Application of Peak Performance Biofeedback
James Wright
For an elite athlete, trying to concentrate in the moment
of greatest stress, finding and maintaining focus can mean
the difference between success and failure. Folks dedicated
to finding any and all manner of perfecting performance
populate the United States Olympic Committee headquarters
in Colorado Springs. In an area set apart from the rest of
the sports sciences department, Tim Conrad and Tom
Westenburg, principal engineers, assert that the greatest
challenge of the future is not so much improving the
mechanics of sport as helping athletes understand and
master their minds.
Presently, they are focused on the inner workings of
athletes. In Conrad's eyes "there isn't much physical
difference between the best athletes, but there can be a
good deal of difference in their states of mind." According
to Westenberg, "Measurement is the key to all advances in
sport, including measuring the intangibles like thought and
feeling." The challenge then, for the USOC is to quantify
the mental characteristics conducive to consistent success
and teach those characteristics to Olympic hopefuls.
Currently, research is focused on using the
electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure electrical activity
in specific regions of the brain, in particular, the
frontal lobes and receiving biofeedback. . For USOC
researchers, the hope is that by using EEG biofeedback in
the lab, athletes will be able to find focus, achieving a
quiet and still mind when it is most required, and in turn,
provide a measurable advantage to US athletes in
competition and allow promising athletes that suffer from
performance anxiety, not only to overcome it, but to
possess a significant advantage over other athletes without
EEG biofeedback training.
Dan Landers, an exercise-and-sports scientist at
Arizona State University in Tempe, has set out to measure
the thought processes right before performance. He has
collected EEG data of athletes in the moments before a
basketball free throw is tossed, an arrow let fly by an
archer, a trigger pulled by a marksman. By analyzing this
data, he has been able to determine the brain state most
conducive to successful athletic achievement, and by
training athletes to manipulate their EEG patterns, he can
teach them to improve their performances.
The difficulty, according to Landers, is that the EEG
only measures activity in rather large areas of the brain
and is unable to isolate particular areas. In order to
examine the basal ganglia, responsible for the fight or
flight response, or the cerebellum, home of our motor
skills, CAT scans or, ideally, MRI must be used. However,
these are time consuming and expensive tests.
USOC researchers Conrad and Westenburg are searching
for another phenomenon altogether, the brain patterns of an
elite athlete in motion. "The sprinter on the starting
block trains for and tries to summon a focus that ends with
the blast of the starter's gun. From that moment on the
state of mind of a runner is a blur of action. Standing in
the batter's box awaiting a pitch with steady thoughts, to
use another example, is altogether different from the half-
conscious act of swinging at a fastball. When the body
engages in action, millions of neurons are fired in the
brain, and right now we have no way of differentiating that
neuron activity from the neuron activity of thought." In
order to try to capture the brain patterns of an elite
athlete in motion unobtrusive wireless sensors would have
to be devised that could take in the vast brain information
of a person competing in an activity. To get useful
biofeedback, computer technology would have to be available
to filter out the neuronal activity caused by muscle
contraction, elucidating brain patterns during action. Of
course, the next generation of performance enhancing drugs
may already be imagined, instead of building muscle or
endurance, providing a mental state conducive to success
(Lawson, 2000).
The 'microbreak' is crucial to
mental performance.
Dr. Daniel Kuhn, a New York psychiatrist, has examined the
EEG patterns of athletes, in particular, during
visualization exercises. Dr. Kuhn has identified moments of
intense concentration separated by spikes of brain activity
signifying momentary distraction. According to Dr. Kuhn
these concentration lapses are necessary to perform at an
optimum level. He calls them "microbreaks," and emphasizes
the importance of learning to control them when you take
these inevitable pauses in concentration (Jones, 2000).
The US Armed Forces are also incorporating EEG
Biofeedback. Dr. Sterman examined the brainwaves of pilots
doing simulated landing tasks and found that the idling
rhythms were suppressed in the parts of the brain that were
being used at the time. Sterman concluded that in the
parietal lobes the processing of sensory inputs was
associated with decreases in the idling rhythms from 11-15
Hz., while more complex thinking decreased idling rhythms
from 8-12 Hz. The harder the task was, the more that these
rhythms were suppressed. The best six pilots were able to
be identified by measuring how well they suppressed the
idling rhythms in the parietal lobe.
