Getting stress-related disorders under control: the untapped potential of neurofeedback

Abstract

Stress-related disorders are among the biggest global health challenges. Despite significant progress in understanding their neurocognitive basis, the promise of applying insights from fundamental research to prevention and treatment remains largely unfulfilled. We argue that neurofeedback – a method for training voluntary control over brain activity – has the potential to fill this translational gap. We provide a contemporary perspective on neurofeedback as endogenous neuromodulation that can target complex brain network dynamics, is transferable to real-world scenarios outside a laboratory or treatment facility, can be trained prospectively, and is individually adaptable. This makes neurofeedback a prime candidate for a personalized preventive neuroscience-based intervention strategy that focuses on the ecological momentary neuromodulation of stress-related brain networks in response to actual stressors in real life.