Biofeedback

Biofeedback is the common term for the learning process involved in the acquirement of psychophysiological self-regulation. The main goal of biofeedback training, regardless of the training modality, is to achieve voluntary control over involuntary physiological processes of the nervous system. Biofeedback is a complex research domain with many levels, complexities, and choices that need to be made. There is the level of the training and its design (e.g., type of training, number of sessions, trainer or no trainer and what type of support, type of biofeedback), the level of ecological validity (real-life field training or laboratory), the level of the feedback device (e.g., type of feedback signal, type of device), the level of the subjects (e.g., motivation, psychological and physiological traits and states, interaction with the device and/or trainer), the level of the targeted improvement (e.g., increased mental performance is a broad concept), and the level of the outcome, to name a few. This chapter provides an overview of the description of the relevant techniques, for which the former “Scientific Foundation” chapter (Chapter 2) offers the necessary theoretical physiological constructs. We review the scientific evidence base for biofeedback modalities. In the last section of this chapter, we focus on the meaning of biofeedback, the caveats, and potential implementations of the technique in a real-life performant context.