How much can biofeedback of the future help us to think, feel, imagine, and remember? Going beyond the clinical applications that are now the preoccupation of the field, we can ask about the potential reach of biofeedback (especially of EEG, HEG and fMRI), in basic research on cognitive functions, emotions, creativity, and help even in the philosophy of mind. Such research on the brain-mind interface is not only among the most challenging theoretically in all of science, but its results should help provide important practical applications, especially in education. Several potential research directions will be discussed.

How long you will live depends upon many factors, of which health, diet, economic conditions, medical practice and its availability, personal support of family and friends are perhaps the chief ones that come to mind first. Many of these are affected by socio-political forces that we can influence only collectively and require sustained organized effort that may require years or decades-- if they can be influenced at all. We do need to increase public support for all life-giving economic and social policies, including publicly supported health systems and longevity research.
Meanwhile there are longevity factors that as individuals we can begin doing something about immediately. Certainly high on our list is informing ourselves of the current evidence concerning optimum diets, exercise routines, life styles and anything else conducive to increased longevity. Learning how to get the most reliable information on such matters is at present difficult because of the bewildering huge array of claims, often conflicting, by different vested interests, including medical and pharmaceutical associations, the vendors of vitamin, mineral and food supplements and the psychological health industry promoting wellness. There is seemingly no alternative to consider these as thoroughly as we can individually and by joining others to create a knowledge bank for increased longevity. The internet will be very helpful here..
The next step is crucial: Set up and follow a routine of health promoting practices based on what you have learned, keeping a diary of your progress. I want to focus on one life-style longevity factor, your interpersonal relationships, that I believe deserve more attention than it normally gets. As a social species, our zest for life is highly dependent on the bonds we have with family, friends, co-workers. How to enhance the life-giving qualities of this factor is highly dependent on your own personal qualities, and you will need to use your own resources, including reading the many materials currently available, and finding the proper person or group with which to pursue this end. Focused effort on your part toward establishing or enhancing positive feelings and bonds with others will be rewarded, no matter where you start.
However, in addition to whatever else you may do to enhance the quality of your relationship to others, in keeping with the nature of this conference I want to discuss a possibility involving the use of biofeedback toward this end, for yourself and for others, including your clients. I have in mind training persons in interaction patterns and corresponding affective relationships between two persons who jointly control the feedback with their collective physiological activity. There are many variants of joint biofeedback possible. Lester Fehmi and others have described some of them. You may want to try one or more things with the equipment you have. I will describe an effort along these lines that I believe has considerable promise. A group to which I belong is developing a system of conjoint biofeedback that will directly influence the kind of personal verbal communication and consequent feelings between pairs of persons. I believe this will be a promising new direction for our field.

Plenary #77): Next Challenge for Biofeedback: The Basic Science of Consciousness

I have long felt that biofeedback provides a crucial methodology for the scientific study of consciousness, a field that includes the relationship of body and brain functions to the entire range of private experiences, from everyday thoughts, sensations, images and emotions to the depths of extreme depression or the highs of ecstasy and spiritual awakenings. .

Awareness at some level of the external or internal world seems to be an essential aspect of consciousness. I started in 1958 with the study of the awareness of the internal world of body and brain activity. I showed that persons could be trained to become aware of the presence or absence of their own ongoing EEG alpha activity. While I observed the fluctuations between the two states of activity I asked them to guess which state prevailed at the time I gave them an occasional ding of a bell, and I informed them over repeated trials whether their guesses were correct or incorrect. After learning this task convincingly, they tended to agree in their reports of the contrast in subjective quality between the two states. They also showed that upon command they could control the alternation between the two states. A study later that same year showed that this control could also be achieved by providing an audio feedback signal which tracked the EEG alpha fluctuations.

That was 47 years ago. The field has since nearly exclusively settled on its clinical applications, but I believe the biggest challenge still remains in the basic science of brain-consciousness relationships made possible by the general methodology of biofeedback. Because of advances in data recording and analysis methods, with new means of monitoring brain activity and the capabilities of computerized feedback, the challenge is more exciting than ever. My excitement is based on the fact that the trained observation of a person of his or her own biological activity in relation to the personal experience of it amounts to the beginning of a new personal science. An implication of this notion seems important.

Here note that the wise ones both East and West have been teaching their students about the nature of their internal worlds without the aid of physiological indicators of their experiences. The fact that their knowledge has been transmitted over centuries, and can be seen cross culturally to have highly similar elements, attests to the universality of basic human experiences. That is, what they have been teaching has an objective basis, although the work often struggles because of insufficiently convergent evidence and because of demands for conformity to dogmas enforced by social institutions. But now with the help of technology, both social and physiological, the knowledge base can be both expanded and its teaching can be accelerated. I can think of no better assurance that biofeedback and allied fields are the central tools for the science of consciousness than the enthusiasm of the Dalai Lama, who encourages Western scientists looking at the physiology of Tibetan Buddhist meditation. He has been introduced to some biofeedback I think that our field, specifically among all the western technologies, can provide a powerful assist toward realizing his goals of seeking the reduction of conflicts within persons and societies.
The emphasis on optimal functioning at this meeting is a step in the right direction to the extent that biofeedback can help all persons, not just those with disorders, find what is optimal for their life circumstances. This can start as a first-person observational science (relating body and brain activities in a social setting to ones own personal experiences in goal seeking, prioritizing values, learning effects of others behavior on oneself, and the effect of ones behavior on others, etc.), and can thus help to define and attain what is optimal for each person.

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Joe Kamiya	Joe Kamiya Dr. Kamiya is generally acknowledged as the father of the field of EEG Biofeedback / Neurofeedback. He first worked with brain self regulation at the University of Chicago, 47 years ago. He spent much of his career at UC San Francisco Langley Porter Institute.