Talk:Biofeedback
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[edit] External links
I think the external links need to be looked at (and possibly watched) closely. As it stands, the first, second, third, sixth and eighth external links all essentially link to the same site, the seventh link is dead, and all of them link to sites that are trying to sell something. A certain I.P. address (132.189.76.10) has, several times, edited the external links to add in his website and remove others. Once, he even edited a link to change the address from the original, to his, but left the description the same, so that someone revisiting the page might not notice that the link had changed. Of course, people editing and watching the edit history should have noticed.
[edit] please update
Very interesting subject, but that page would need a bir of work :
From the article : " ... as temperature and blood pressure are strongly correlated ..." : seems to be wrong blood pressure change a lot, simple to double or more, when temperature got very small variations, and anything outside is often lethal (already tried a 50 degC blood temperature :-) only a few % above 37 average if we measure it from absolute zero, which should be done, because 0 degC, melting water is an arbitrary reference!)
[edit] cure Epilepsy with bio/neuro-feedback
The possibility to cure epilepsy with bio/neuro-feedback is extremely interesting, because it looks like many successes have been achieved in this direction and it looks also very promising because of the next points : (1) what best that adjacent neurons to control disfunctionning one! They are nearby, work on the same scale etc. (2) looks like many people don't have any interest of these techniques to be applied efficiently, especially the chemical industry, because they earn much more on life medication than on cures, especially if these cures are not within their field! (3) something terrible with some industries : the sicker their customers are the wealthier they become! The perfect starting point for social catastrophy!
[edit] needs thorough rework ...
this looks like an unsubstanstiated load, maybe it should be deleted?
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- Biofeedback is real. Just the page needs thorough rework by someone knowledgeable. Pavel Vozenilek 17:49, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Check out the external What is Biofeedback Link, it's very well written, and unbiased.
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- None of the links at the page right now are what I would consider unbiased. One is a FAQ from people who sell products related to biofeedback, the other one is a yahoogroup. I would like to see an unbiased link here, though, to give some kind of idea of what to do with this page. I would like to see a separation of the description of what it is and what you can use it for, for instance.
[edit] 24.164.109.30 edits/deletion
I'm wondering why 24.164.109.30's recent edit [1] deleted so much stuff? He describes this as "cleaned up and extensively revised", and indeed he has added a lot of new text that seems pretty good, but large chunks of the old article that contained useful information are completely gone. Perhaps that stuff just needs to be sourced properly? ObsidianOrder 08:08, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
- What is the point of editing a piece if the result is criticised because it is different ? Or written by someone who >might< not be unbiased ?
- What does 'sourced properly' mean, please ?
- I could write a piece which retained the good material and cut the erroneous material and added useful references, e.g. to the web site of the professional body for the field, http://www.aapb.org.
- I have been writing about Biofeedback for more than 30 years but am new to Wikipedia and unsure what to do. --Oct 13 Laurence3
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- Welcome, Laurence3. The 3 Wikipedia editorial policies are neutral point of view, cite your sources, and no original research. Ideally, any sentence that might be questioned by readers or other editors will have an in-line citation, such as a footnote or a citation in the form of: (Smith, 2002). Also, you can sign your user name at the end of your post by typing four "~"s --Nectar T 22:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV tag
I put in NPOV tag since the old content (pretty lousy but at least it tried to describe the thing) got replaced by argument of opponents of the technology (here, by an anon attempting the same this months ago). While this is perfectly valid information (the fact that biofeedback is controversial is quite acknowledged) people coming here may be also interested in details of what it is, not just being pushed it is pseudoscience. Pavel Vozenilek 04:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
- See also "24.164.109.30 edits/deletion" above (the same author). Pavel Vozenilek 04:21, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
- Hi Pavel. I rewrote it and took off the NPOV tag: it's still kind of weak, though -- I wish we could get some editors working on it who are more knowledgeable about biofeedback. As far as the previous criticism section went, I took it out because most of it was insubstantiated, misleading, or irrelevant. The old article said that "the original biofeedback studies were never replicated" -- I'm not certain which studies they mean, but there has been a lot of research into biofeedback since the 1960s and it has been proven to be a decent treatment modality for some illnesses. If the person who wrote that wants to check, they can look biofeedback up in an academic database. If, as the editor wrote, "Miller himself wrote an article calling into question the results of those previous articles", it would be good to see a link. DiCara's divorce and suicide are irrelevant to an encyclopedia article about biofeedback.
