The human has extended its ability using machines. Machines have made progress to be the partner that participates in human mental process and complement weak aspects. The study of human-machine interaction at this stage is desired as one of major topics of our society. There still remain competitions in the world. It is desirable to investigate further the basic theory for acquisition of knowledge through action and result, which is the original interest of our society, with the progress of machine as the background. The technology will progress from portable equipment and then to the symbiosis with the human, but the collaboration with a little distance will be desirable, considering the different nature of human and machine. There should be the effort from the machine side to approach the human emotion-driven aspects. Several models are discussed. The machine provides the human with new worlds. There are many urgent topics of study, such as the human-machine societal relation, as well as the effects of the virtual world and machine environment on human, especially on the next generation.

View full abstract

Biofeedback trainings for the Alzheimer Dementia (AD) and Parkinsonian Disease(PD) by peripheral somatic stimulations have been executed with good effects. As for the PD rehabilitation by visual and sound feedbacks, the tremor amplitude is decreased and the main frequency is enhanced from 4Hz to 8H. The light feedback and foot-sole patting in acute points of dementia patients show the improvement of HDS-R/MMSE scores and POMS. From the results of the two biofeedbacks it seemed that the conscious recognition of patients are not needed for the establishment of biofeedback. A new biofeedback model based on the conception of "somatic memory" is proposed in order to explain the inner biofeedback loop without sensory recognition by cerebral cortex. In the model the sensory input from the peripherals is conducted to the hypothalamus through juxtallocortex, which is lead to the autonomic nerve system and is "memorized". It may become possible to expand the traditional biofeedback principles and to include oriental integrated medicine into new biofeedback systems.

View full abstract

Integrative medicine is defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person (mind, body, spirit). It emphasizes an individualized therapeutic relationship and makes use of all appropriate therapies, both conventional and alternative. Health care professionals and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners work as a team, integrating multiple therapies to provide the best possible care. Recently, biofeedback (BF) is also classified into CAM as mind-body intervention. It is important for clinical BF therapist to have knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. Consideration of BF in the US is very useful to establish clinical application of BF in Japan. Certification of biofeedback professionals in the US is managed by the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America (BCIA). BCIA is an autonomous nonprofit corporation. It has three certification programs, such as General Biofeedback, EEG Biofeedback, and Pelvic Muscle Dysfunction Biofeedback. Health care professionals who achieve BCIA Certification demonstrate commitment to professionalism by completing basic degree and educational requirements. When treating a medical or psychological disorder, BF practitioners are required to hold a current license of an appropriate health care professional. Thus, evolving BF application in medical setting in Japan, it is necessary to establish a profession as clinical BF therapist.

View full abstract

Many studies showed that mental imagery can induce some kind of physiological response. The physiological responses vary according to the content of imagery. In biofeedback training, subjects often use mental imagery as a cognitive strategy. According to physiological responses which a subject wants to regulate, the subject intuitively decides an imagery which may induce the target responses. The development of training depends on it that the subject will adopt an effective imagery. If a list of imagery including various contents is constructed and the trainer chooses the best imagery for the desired responses and provides it to the trainee, the effects of training will be achieved in a short period of time. The management of imagery used in biofeedback training will enhance the merit of biofeedback.

View full abstract

Multi-feedback is a clinical method using more than one index which reflects a clinical condition of patient. It has an advantage that a patient can select indices which he or she thinks is more controllable. Until now, we have reported the effect of multi-feedback as clinical data but not as fundamental experiment data. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of multi-feedback with applying three indices of frontalis muscle EMG, trapezius muscle EMG, and fingertip temperature for healthy university students. Thirty participants were randomly allocated to two groups: one given multi-feedback (BF group) and the other with no intervention (CO group). The session was administered once and consisted of 6 successive trials: a PreFeedback trial (PRE-FB), 4 Feedback trials (FB1 to FB4), and a POST-Feedback trial (POST FB). Multifeedback effect was examined with two-way ANOVA in each indices. As a result, significant main effect for trials showed that participants tended to decrease in frontalis muscle EMG, although there were no other significant effects. It was proven that frontalis muscle EMG is an index that has margin to learn acquisition of physiological responses toward desired direction. However, when multi-feedback is applied to healthy university students, a method enforcing to solve "law of initial value" in a trapezius must be taken in consideration. Moreover, in all indexes, it is possible that the effect of multi-feedback was not controlled completely in this study; therefore, further research will be necessary. Although Results showed not significant effect, BF group indicated greater responses in values of both EMGs and fingertip temperature than those of CO group. Effectiveness of Multi-feedback was confirmed.

View full abstract

To achieve the better performance, cognition of results is important during competition. It is assumed that there will be different information processing, depending on various situation of competition. Eventrelated potentials (ERPs) are useful to examine such cognitive activity. The amplitude of P300 can indicate the distribution of attentional resource, and latency is equivalent to evaluation time for stimulus. N400 reflect the semantic processing. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether processing of results in competition would differentiate between winning and losing, or between two following competitive situation: 1) to compete with visible another, 2) to compete with invisible anyone. The subjects were assigned randomly into visible or invisible group. EEG was recorded during they were engaged in reaction time task in the control and competitive conditions, respectively. P300 component was observed in both groups because the result of competition for RT was presented immediately after the response for S2. P300 amplitudes of winning trials in competitive condition were enhanced and latencies of losing trials had small delays in both groups. These may reflect their attention increased by motivation for win and feedback for next trial when they were losing. In visible group, N400 amplitudes of winning trials were larger than those of losing trials, while N400 of both trials had similar configurations in invisible group. The former may reflect that processing of results would be selected depending on winning or losing because much information of their competitors were available, and the later might indicate that the information of results would be processed repeatedly independently of winning or losing because of little information of their competitors. These findings suggest that an effort would be made to win in competitive situation, and that processing of results might alter to suit the competitive situation.

