Ask Slashdot: Neurofeedback At Home, Is It Possible? 68
New submitter sker writes "Mind hackers, self-help junkies, even regular people have heard wild promises of the power of neurofeedback — namely the process of watching a visual representation of your own brain's activity to influence what your brain is doing. Folks are using it to cure ADHD, PTSD, or even to supposedly improve mindfulness meditation. Previously the sole domain of costly hospital and research equipment, the necessary EEG equipment is making its way into the home. From newagey Deepak Chopra-endorsed kits to the for-engineers-only OpenEEG project, the options are rapidly getting unwieldy for curious bystanders to make sense of. Have you had experience with EEG or neurofeedback at home? Do you have advice?"
That reminds me a lot of (Score:4, Insightful)
biofeedback, which was the self-help craze of the 1970s. It didn't work very well. (No, I didn't RTFA.)
It really is complicated (Score:4, Insightful)
the options are rapidly getting unwieldy for curious bystanders to make sense of.
That's because it IS unwieldy, for anyone. Even EEG done properly is not cheap or simple, and EEG is not a wonderful method of visualising what is actually going on in the brain: you're measuring the potential difference between points of the surface of the skull, and making a guess as to roughly the region in the brain the current(s) that produced that potential difference are actually occurring in based on electrode placement.
fMRI and similar are better, but NOT something you can do at home (just building the superconducting main coil would be a massive feat).