Neurofeedback for Cognitive Enhancement, Intervention and Brain Plasticity

Abstract

Neurofeedback has been employed in recent years as a cognitive learning approach to enhance brain processes for therapeutic or recreational reasons. It involves teaching people to monitor their own brain activity and adjust it in the ways they see fit. The central idea is that by exerting this kind of command over a particular form of brain activity, one can improve the cognitive abilities that are normally associated with it, and one can also cause certain functional and structural transformations in the brain system, assisted by the neuronal plasticity and learning effects. Herein, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of neurofeedback and outline the practical applications of this technique in clinical and experimental settings. Here, we take a look at the alterations in reinforcement learning cortical networks that have occurred as a result of neurofeedback training, as well as the more general impacts of neurofeedback on certain regions of the brain. Finally, we discuss the current obstacles that neurofeedback research must overcome, such as the need to quantify the temporal neorofeedback dynamics and effects, relate its behavioral patterns to daily life routines, formulate effective controls to differential placebo from actual neurofeedbackimapcts, and enhance the processing of cortical signal to attain fine-grained real-time modeling of cognitive functionalities.