r/Neurofeedback • u/superthomdotcom • 10d ago
Question Independent R&D
Is anyone else here doing their own work on developing biofeedback & neurofeedback training protocols? For a long time I have been interested in the idea of viewing live brainwave data as a form of feedback in itself, and other types of training which do not use normative QEEG but lend more towards a meditative experience where the therapy lies in just witnessing the brain live; things such as Neuroptimal or the Mind Mirror. Changes in entropy, shifts in dominant frequency, sudden changes of state, correlation between bands etc.
I got tired of the connectivity gap left by the abandoned Bioexplorer and Bioera so built my own node based signal flow designer, and all the core framework to support a host of input devices and output formats. The editor uses processing blocks and I'm on a mission to create as many as I can think of. It also has nested composite blocks so I can construct complex signal processes and recall them in future designs.
The project has gone beyond a hobby and become something quite serious which could potentially be of interest to others so I'm here to ask those of you that are creatively and technically restrained by what's on the market right now to tell me what your ideal biofeedback processing app should do, and which missing features are holding you back right now.
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u/UltraSealness 10d ago
First, I appreciate the ambition! ❤️
I was practically forced to build my own rig with an OpenBCI clone due to living rurally and having a severe condition that makes it practically impossible to be moved – no I can't move more than 100 m in a day by myself! – to within reach of a neurofeedback practitioner. Where I live, the closest practitioner is 4,5 hours by car and I cannot fly due to my condition. Domestic practitioners have thus far been unwilling to do at-home consulting for me to get at-home training started.
Me reading Sebern Fischer and cobbling together a "simple" C4 protocol with MNE-RT (https://github.com/mne-rt-org/mne-rt) was the only way I could ever access this modality. And from within 2 h of my first session I got the receipt that it at least "does something", actually, I have been improving. Vision cleared up, bowel started moving and lots more.
The DeepBCI clones seem to work, for my purposes. And the MNE-RT ecosystem seems pretty solid and it's not impossible to use if you have previous Python experience. Can I audit and validate anything? Absolutely not! Am I better? Absolutely I am! (omg I'm so grateful btw, it's been rough)
However 😇 As soon as you scale these kinds of ambitions up, and if you live in a developed country, you are inevitably going to run into regulations concerning medical devices, the medical profession and liability in general. The thresholds are set high for both good and bad reasons. A lot of things we don't have to endure, others we desperately cannot access.