Functional rearrangements in the human brain during emotional self-regulation with biological feedback.

The concept that functional psychopathology producing phobic syndromes is mediated by a specific deficiency in the integrative activity of the brain as a loss or partial limitation of the ability to recognize subjective experiences was used to develop a special method for mobilizing the selective attention of patients to the time course of subjective states. The fact of recognition of a state was demonstrated by the patient's ability to reproduce it by achieving specific parameters in a biological feedback test based on skin electrical responses. Success was positively reinforced by avoidance of an anxiously expected electrical stimulus. After successful training, patients could spontaneously adaptively correct their general daily behavior. Computer analysis of EEG traces revealed the specific structural-functional features of various states provoked during training.