapid development of the personal computer, beginning in the 1990's, combined with the designation of that decade as the Decade of the Brain, have resulted in two major elements that have made brain-training a widely-used technology around the world.

As a result of the NIH designation, significant research began, often using normative QEEG databases developed in the 1970's based on early models by NASA in the 1950's. Among many other designs, a large number of studies created sub-population databases which calculated means and standard deviations for groups of individuals in particular categories, such as anxiety, impulsivity, physiological disturbances (e.g. sleep, pain, digestion) and peak performance. By performing analyses of variance between sub-populations and the normative set, these studies identified correlates in the EEG that frequently occurred in the target group and rarely appeared in the overall population. These "markers" helped to predict specific issues in an individual based on the EEG patterns in his/her brain.

As computing became faster, more powerful and economically viable on smaller scales, hardware and software systems were developed and implemented with a focus not on research but on actual training of brain patterns in individuals. The work of Sterman with seizure disorders, later extended by Lubar into the areas of problems of attention and control in the 1970's demonstrated and published the effectiveness of brain-based interventions in producing lasting changes.