As some of you may know, I have resigned my membership in iSNR. Curiously, I
continued
to receive posts from the SNR Members forum even though I informed iSNR about
this
situation. Most recently there was a post concerning insurance reimbursement,
the field
as a whole, etc and I felt it was important for me to respond to it. I actually
have felt that
there were several such ones to reply to -- as well as some other threads to
post here
about recent events in the field -- but I've been so busy with programming
recently that I
just haven't had the time to compose those other posts.

Anyway, I posted the following to the SNR Members forum but it was removed from
the list
(as far as I can tell) and my name was finally removed. I think the message is
important so
I'm posting it here, as I posted it to SNR Members, with just a bit of <added
comments> to
clarify points in the original post to which this was a reply.

I'll follow up with the other posts -- about additional, interesting recent
events -- in a
couple of days.

*********************************************

I'm really lurking on this list <SNR Members forum> these days as I've resigned
my
membership in iSNR. But, since I still seem to be getting emails <from that
forum>, I
thought I'd take the opportunity to respond to one part of this.

I'm sure that it would be easy to dismiss what I say, esp since I've resigned my
membership, but the inevitability of my resignation goes hand-in-hand with a
number of
the points in this and other recent threads. I'll just focus on one for the
moment.

And, John <the writer of the original post on SNR Members forum>, I've known you
for a
long time and know that you are well intentioned, with a good heart. So there
really is
nothing at all personalized in my comments.


J:>Unlike some who want to make neurofeedback a separate field, I believe
EEG biofeedback is simply a biofeedback modality, albeit a highly
effective one and the one I prefer to focus on in my practice. Instead
of trying to fight the ignorance of the insurance industry or trying to
educate them I suggest we all embrace the entire field of biofeedback
and fly under their radar until acceptance happens as a result of our
good work.

The truth is that, quite simply, <neurofeedback> IS different from traditional
biofeedback.
And there really is no way around that.

Traditional biofeedback makes use of conscious mediation and strategies on the
part of
the trainee — and these consciously mediated participation skills are essential
to its
success. Neurofeedback does not NEED to do so and, IME, works best when such
"add
ons" are left off. Conscious processing is simply the slowest part of the
entire process
and, like "insight" in traditional talk therapy, the conscious elaborations only
emerge long
after the actual transformations have occurred.

The bigger problem here though IMO is the adamant refusal to recognize that
medical
"acceptance" is not going to be the nirvana that some believe. In fact, if it
occurs at all, it
probably will be the exact opposite. The field has been trying to gain such
acceptance for
40 years now. It hasn't worked up till now and that IMO has been a very, very
good thing.

Let's also be clear about another thing. To call something "feedback" there
needs to be a
real-time feedback loop involved: ie, there has to be some real-time monitoring
of some
system parameter that is being reintroduced into the system in a time-dependant
manner
so as to provide timely information to the system. If there is no such
provision in the
system being used then it simply isn't feedback being done — regardless of how
effective
it is. There are a number of techniques being used that are specifically NOT
using
feedback and yet they too are lumped into "EEG biofeedback" in order to obtain
reimbursement, etc.

IMO these are all problematic practices and, since they and other equally
problematic
stances are condoned by iSNR, I have found it necessary to resign.

It is really the only way that I can continue in good conscience to work at
extending the
cutting edge of the field of neurofeedback.

val