Neurofeedback is often marketed today as a wellness hack, a Silicon Valley brain-optimisation tool, or an alternative therapy practiced outside mainstream medicine. But its origins lie in neuroscience labs—and surprisingly, very close to the heart of psychiatry.

Yet somewhere along the way, the field slipped through psychiatry’s fingers. What was born in our discipline grew up in someone else’s home.

This is the story of how that happened.

The Accidental Discovery: Cats, Calmness, and Brainwaves

In the late 1960s, psychologist Barry Sterman at UCLA was studying brain rhythms in cats. He trained cats to increase their sensorimotor rhythm (SMR)—a slow, stable brainwave pattern linked to stillness and alert attention.

The cats learned. Their EEG changed.
This was already extraordinary. But then fate intervened.

NASA asked Sterman to test the neurotoxin monomethylhydrazine because astronauts were at risk of exposure. Most cats developed violent seizures.

But the cats trained to increase SMR?
They resisted the seizures.

This was the moment neurofeedback was born—when a brainwave became a protective factor.

Neurofeedback Moves to Humans

Sterman and Joel Lubar quickly applied SMR training to humans:

• epilepsy
• ADHD
• impulsivity
• sleep disorders

The results were compelling. EEG patterns changed. Behaviour changed. Focus improved. Seizures reduced.

This was not meditation.
Not placebo.
Not imagination.

This was operant conditioning of brain physiology.

Psychiatry should have claimed it immediately.
But it didn’t.

Why Psychiatry Lost Neurofeedback (Temporarily)

1. The biological shift came too late.

Neurofeedback was rising just as psychiatry was becoming obsessed with psychopharmacology—dopamine, serotonin, receptors. EEG was seen as old-fashioned, and behavioural therapies were overshadowed by medication breakthroughs.

2. Equipment was expensive and clunky.

Early neurofeedback machines were large, unreliable, and required engineering expertise. Psychologists and neuroscientists, not psychiatrists, learned to use them.

3. There were no pharmaceutical incentives.

Neurofeedback was hard to monetise, slow to validate, and not backed by industry. Medications, meanwhile, drove research funding and academic prestige.

4. Psychiatry lacked training in electrophysiology.

By the 1980s, most psychiatrists were no longer taught EEG beyond its use in epilepsy. Meanwhile, psychologists embraced it enthusiastically.

Thus, neurofeedback drifted—as Hans Berger’s EEG once did—away from the field that first needed it.

A Quiet Revival: Psychiatry Returns to Brain-Based Therapies

Today, neurofeedback is experiencing a renaissance:

• AI-enhanced QEEG
• Normative databases
• Wearable EEG devices
• Non-invasive monitoring
• Precision neurofeedback tied to networks
• Integration with rTMS and tDCS
• Emerging closed-loop neurostimulation

Psychiatry is at last waking up to something it lost decades ago:
the power of seeing and shaping brain activity directly.

With ADHD, PTSD, depression, insomnia, and emotional dysregulation now understood as network disorders, neurofeedback fits perfectly into modern psychiatric practice.

Hans Berger wanted psychiatry to measure the mind’s electricity.
Barry Sterman showed we could train it.
Modern psychiatrists now have the tools to apply it.

The circle is closing.

About the Author

Dr. Srinivas Rajkumar T, MD (AIIMS), DNB, MBA (BITS Pilani)
Senior Consultant Psychiatrist & Neurofeedback Specialist
Mind & Memory Clinic, Apollo Clinic Velachery (Opp. Phoenix Mall)
✉ srinivasaiims@gmail.com 📞 +91-8595155808