Studies of pilots in the cockpit, as they actually
flew their planes, showed that there was a short burst of
idling rhythm between the individual tasks that they
performed in the cockpit. The better pilots needed a
shorter rest period before starting to focus again. This
rest period is referred to as a microbreak.
Evidence has shown that this kind of cycling between
concentration and the microbreak is a basic way in which
the brain functions. Studies have shown that when we read,
there is a brief idling rhythm in the visual cortex when we
come to the end of a line and move on to the next.
Dr. Sterman performed a study that showed that these
idling rhythms decrease right after a pilot is presented
with a target to respond to, and then increase again when
they finish processing their response to the stimulus. In
the back of the brain, this idling rhythm was an 8-12 Hz.
(alpha) burst that increased as they became more familiar
with the task. As he looked at sites that were further
forward in the brain, he saw that there was also an idling
rhythm at 5 to 7 Hz.
There are also good, common sense reasons to believe
that the brain is set up to cycle between concentrating and
taking a recharging microbreak. Even the best of us cannot
concentrate forever. We need our breaks. They are built
in to our work and school day. The concept that each of
us has an "attention span" that increases as we mature from
child to adult, and then decreases in old age is a clear
reflection of this well accepted concept. It is
hypothesized that people who fail to regularly take these
necessary microbreaks between tasks set themselves up for
stress-related diseases because they accumulate the tension
and anxiety from the continuous effort in their minds,
brains, and bodies.
The prefrontal cortex is also capable of alternating
between concentration and idling. When things are familiar
to us, it can idle, and let the other parts of the brain
carry out their habitual ways of processing inputs, turning
on and off in well established sequences. When they are
unfamiliar, the prefrontal cortex and the Executive
Attention Network get turned on. They have the role of
bringing these new experiences into conscious awareness and
figuring out how to process them by activating other
centers of the brain. Dr. Sterman's research indicated
that the brainwaves of the frontal lobe, including the
sites near the Executive Attention Network, also shows
cycles when the individual is continually involved in
detecting a series of targets. Right after a target is
presented, the idling rhythm is suppressed, only to return
in about half a second. After an event, the frontal cortex
finishes its processing and goes into idle before the back
of the brain does. The frontal lobe idling rhythm is
primarily in the mid-theta range, between 5 to 7 Hz.
Japanese researchers have detected this increased theta
after doing other kinds of tasks, and called it the
"frontal midline theta rhythm".
The relationship between concentration and the
decrease in 5-7 Hz. rhythms at the midline site close to
the hairline was the clearest indicator of concentration
observed in Dr. Sterman's clinical experience. A graphical
display permitted him to look at the voltage output at each
frequency from 1 to 40 Hz., and to examine more clearly the
higher frequencies, which are usually low in output. It was
observed that as subjects concentrated, the voltage output
decreased across the board, at all frequencies. This
difference is shown in Figure 2. The left side is
concentration, while the right side is recharging.
Figure 2
Dr. Sterman noticed this at virtually all the brainwave
recording sites he tried. Technically, this is called
"event related desynchronization". In the frontal lobe,
this suppression is followed by the return of the theta (5-
7 Hz.) idling rhythm in about half a second, particularly
after subjects see a target, rather than an unimportant
control stimulus.
It was observed that when subjects learned to suppress
the idling rhythms, their attention problems clear up.
Several large studies have shown that the suppression of
theta and or alpha (depending on age and recording site) is
largely responsible for the success of other brainwave
training protocols in treating people with attention
deficit disorder, one of the first applications of EEG
biofeedback. Most all of the brainwave training protocols
for treating attention deficit disorder have rewarded
students for decreasing theta and/or alpha at central or
frontal sites. These decreases were much more consistently
related to successful treatment than the changes in higher
frequencies that were also evaluated. It is hypothesized
by Dr. Sterman that using a protocol that teaches the
subject to enhance beta may actually slow down training.
Lawson, Guy 2000 The Winner Within. New York Times
Magazine. June 11
Jones, Marion 2000 Fox News September 22
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