The old article said "Although the practitioners of biofeedback have claimed that their positive results are a function of the specific techniques that they employ, it is not clear that biofeedback leads to any stonger results than those that can be acheived by more general techniques such as relaxation training and meditation or self-hypnosis." This is false. In some fields where it has been studied, for instance incontinence therapy and treatment of ADHD, neither relaxation training nor hypnosis nor meditation could reasonably be expected to have similar results.
"There have been connections between the practice of biofeedback and practioners of neurolinguistic feedback/programming training as well as those who provide feedback for cortical EEG averaging and other techniques. None of these procedures have been shown to be effective in randomized clinical trials." I'm sure some people are interested in both biofeedback and NLP but that doesn't make the shared interest encyclopedic. I don't see a strong connection between the two -- NLP is some kind of psychological technique used, I believe, primarily by businessmen to attempt to convince people of things and attain social success, while biofeedback is the use of technology to provide a person with information about their bodily processes in order to improve physical well-being :P
The main criticism of biofeedback that I can find on reasonable, medical webpages is that it has not been studied enough.Katsam 07:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Clinician reports of beneficial side effects?
A recent change under the new section heading "Side effects of biofeedback" said various benefits were "reported by ... clinicians". The source it cites does not specifically name any physicians who reported those benefits, so for now I reworded it to "attested by supporters of biofeedback". That may still not be the right wording, but it's better. The Rod 18:38, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Re Criticisms
I moved the following post from 144.137.200.212 from the article page to here here because it discusses the article itself, lacks an encyclopedic tone, and comes across as original research:
- Re the "CRITICISMS" section. I'm Victor Barnes PhD, an Australian psychologist (http://www.PsychologyNatural.com) and have been making use of biofeedback since 1976. Biofeedback is not something done INSTEAD of teaching relaxation and self-hypnosis, it is indeed a tool for doing just that - teaching relaxation and self hypnosis! It's very useful too for convincing people of the realness of the link between mind/emotion and body. I "hookup" a pair of the client's fingers to a GSR (galvanic skin response) machine and tell the clients to close eyes and relax. When the sound coming from the GSR machine's speaker settles down to a more or less stable condition I then warn clients that I'm going to pinch the back of their hand and that it is going to hurt them. But I don't do it. Within about a second of the warning the speaker starts to scream at a higher pitch as the machine responds to the client's slightly rising anxiety even though I haven't touched their hand. As a general note: I find the simple GSR machine, which is cheap and easy to use, the most useful and most of what can be achieved in therapeutic psychology with other modalities (EEG, EMG etc.) can be achieved with much less fuss using the GSR. Most research seems to be with EEG and EMG which involve expensive machines and much messing around getting the electrodes attached to the client "just right". I believe the EMG (muscle)feedback has great potential for physiotherapy but the physiotherapists don't seem to have "picked up" on it.
- AN EXAMPLE OF EMG USE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: A teenage boy with a severe facial tick (involuntary twitch of the face) was brought to me by his father for treatment. It didn't take me long to ascertain there was a strange relationship between the son and his father who had a dogmatic and aggressive demeanour. The boy was intimidated by him evidenced by the fact that the tick occurred less often when the father wasn't present. I attached EMG electrodes to the boy's jaw and facial muscles. The idea was that slight nerve impulses tending to cause a muscle spasm would be detected by the machine before they got strong enough to cause the spasm. The boy would be alerted to the rising tension by the sound of the machine and would learn to inhibit the impulse by consciously relaxing using the mental devices I taught him. It worked. After 3 1-hour sessions the lad could go an hour without a facial twitch and without the benefit of the machine's feedback. However, outside the clinic situation, being exposed to his father, he relapsed. #
Note: the above paragraphs have some information that should be incorporated into the article, as they reveal an apparently common use for Biofeedback. The Rod 00:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Massive changes by User:63.119.156.133 - plan revert it
User:63.119.156.133 had changed the article significantly on May 5th: [2]. The visual style is really better now but lot of information has been removed (e.g. the positive effects, links) and the introductory section suggests the technique is something akin Scientology.
I have a feeling the change came from a warrior, with history of unexplained deleting [3] and with no prior involvement in the topic.
I ask someone take a look and improve the previous version, otherwise I'll mechanically revert the content back (preserving subsequent change). A version written by User:Katsam on Dec 27 [4] could be taken as balanced and qualified, IMHO.
TIA Pavel Vozenilek 18:03, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
- No, that is far too early a version. A lot of things have changed since then. In particular I removed a number of the links are they were either not valid, or just plain bad in my opinion. Do feel free to undo the changes by 63.119.156.113 however. Mrjeff 20:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
