A cool new study looked at the use of neurofeedback for improving creativity in professionals, brought to you by the Mind Modulations blog. It would be seriously cool if all research were open source, so that not only professionals can have access to it.
New Alpha/Theta Neurofeedback & Creativity Study
Sunday, 21 December 2008
A theory of alpha/theta neurofeedback, creative performance enhancement, long distance functional connectivity and psychological integration.
Gruzelier J.
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW, UK, j.gruzelier@gold.ac.uk.
Professionally significant enhancement of music and dance performance and mood has followed training with an EEG-neurofeedback protocol which increases the ratio of theta to alpha waves using auditory feedback with eyes closed. While originally the protocol was designed to induce hypnogogia, a state historically associated with creativity, the outcome was psychological integration, while subsequent applications focusing on raising the theta-alpha ratio, reduced depression and anxiety in alcoholism and resolved post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). In optimal performance studies we confirmed associations with creativity in musical performance, but effects also included technique and communication. We extended efficacy to dance and social anxiety. Diversity of outcome has a counterpart in wide ranging associations between theta oscillations and behaviour in cognitive and affective neuroscience: in animals with sensory-motor activity in exploration, effort, working memory, learning, retention and REM sleep; in man with meditative concentration, reduced anxiety and sympathetic autonomic activation, as well as task demands in virtual spatial navigation, focussed and sustained attention, working and recognition memory, and having implications for synaptic plasticity and long term potentiation. Neuroanatomical circuitry involves the ascending mescencephalic-cortical arousal system, and limbic circuits subserving cognitive as well as affective/motivational functions. Working memory and meditative bliss, representing cognitive and affective domains, respectively, involve coupling between frontal and posterior cortices, exemplify a role for theta and alpha waves in mediating the interaction between distal and widely distributed connections. It is posited that this mediation in part underpins the integrational attributes of alpha-theta training in optimal performance and psychotherapy, creative associations in hypnogogia, and enhancement of technical, communication and artistic domains of performance in the arts.
more here (study abstract)
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The link to the above article by Gruzelier is a dead end. The article apparently does not have a PMID number and is not found in PubMed.
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