The role of consciousness in NF
Siegfried Othmer
Reflections on the role of consciousness in neurofeedback:
Biofeedback brought consciousness into the realm of mental health in the Western world, in recognition of what had been demonstrated by the yogis in India. An MD lamented at a conference in 1980: “If you bring consciousness into the discussion, you will set back the field of medicine for fifty years.” But consciousness was very much already there. The placebo model rests entirely on the presumptive influence of consciousness on physiology. And efficacy research in psychiatry by way of RCTs is largely organized around the placebo model. That model also had utility in flogging everything that wasn’t ‘medicine’, including neurofeedback. (“Psychiatry cures dissent, not disease.”) Neurofeedback takes consciousness out of the discussion once again. As stated beautifully in the book “The Ghost in the Box,” the placebo is a compounding factor, not a confounding one in NF. NF is not reducible to a placebo because it is not reducible to consciously mediated mechanisms.
All we had to prove is that NF is not explainable in terms of conscious mechanisms, and Barry’s research had already shown that. In the early days of establishing research, the placebo ghost had to be dispatched, of course, to secure a beachhead with mainstream opinion. Both Lubar’s and Sterman’s controlled studies on epilepsy and ADD sufficed to accomplish that. Yet, when confronted with challenges, we did not stand our ground. Instead, we acquiesced to our critics and bought into the notion that NF still needed to be proved out in the conventional manner with large-scale RCTs….in order to rule out the placebo hypothesis! This had the practical effect of rendering the prior research as preliminary, less than dispositive of the critical issue. One must ask: how many times does the placebo zombie have to be vanquished before we can move on?
This eventually culminated in the Ohio State study that was sponsored by a hostile NIMH, performed by drug researchers (the NIMH’s ‘safe hands’), and subject to endless manipulation during editorial review to obscure its positive outcome, as described by Gary Schumer. Our people enthusiastically signed on to that project, but we did not find ourselves on a level playing field. No one is more skilled than drug researchers in manipulating research findings to their desired outcome.
Observe that the published studies on fMRI NF don’t concern themselves with the placebo. Their evidence for brain involvement in NF was compelling, which sidelined any concern about the placebo. But the same holds true for us, and our evidence is more abundant, more multi-faceted, and much more relevant to the real world of clinical practice.
Even a single case that cannot be explained in terms of the placebo model obliterates the placebo model. We have lots of “black swan” events among our case files. Take, for example, the early report by Dan Chartier of a forty-point IQ improvement, from 72 to 112, in a nine-year old boy. Margaret Ayers routinely brought patients out of level two coma. Infant brains respond readily to Endogenous Neuromodulation. There is no placebo model for any of this—because consciously mediated mechanisms are not availing in these cases.
We need to stand our ground, but we also need to seize the high ground. The key to health is mental health; the key to mental health is brain health and functionality; the key to brain functionality is core state regulation; and in my own perspective, the efficient path to core state regulation is Endogenous Neuromodulation, combined with traditional biofeedback.
What is left out of this picture? The social dimension. We cannot expect to succeed in a society that is not family-friendly and is not attentive to the needs of fathers, mothers and children. Our children exhibit the worst health status among our peer countries. Remediation will not bail us out. The society needs to move toward a prevention model, the heart of which is core state regulation, and the need for which is universal. Therein lies our future.
Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, The EEG Institute
Los Angeles