An innovation from NASA's Langley Research Center (LRC) is a system of providing physiological self-regulation training for mental or physical optimizing purposes in sports or other complex skills, or for treating health problems, through the trainees'/users' psychophysiological signals.
The method provides for real-time modulation of task/environment interface that would allow a trainee to learn physiological self-regulation in order to modify the difficulty of the performance task and/or environment in which training is conducted.
Employing proven techniques in biofeedback and physiological self-regulation, in conjunction with the innovation described herein, would enable athletes to develop self-efficacious outcome responses that can be translated into the operational domain of athletic competition. The innovation presents the capability to extend current sports psychological practices of guided imagery, visualization and cognitive reinforcement learning by systematically providing demonstrable and knowledge feedback through the innovative use of closed-loop cybernetic feedback principles that provide immediate reinforcement of psychophysiological self-regulation.
Like the video game biofeedback technology that received widespread favorable publicity for LRC and was licensed to Cyberlearning Corp. (www.smartbraingames.com), this human performance enhancement technology is based on the LRC biocybernetic flight deck adaptive automation research of the 1990s. It differs from the video game technology in that, with the present invention, the feedback of an operator's physiological activity is presented in the form of movement of actual physical objects that the person is manually interacting with while performing a task, rather than in the form of a task simulation or game on a computer screen.
More info: http://technology.nasa.gov
