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Wired for Victory
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Neurofeedback techniques vary, but all the protocols depend on this: The brain tells its tales in the wavelengths of electrical currents-—alpha and SMR (relaxed openness and focus); beta (multitasking efficiency, but also anxiety and self-talk); and theta (wandering mind). The core tenet of neurofeedback is that, with training, the underlying processes that result in brain waves can be modified at the behest of their possessor, improving performance and function.
At the Mind Room, which is run with Opus Dei?like secrecy (my request to give it a test spin wasn't so much denied as smothered by layers of bureaucracy), soccer players like to choose a user interface in which they try to make an animated robot run. Afterward they compare speeds—in effect, the player with the most alpha and fewest beta and theta waves wins. But a curious thing about neurofeedback is that one does not improve by trying to improve—at least not directly. Type-A personalities be warned: One cannot simply power one's way to a quieter mind. In a book by Jim Robbins called A Symphony in the Brain, Sterman describes the ideal neurofeedback condition as "a standby state for the motor system. You might think of it as a VCR; it's a pause button." A typical neurofeedback treatment lasts for roughly 20 to 40 sessions of an hour each, and then—so the theory goes—the patient has permanently changed the makeup of his mind. He can now hit "pause" at will.
As I began looking into neurofeedback over the past year, it did seem to me that perhaps the mind really can be shaped into an incredibly cooperative and flexible instrument when its possessor is motivated. I read in Gazzetta dello Sport that AC Milan defender Dario Simic, who scored a clutch goal against Argentina in last summer's World Cup, said he owed it all to the Mind Room. Then later at the Washington, D.C.?area office of a practitioner named Deborah Stokes, I ran into a Morgan Stanley wealth manager who claimed that since he'd started neurofeedback his tennis game had soared. "It's as if the ball had slowed down," he told me. "It's just very clear that I expect to win." That convinced me. The money guy hadn't even gone in for sports training—he'd gone because of concentration problems at work.
The idea that I, too, could gain a competitive edge without steroids, supplements, or endless practice seemed appealing. I am an avid swimmer, although one beset by repeated injuries that have made it increasingly hard to enjoy the sport, let alone truly excel at it. On Italian TV, the head psychologist of the Mind Room had said that the difference between the stress felt by great athletes and ordinary ones was "quantity, not quality."
My first stop was with Ray Pavlov, a neurofeedback practitioner in Montreal. He and his wife, Nicolina, have trained many of Canada's practitioners. I had expected to be in a large sanitized environment, a Canadian version of the Mind Room. Instead, the Pavlovs work out of three tiny rooms above a bagel store. I had been told that Pavlov was the grandson of the famous physiologist, but he was evasive on the point.
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