NeuroBLOG

*From the archives* Key Points: • Placebo effects are not “fake” outcomes; they reflect the brain and body’s real capacity to shift symptoms and motivation through learning, expectation, and meaning. • Placebo and deliberate emotion regulation share overlapping neural systems, especially those supporting appraisal, attention, and the construction of value and affect. • Clinically, combining expectancy-rich therapeutic contexts with concrete self-regulation skills may help people regulate emotions more reliably, especially when motivation or cognitive capacity is low.

*Emerging trends in neuroscience* Key Points: • Quantitative EEG (QEEG) consistently shows patterns of excess frontal–central theta and reduced beta activity in many individuals with ADHD, but very much like the individials with the diagnosis, these signatures are heterogeneous and not diagnostic on their own. • The classic theta/beta ratio (TBR) biomarker is best understood as relevant for a subset of hypoaroused or maturational-delay profiles, rather than as a universal EEG marker of ADHD. • Neurofeedback protocols built on these patterns helps, but the most rigorous trials suggest that standard ADHD protocols do not consistently outperform sham or active control conditions. (Why? Due to all of the inherent problems with the "placebo-controlled" paradigm in neurofeedback research.) This highlights the importance of protocol individualisation. Multimodal treatment is also a definite bonus.

*Emerging trends in neuroscience* Key points : • Many children’s chronic headaches are better understood as the body’s way of expressing emotional distress than as a purely neurological problem. • Medication often has limited impact on pediatric chronic headaches, while non-pharmacological approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy and biofeedback show strong promise for improving function. • An integrated, interdisciplinary model that combines psychoeducation, self-regulation training, and careful differential diagnosis can prevent over-medicalisation and help children build lifelong resilience.

*From the archives* Key Points : • Conscious access is proposed to occur when local brain activity crosses a tipping point and triggers a distributed “ignition” that makes information broadly available across the cortex. • The same sensory input can be processed unconsciously (brief, local, fading) or consciously (amplified, sustained, and reportable), depending on whether recurrent, long-range networks engage. • Changes in consciousness across anesthesia and sleep often preserve early sensory responses but disrupt late, global signatures such as widespread activation and the late P3-like response.

*From the archives* Key Points: • Sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) neurofeedback can raise seizure thresholds by stabilising thalamocortical and basal ganglia circuits involved in motor excitability and arousal. • Quantitative EEG (qEEG) mapping and carefully designed operant conditioning protocols are central to safe and effective neurofeedback for epilepsy. • For drug‑resistant epilepsy, SMR‑based neurofeedback offers a realistic, evidence‑supported alternative or complement to anticonvulsant medication, especially when delivered by well‑trained clinicians.

*Emerging trends in neuroscience* Key Points: • Three rigorous, sham-controlled studies tested infra-low-frequency neurofeedback (ILF-NFB) with classic frequency-band (FB) signals alone, ILF signals alone, or both combined. • Only the combined FB&ILF protocol produced robust, brain-wide connectivity changes and autonomic differences, suggesting additive or synergistic effects. • Connectivity shifts linked posterior midline and parieto-occipital regions with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, hinting at rapid network-level reconfiguration even after a single implicit training session.