Biofeedback

Biofeedback for Focus and Mental Performance

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The research is encouraging on paper and weak underneath. A 2025 meta-analysis of 41 trials in athletes found significant pooled benefits for mental health, sports performance and thinking skills, but rated the certainty of that evidence low to very low. A 2024 meta-analysis of brainwave training for attention in healthy adults found a small overall effect, but no significant effect in the trials that compared it with a sham version.

What is the idea behind it?

To use the same feedback loop as clinical biofeedback, but aimed at performing well rather than treating a condition. Athletes and other performers train a signal, such as heart rhythm, muscle tension or brain activity, with the goal of staying composed or focused under pressure.

What does the research on athletes show?

The 2025 Bayesian meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology by Zhang and colleagues pooled 41 randomized trials of biofeedback and neurofeedback in athletes. It reports:

  • Statistically significant pooled effects for mental health, athletic performance and cognitive performance.
  • Low certainty for the mental health finding, and very low certainty for athletic and cognitive performance, under the GRADE system.
  • A call for more rigorous trials, given the differences between studies and their sample sizes.

The GRADE grades, as the authors describe them, run from highly certain to highly uncertain, and very low sits at the uncertain end. The results justify more research, not confident promises.

Does brainwave training improve attention?

Not convincingly, in healthy adults. A 2024 meta-analysis in Imaging Neuroscience by Kimura and colleagues pooled 15 randomized trials with 569 participants. Neurofeedback produced a small overall improvement in attention, but in the eight trials that compared it with sham neurofeedback, there was no significant pooled effect. The authors call for more sham-controlled trials.

That comparison matters. A sham session reproduces the screen, the sensors and the trainer’s attention without the real feedback, so an effect that does not beat it cannot be credited to the training itself.

How should you weigh a performance claim?

By the control group. A study that compares biofeedback with doing nothing tells you less than one that compares it with a sham version or with another active method. Ask what the comparison was, what was measured, and in whom. A result in trained athletes may not apply to an office worker, and a result on a lab task may not carry over to a match or an exam.

If you want to try it

Set a concrete target you can measure yourself, such as a practice score, a time or the number of minutes you can work without switching tasks. Record it for two weeks before you start and again during training. If the number does not move, you have your answer at a lower cost than a long course.

This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.

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