The View from Within the Brain : Does Neurofeedback Close the Gap? (2017)
Neurophenomenology is intended to be a remedy for the hard problem of consciousness (Varela, 1996). There are, however, serious doubts as to whether it addresses the hard problem per se or is merely meant as a way for a more practical marriage between the domain of experience and neuroscience. If the latter is true, closing the gap would, at best, result in developing better models of phenomenality and better models of neuronal activity (Bayne, 2004). The technologv of neurofeedback (NFB), which helps subjects to self-regulate their own neural activation, is considered as a pragmatic tool to overcome some of the obstacles being faced by neurophenomenology (Bagdasaryan and Le Van Quyen, 2013). In this epistemological and methodological context, our aim in this paper is to discuss whether the neurofeedback paradigm can help to close the explanatory gap. In the face of doubts concerning the issue we also propose analysing NFB in terms of personal neuroscience as another perspective for linking mental and neural events.
Keywords: psychologia