The Historical Background
During the sixties, Joe Kamiya explored his earlier finding that EEG activity could be altered deliberately by means of feedback of EEG information to the subject. Alpha wave activity was trained while the subject's eyes were closed. In this manner, a more relaxed state could be facilitated and different experiential states explored.

At roughly the same time, M. Barry Sterman of the UCLA School of Medicine was doing sleep studies on cats, and finding that a certain rhythmic activity, at 14 Hz, was present in both the sleeping and waking state. He was successful in training that activity as well, with manifest consequences for sleep in these cats. Fortuitously, NASA approached Sterman about a problem they were having with their rocket fuel: it appeared to be inducing seizures in their personnel out on the test range. Would he be willing to test the rocket fuel? He was. The rocket fuel did indeed induce seizures in cats, but there was a wide variation is seizure threshold. As it turned out, those cats which had under gone the brain wave training had a significantly higher seizure threshold than the others. Apparently, brain wave training could change behavior!

This little experiment launched a lengthy period of research in which it was rigorously demonstrated that seizure incidence, intensity, and duration, could be reduced with EEG training in the same spectral band, about 12-15 Hz. Human brains did not usually show a 14-Hz rhythm (called sensorimotor rhythm, or SMR rhythm, for its appearance at sensorimotor cortex) in the waking state. However, some controlling mechanism appears to operate in that frequency range.

The alpha training became popular in the culture of the sixties and seventies, which of course rendered it unfit for serious study by most university researchers. In that climate, Sterman was careful to distinguish his own work with SMR training from the "popular" version of EEG biofeedback. The work was sound; it was replicated by a number of other groups; but the technique remained obscure. The training took a long time in most subjects; the training was provided by Ph.D.'s, so it was expensive; and Sterman depended in his clinical work on referrals from neurologists. Hence, the training was received mostly by very severe cases of seizure disorder. Hardly front-page stuff.

During the course of this work, it was observed that hyperactivity in epileptics also seemed to subside with the training. One of Sterman's associates, Joel Lubar, pursued the matter further with rigorous studies. Over the years it was established that the technique could be helpful not only with hyperactivity but also with attention deficit disorder in the absence of hyperactivity, as well as with learning disabilities.

Things grew from there: We are now finding in our own clinical work that the technique can be helpful with a broader range of conditions. Just as the ADHD work grew out of epilepsy studies, these insights and findings accrue incrementally. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD) can, for example, be looked upon as an underarousal condition. This may seem paradoxical; however, it is consistent with the fact that stimulant or anti-depressant medication helps the condition. One may ask: Can EEG training help other conditions which respond to anti-depressant medication, in particular pure depression? Clinical evidence suggests that this is indeed the case, although this finding has not been subjected to controlled study