Can neurofeedback improve Olympic and Paralympic performance?

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are the highest stage for sporting achievement, bringing together the world’s most accomplished athletes. Today’s competitors have access to elite coaching, carefully tailored nutrition and effective recovery programmes.

However, some are seeking a less conventional advantage: training their brains.

One brain-focused method said to support performance, and one becoming increasingly popular in elite sport, is electroencephalographic neurofeedback. The method uses small sensors placed on the scalp to measure and show brainwave activity as it happens.

Its purpose is to enable athletes to identify and generate brainwave patterns that improve concentration, encourage relaxation or create an individually tailored state that suits their particular skills. In effect, it provides the brain with a mirror.

By seeing their brain activity live, individuals can test the effects of bringing different thoughts or mental images to mind, immediately observing how their brain signals respond.

Over time, this allows them to distinguish between brain states and use psychological techniques to gain greater control over them.

Athletes in a range of disciplines – including golf, football and archery – have been trialling neurofeedback for many years.

Does neurofeedback really work?

At Bangor University’s Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, we have spent several years examining neurofeedback’s effects in different sports and performance tasks.

A 2015 study found that 12 amateur golfers increased their putting accuracy by 21 percent following three neurofeedback sessions lasting one hour each.

A comparable experiment in 2023 showed that six 30-minute neurofeedback training sessions enabled 14 elite biathletes – competitors in a winter sport combining cross-country skiing and rifle shooting – to regulate their brainwaves and improve their concentration during the final seconds before dry-firing their rifles.

There was, however, an important qualification. In both studies, the gains made by the golfers and biathletes resembled those achieved by control groups that simply practised their sports without neurofeedback.

Our 2021 research involving 40 adult volunteers produced more encouraging findings. After completing only 12 minutes of neurofeedback, participants were asked to cycle on an exercise bike until they could no longer continue.

Thirteen participants were instructed to create a brainwave pattern we believed would support endurance exercise. Another 13 were told to generate a pattern we did not expect to improve performance. The final 14 participants watched a recording of neurofeedback without attempting to control their brainwaves.

The outcome was notable: those instructed to produce the beneficial brainwave pattern cycled for 30 percent longer than the other participants.

To investigate this result further, we asked the 26 people in the first two groups to return to the laboratory. Before repeating the cycling test, they were given the opposite neurofeedback treatment to that used in the initial experiment. On the day they received the positive neurofeedback treatment, volunteers cycled for an average of 11 percent longer.

What the evidence means for elite sport

Even with these findings, the study must be repeated with a larger sample and better-trained cyclists. This would help establish whether the technique can also offer advantages at the more elite levels of sport.

Research groups internationally have drawn similarly mixed conclusions from neurofeedback training studies across several Olympic sports, including archery, gymnastics, speed skating, ice hockey and golf.

Research papers published in 2018 and 2024 combined the data from all available studies and found evidence of modest overall benefits from neurofeedback. Yet the evidence became less convincing when analysis was restricted to well-controlled trials, with balanced control groups designed to account for ordinary practice and placebo effects.

So, does neurofeedback work? It may do. Existing evidence points to considerable potential, while also making clear that significant research remains necessary.

Neurofeedback beyond Olympic performance

The next stage of research is already in progress. Some investigations are using insights from sport neurofeedback experiments in an effort to make an impact in other areas.

Initial results from our laboratory and others suggest that neurofeedback could be a feasible way to support rehabilitation and assist the recovery or management of symptoms linked with Parkinson’s disease, stroke and chronic pain, among other conditions.

Olympic medals may be highly prized, but the greatest reward could come if neurofeedback research eventually produces accessible, effective treatments beyond sport.

Andrew Michael Cooke, Senior Lecturer in Performance Psychology, Bangor University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.