EEG Biofeedback and Consciousness Interest Group Now Forming!

The EEG Biofeedback and Consciousness Interest Group is forming to discuss the creation of a comprehensive system to facilitate the development of consciousness, with EEG biofeedback being one of the primary consciousness exploratory methods.

Interested individuals can contact me directly.  For individuals attending the February EEG Biofeedback Meeting in Palm Springs, CA sponsored by Futurehealth, I will be offering a morning talk and afternoon workshop that will present these ideas in a comprehensive and concrete form.  Rob Kall has generously offered to provide a meeting room and time during lunch on Sunday, February 23 for The EEG Biofeedback and Consciousness Interest Group to have its first meeting.
It will be an opportunity for us to begin to meet one another, brainstorm, and coordinate our efforts.
 
To provide an agenda for our discussions, I have borrowed heavily from the structures inherent in the major spiritual traditions which have all utilized a variety of approaches to facilitate the development of consciousness.  

Meeting Agenda
Discussions Regarding:
1) Analytical knowledge, theory, and foundation concepts
a. philosophical foundation concepts
b. psychological foundation concepts
c. spiritual foundation concepts
d. scientific foundation concepts with an emphasis upon neuroscience and EEG research
2)The methods (experimental and experiential) to explore consciousness
a. the variety of meditation and relaxation methods
b. psychotherapy methods
c. EEG biofeedback methods
d. Body oriented methods and expressive methods
e. scientific and observational methods for consciousness research
3) The role of direct and un-biased experiencing and intuitive knowing
4) The development of a community for support in common efforts
5) The development of a comprehensive system, that combines these different approaches, into a unified system to facilitate the development of consciousness.

Background
Since Joe Kamiya, in the 1960's, first wondered whether people could discriminate the presence or absence of EEG alpha activity and whether feedback could facilitate that conscious process, the power of EEG biofeedback as a method to explore and to help facilitate the development of consciousness has been recognized by many people.

In the nearly thirty years since that first use of EEG biofeedback, great advances have been made in using EEG biofeedback in many very important clinical application areas and many able scientists and clinicians have helped the field grow rapidly.  But for a variety of reasons, the full potential of EEG biofeedback to explore and help facilitate the development of consciousness in areas such as exceptional ability, peak performance, and spiritual development have been slow to mature.  What may be necessary for EEG biofeedback to realize this potential is for it to be housed within a carefully crafted comprehensive system to facilitate the development of consciousness.   

There have been a number of historical precedents of such comprehensive systems to facilitate the development of consciousness.  All of the great spiritual traditions have as their primary aim the facilitation of the development of consciousness and all are comprehensive systems.  They emerged from within unique and different cultural contexts.  In order to provide a relevant system to facilitate the development of consciousness, each system drew heavily upon its culture's time and place, its particular local, its essential philosophy, implicit psychology, technology and sciences, medicine, and artistic forms. 
If history can provide some guidance, it might be possible to assume that if a Western comprehensive system to facilitate the further development of consciousness were to begin to emerge today it also would necessarily reflect our era's different philosophical systems, our various psychological approaches, our technology and sciences, and definitely our emphasis upon the scientific method, our conventional and alternative medical approaches, our expressions of popular culture, and our varieties of artistic forms.


It may be possible that some of the necessary elements needed to build a Western comprehensive system to facilitate the development of consciousness currently exist as they have not existed before.
Humanistic and Transpersonal psychology have recently emerged and have begun to provide a non-sectarian psychological and philosophical context for a comprehensive system to facilitate the development of consciousness (see Battista, Tart, and Wilber articles in bibliography).  Guidelines regarding methods to explore consciousness have been emerging (see Echenhofer, Pope, and Stoyva articles in bibliography) and EEG biofeedback technology has become very sophisticated along  with qEEG and topographic mapping technology.  With many more Westerners practicing in the traditional spiritual systems, and many of them psychologists, there  has been a great increase in our collective nowledge regarding the functional significance of many of the methods used within the spiritual systems which could provide guidance regarding the specific directions for  developing consciousness.

Finally, what may be most important, are individuals who are interested in such an enterprise.  To build a Western comprehensive system to  facilitate the development of consciousness it will probably be necessary to develop consensual   realities for discourse regarding the states of consciousness in question (see Tart article in bibliography).  The EEG Biofeedback Consciousness Interest Group is forming to see, if  indeed, the required elements for this endeavor to unfold currently exist. 

I include an initial bibliography whcih will soon be greatly expanded. 

Links

consciousness quotations
QEEG Central

     EEG Biofeedback and Consciousness Interest Group Bibliography

Battista, J.R. (1978). The Science of Consciousness. In K.S. Pope and J.L. Singer (Eds.) The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience. New York: Plenum Press. pp. 55-87. 

Coordinator: Frank Echenhofer, Ph.D. P.O. Box 192, Jenner, CA 95450 phone: (707) 865-1412

Davidson, J.M. (1980).  The Psychobiology of Sexual Experience.  In J.M. Davidson and R.J. Davidson (Eds.) The Psychobiology of Consciousness. New York: Plenum Press. pp. 271-332. 

Echenhofer, F.G., and Coombs, M.M. (1987).  A brief review of the research literature and controversies in EEG biofeedback and EEG meditation research.  Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 19, pp. 161-171. 

Echenhofer, F.G. (1992).  EEG biofeedback assisted Meditation. Proceedings of the the Pennsylvania Society of Behavioral Medicine and Biofeedback, King of Prussia, PA.    Pennsylvania Society of Behavioral Medicine and
Biofeedback Editor - Ilsa Loetzbeier, (610) 776-1034. no copyright 

Fischer, R. (1978).  Cartography of conscious states: Integration of East and West. In A.A. Sugerman and R. E. Tarter (Eds.) Expanding dimensions of consciousness, New York: Springer Publishing Company.  pp. 24-57. 

Fox, N.A. and Davidson, R.J. (1984). Hemispheric Substrates of Affect: A Developmental Model. In N.A. Fox and R.J. Davidson (Eds.) The Psychobiology of Affective Development, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. pp. 353-381. 

Pope, K. S. (1978). How Gender, Solitude, and Posture Influence the Stream of Consciousness. In K.S. Pope and J. L. Singer (Eds.) The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience.
New York: Plenum Press. pp. 259-299. 

Rosenfeld, J.P. (1995). Operant (Biofeedback) Control of Left-Right Frontal Alpha Power Differences: Potential Neurotherapy for Affective Disorders. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 20(3), 241-258.

Sterman, B. (1996). Physiological Origins and Functional Correlates of EEG Rhythmic Activities: Implications for Self-Regulation. Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, 21(1), 3-33.

Stoyva, J. (1971). The Public (Scientific) Study of Private Events. In T. Barber, L. DiCara, J. Kamiya, N. Miller, D. Shapiro, and J. Stoyva Biofeedback and Self-Control. Chicago: Aldine - Atherton. pp. 29-42.

Tart, C. (1974).  States of consciousness and state-specific sciences. In R.E.   Ornstein (Ed.) The Nature of Human Consciousness. New York: Viking Press.

pp. 41-60. (reprinted from Science, 176 June 16, 1972, 1203-1210. Copyright  1972 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science).

Wilber, K. (1973).  Eye yo eye. Revision: a Journal of Knowledge and Consciousness. 2 (1), pp. 3-25. Copyright 1979 Revision, Inc. P.O. Box 316, Cambridge, MA 02138, Printed by Heffernan Press, Worcester, MA.