Biofeedback

Biological feedback, or biofeedback for short, is the measurement of biological or physiological phenomena and the simultaneous visual and auditory feeding back or display of this information. It requires instruments to measure and record the biological information so that the patient can see it or hear it. The patient learns by trial and error to establish voluntary control over aspects of his or her physiology that previously were not controlled. The instrument is, in effect, a temporary bridge between a person's awareness and his or her physiological functioning, providing information otherwise unavailable.

Various physiological phenomena such as muscle tension, brain waves, and hand temperature, previously thought to be involuntary, have been demonstrated to be voluntary, once the appropriate information is provided. When information concerning the stress response, such as muscle tension or increased heart rate, is provided, the patient can learn to control them, lessen them, and experience relaxation. With continual feedback provided, the individual learns under conditions which are closer to real life situations than are the eyes-closed meditation techniques.

Clinically effective biological feedback must include both general relaxation training and specific biologic feedback via instruments. Proof that patients have learned generalized relaxation includes diminished respiratory oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange, blood pressure, pulse rate, and lactic acid levels. Until this is accomplished, and generalized to situations outside the laboratory, additional training will not be clinically effective. If it is to be clinically useful this new learning must be both generalized and reinforcing. Many factors, including the learning climate, play a role in this situation.

The type of learning involved is not unlike the learning that children of two, three, or four undergo as they increase the ability to control motor and automatic functions. The environmental setting, therefore, should include continuous reinforcement, love, and steady support. This allows an adult as well as a child to learn, by trial and error, control over previously uncontrolled body functions.

The attitude and therapeutic skill of the trainer are crucial. In the biofeedback setting, patients are asked to perform tasks that normally stimulate the fight-or-fight response, but in which success can be achieved only by producing an opposite response. For example, people often "try hard" to relax, as they do in competitive situations, whereas only by "letting go" or "letting it happen" will relaxation occur. The instructions must be given in a relaxed setting in which stress is minimized. In essence, patients learn to follow the signal of the biofeedback instrument rather than lead it and compete with it. They become aware that the signal is produced by themselves and that the machine is producing nonjudgmental, therefore non-stressful, information.

How the actual learning occurs, however, remains uncertain. Thus, biofeedback training has three main goals. First, to increase awareness of what you are doing with your body arousal. Second, once you are aware, to permit you to learn to control or to modulate this bodily arousal in the laboratory. Lastly, if you can control your arousal in the lab, to teach you how to transfer this control to everyday life, where it counts.

Sources: What is Biofeedback? Arizona Behavioral Health Associates, P.C.

Biofeedback, University of Maryland Medical Center