Observations placeholder

Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green

Recent evidence of interest in EMG feedback training is the establishment of a new Sensory Feedback Unit in the ICD medical service (a private rehabilitation center in New York City). The director is Joseph Brudny, M .D., who conducts clinical studies in sensory feedback therapy (his term for biofeedback therapy) at New York University Medical Center.

The unit treats incapacitated victims of stroke, cerebral palsy, spinal-cord injuries, and other CNS and neuromuscular disorders.

As noted, in normal motor activity there is internal sensory feedback from muscles to the brain as well as control instructions from the brain to the muscles. When such sensory feedback is disrupted by accident or disease, the brain motor centers, though intact, fail to function properly or may not function at all. If the disrupted sensory information can be substituted for, or augmented, by external feedback-visual or auditory EMG feedback-then patients, through practice, can learn self-regulation and often can establish a new internal sensory loop. When this is accomplished, artificial external feedback is no longer needed.

Brudny told us that he has worked with a large number of torticollis patients, though he has not reported all of the cases in the scientific literature. In one of his first reports (Brudny, 1974) he tells of the use of both auditory and visual feedback displays in training nine patients to control this striate-muscle problem.

After ten weeks of training, seven of the nine patients learned to control muscle spasms without external feedback. Psychological gains of self-assurance, overcoming depression, and resumption of social contacts were observed in these seven subjects.

In a later report, Brudny, Korein, et al. (1974) discuss the treatment of thirty-six patients suffering from spinal-cord injuries, hemiparesis, torticollis, and dystonia. Thirty-four of the patients responded with varying degrees of improvement.