The effect of individual upper alpha band enhancing neurofeedbac kon reaction-time as an indicator of short-term memory in women employees

In neurofeedback systems, people are able to reinforce or hinder their basic EEG rhythms according to operant conditioninin recent studies the effect of neurofeedback training on improvement of working memory has been shown on the healthy subjects. Disadvantage of neurofeedback is the high number of training sessions and high cost. In previous studies, alpha band power within (8-12 Hz) has been considered for all subjects. Previous research reached the conclusion that by using individual upper alpha in neurofeedback, learning rate will increase, so the training sessions and the cost of training will be reduced. In this study, all participants were female, 10 adults (10 women, mean age 33.8 years, SD=3.56 years). Randomly assigned to control and test group, five in test group and five in control group. Each subject performed the memory test four times, two times before the start of the first neurofeedback training and two times after the end of the last neurofeedback session. Eight training sessions were held, each session had three trials. Discriminate response to the color of the drawing, as well as reaction time hadsignificant effects for test group (p<0.05), but had no significant effects for control group (p>0.05). Before and after eight training sessions by individual upper alpha power neurofeedback, reaction time of discriminate response to the color of the drawing for test group decreased and had significant effects (p<0.05). However, There was no significant effects in the control group (p>0.05). Increasing relative individual upper alpha power, caused by neurofeedback training during eight sessions, indicated that this method increases the memory of women employees, and improves the ability of discriminative response to the color (red & green) of the drawing as well as reducing reaction time.