Neurofeedback for Stress and Burnout
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This study focused on the effectiveness of Neurofeedback training on 40 kindergarten students who showed resistance to stress between the months of January 2008 and December 2008. 20 subjects were placed in an experimental group and the other 20 were placed in a comparative group. The brainwaves were adjusted by time series linear analysis and after observing the pre and post brain wave measurement results, the differences between both resistance stress was confirmed. Overall, the results suggest that Neurofeedback may positively affect the subjects’ mental state.

Athletic performance can be threatened by excessive tension and stress which is why the goal of this study was to help athletes manage their stress response through self-regulation of the autonomic and central nervous systems’ activation levels. This study involved 15 elite athletes who were preparing for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. These athletes underwent a psychophysiological stress assessment, EEG, and bio-neurofeedback training. Athletes and coaches reported that the bio-neurofeedback training helped athletes manage the stress of training and competing. As a result, bio-neurofeedback helped produce better athletic performance.

Neurofeedback was conducted on 18 volunteers suffering from stress-induced disorders and it was revealed that there was a dominant narrow-band (0.4 – 0.6 Hz) oscillators in theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-13 Hz) EEG bands. During two examinations, the volunteers were presented with classical music. The music would be interrupted for approximately three seconds if the amplitude of the volunteer’s theta (slow wave) exceeded the initial level, or if the amplitude of the volunteer’s alpha (middle wave) did not reach the initial level. Volunteers were then asked to maintain the functional state where the music would play continuously. The authors found that there was marked EEG normalization and evidence pointing towards the reduction of stress. The volunteers also had positive shifts in their mental and emotional states as early as the end of the first neurofeedback treatment.

This paper provides a comprehensive summary of critical information for neurofeedback training and describes the need for the development of content. This content acts as a stimulus which trains the client to control their brain activity in stressful conditions. The developed content involves audio and game. The audio is used to enhance the amplitude of alpha brainwaves in the left-prefrontal lobe, whereas the game is used to reduce the power of high-beta activity. The results indicate significant improvement in reducing stress levels.

This study involved 10-20 sessions of Alpha Neurofeedback training on 20 individuals who suffered from several stress symptoms. The subjects were clinically evaluated and their QEEG’s were recorded. 15 of the 20 subjects who showed clinical improvement had an 89% increase of their mean Alpha activity, whereas 5 subjects with little improvement didn’t show an increase of alpha at all.The difference of Alpha enhancement between both groups was statistically significant as it indicates that Alpha enhancement is a predictor of clinical outcome. As a result, this study had a 75% success rate after about 12 hours of treatment which means that Alpha wave neurofeedback training may be an effective method to treat stress.

Stress and burnout have been recognized as major causes for individual and societal issues in the West. Neuropsychological findings have allowed the authors to explore alternative methods to induce relaxation. One method being the application of so-called brainwave synchronizers or neurofeedback, which is said to induce a relaxation response by entraining alpha brain-wave activity through audiovisual stimulation. In this study, a double blind, quasi-experiment was conducted on employees at a Dutch addiction care center to look into the possible effects of two brain machine programs on anxiety and burnout. Subjects experiencing both conditions showed a significant, immediate decrease in an anxious state as assessed by Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of neurofeedback on stress and brain function in high school students. There were 62 students who participated in this nonequivalent control group study and the subjects underwent neurofeedback training for 30 minutes at a time, 3 times per week, for a total of 12 weeks. Brain function was measured by the brain waves in the subjects’ frontal lobes and analyzed by 8 brain quotients which distinguished patterns of EEG rhythms. A stress scale from regular daily life was then used to measure stress experienced by the students. After neurofeedback training, the level of brain quotients in students from the experimental group increased (t=2.36, p<.05) and the level of stress decreased (t=-3.59, p<.001). These results suggest that neurofeedback is an effective treatment modality for stress reduction in high school students.

The study examined the impact of NFB on the cognitive workload and personal growth areas of surgery residents with burnout and depression. 10 surgical residents with severe burnout and depression participated in the experimental condition and 5 surgical residents with mild symptoms of burnout and depression served as controls. The experimental group received 8 weeks of NFB treatments. Each participant’s cognitive load was assessed initially and again after the treatment via EEG while they performed NFB working memory tasks. The study found that after the NFB intervention, the experimental group showed significant improvement in cognitive workload and these findings were not noted in the control group. They also found a significant correlation between the NFB sessions and average improvement in all growth areas (r = 0.98). 

This study examined the impact of NFB on the executive functioning of female university students with burnout and depression. The experimental group contained 15 students and the control group contained 17 students.  The experimental group received 10 sessions of NFB (2x a week for 45 min) which looked at upper alpha waves in the parieto-occipital area (P3, Pz, P4, O1, O2). The results of the study showed that upper alpha NFB training had a significant effect on executive functioning and found that it led to an improvement in the individual’s cognitive performance overall.

Research has shown that acute stress can affect the allocation of neural resources between large-scale brain networks; specifically the balance between the executive control network (ECN) and the salience network (SN). Resilience to stress in turn may be determined by the ability to adaptively reallocate neural resources between these two networks. Therefore, training this ability could potentially help to increase resilience in individuals with acute stress symptoms. This study aimed to use real-time FMRi and neurofeedback to investigate whether individuals can learn to regulate their stress-related network balance. Participants in the study underwent training where they were provided with a visual representation of the difference signal between the average activation of the salience and executive control networks and were instructed to self-regulate this signal. The results of the study showed that participants were able to learn strategies to control the balance between the ECN and SN activation on command and successfully transfer this skill to a situation where they were exposed to an acute stressor but were not provided feedback anymore. This study provides support for using neurofeedback training to help increase resilience in individuals with acute stress symptoms.