For the past four years, a small team of Masters students led by Prof. Gordon Bloom, Director of the McGill Sport Psychology Research Laboratory, has been quietly conducting bio/neurofeedback training with dozens of elite athletes, including skiers, skaters and hockey players. The goal of the program, funded through Sport Canada and the Centre nationale multisport in Montreal: help Canada’s Olympians achieve peak performance at the Vancouver games next winter.

Neurofeedback training, designed to enable people to alter their brain activity, has been used widely in the treatment of conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. But relatively little rigorous work has been done on adapting the technique to help give top athletes a mental edge.

Bloom’s student-trainers conduct individual sessions in the McGill Seagram Sport Science Centre or at a satellite lab in Olympic Stadium.  The athlete, seated in front of a computer, has sensors placed on the scalp and ears to monitor brainwaves. The athletes can see their brain activity on the computer screen – and learn gradually, through exercises such as video-game simulations, to produce patterns closer to the desired form.

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