ABSTRACT
While standard biofeedback training rewards the production or inhibition (or “control”) of certain physiological states, state discrimination training rewards the observation and reporting (or “awareness”) of these states. It is commonly argued that increasing awareness of subtle phenomenological correlates of physiological states is central to the mechanism of action of biofeedback, but the interaction between awareness and control of physiological function is vastly unexplored. Although an EEG alpha state discrimination experiment (Kamiya, 1962) was the first empirical demonstration of operant conditioning of the EEG, relatively few studies have employed this paradigm in the past 50 years. Unlike most discriminative stimulus paradigms, there is a qualitative difference between the physical dimensions of brain activity and our phenomenal experience of them. EEG state discrimination training, by repeatedly training observation of the difference between high and low magnitudes of a given brain state, may provide a novel empirical window for the systematic study of the phenomenal correlates of brainwave states and our efforts to control them. This chapter discusses the similarities and differences between operant discrimination and standard operant conditioning; the importance of observation and awareness in physiological self-regulation; the psychophysics of EEG state discrimination; EEG state discrimination as a sensorimotor process; potential clinical applications; and the possibilities of future research in this paradigm.