View full abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is neurodegenerative disease which often afflicts the elderly. Among the symptoms are motor impairments (tremor, muscle rigidity, posture disorders, and akinesia). Especially, the tremor poses a serious problem in daily life, leading to considerable anxiety. The primary therapy for PD is medication. But it causes direct and indirect side effects including a decrease in medicinal effect. In this study we focused on biofeedback (BF) as a method of controlling the tremor in PD without using medicine. As a BF index, root mean square (RMS) was calculated using a three-axial acceleration sensor of the piezoelectric type fixed on the thumb base of the subjects. And the sound pressure level converted into the pure tone of 1kHz corresponding to the RMS was used as BF information. Subjects were PD patients who did not have auditory abnormalities, and were randomly assigned to a BF group (10 patients, 74.9±5.1 of age, Yahr's Grade I〜IV) and control group (7 patients, 67.5±10.5 of age, Yahr's Grade I〜III). Experimental procedure was as follows: 1. RMS was measured a minute before BF training. 2. Subjects experienced a combination of training and rest period 3 times. 3. RMS was measured a minute after BF training. In the experiment, subjects were instructed to sit in a chair and put their hands on a desk in front of them. In RMS after training, we found a significant difference between the BF and control groups. The RMS value of the BF group was significantly decreased compared with the control group (t=2.43, p<.05). For this reason, it was concluded that subjects could learn to inhibit their tremor by changing the sound pressure level. Therefore, the training method in this study was shown to be effective in the inhibition of PD tremor.

View full abstract

The pathological tremor like the essential tremor (ET) disease and the Parkinson's disease (PD) lowers the patient's quality of the life. We studied on using a biofeedback (BF) for one of the non- drug treatments in the restraint of the tremor. In the previous report [9], we found the peak frequency from 6 to 10Hz (6-10Hz frequency) indicates condition of patient with PD. And the 16 healthy students were trained to increase the peak frequency. It was found that subjects who were able to increase the 6-10Hz frequency tended to also be able to depress the power of the tremor. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of the 6-10Hz frequency BF training on the pathological tremor in patients with PD and ET. We investigated the 26 patients including 12 patients with ET and 14 with PD. All patients were randomly divided into the BF group and the control group. We attached an accelerometer on their dominant hand. We measured tremor acceleration in the posture the subject was sitting on the chair. Tremor accelerations were measured to calculate the 6-10Hz frequency. In the BF group, patients received the 6-10Hz frequency by the color change of a color lamp each 2 seconds. But in the control group, the color lamp didn't change the color. Both groups were indicated the training goal of the frequency rise and trained 1 minute training three times. At the ET patients, the 6-10Hz frequency of the BF group had increased significantly compared with the control group and a training goal was achieved. Moreover, the ET patients had a tendency to decrease the tremor amplitude after the BF training. This result suggests that the ET patients can control their tremor using the tremor frequency BF system.

View full abstract

The effects of TaiJiQuan breathing on Electroencephalogram(EEG), state anxiety and heart rate were investigated. Subjects were 57±4.4 years old and had 4.6±2.3 years experience of TaiJiQuan exercise on average. The level of state anxiety, heart rate, blood pressure and EEG were measured in sedative condition, just after TaiJiQuan breathing, and 30 minutes after the breathing respectively. The results were summarized as follows. I) The level of state anxiety just after the breathing was significantly lower than in the sedative condition. II) The heart rate just after the TaiJiQuan breathing was significantly lower than in the sedative condition. The frequency of heart rate CVRR and HF/LF>1 was significantly increased just after the breathing. III) The blood pressure in systolic and diastolic period was mostly constant during the experiments. IV) The EEG during sedative condition, just after the breathing and 30miniutes after the breathing did not show any significant differences. However, the α1% component was more frequently than β2% component and α2% component was more frequently than θ% component and β2% component significantly. That TaiJiQuan breathing had an effect of decreasing state anxiety and relieving psychological stress. Moreover, the subjects with continuous exercise of TaiJiQuan breathing were presumed to have a good habit of daily breathing and α1 and α2component are more dominant in their EEG. Therefore TaiJiQuan breathing without any physical movements had good enough effects on our mental health improvement and that this breathing was expected to be applied to a patient with a restriction in their physical movement.

View full abstract

A hyperhidrosis patient is studied by measuring and analyzing her sweating using photonic hidrometer, which shows that the disease is classified as a type of disorder in the autonomic nervous system. A new combination method of palm thermal biofeedback (BF) and oriental medicine is tried for her hidrosis treatment with good effects. Although the BF instruction to the patient is to make more than 2-degree temperature difference between the palms one after another, the actual temperature changes steadily becomes smaller during the whole BF training. It is observed that the temperature rises accordingly on the days with occasionally excess sweating.

View full abstract