Biofeedback: an overview in the context of heart-brain medicine

Biofeedback involves the monitoring and use of physiologic information to teach patients to modify specific physiologic functions. Common modalities for biofeedback include surface electromyography, respiration rate and depth, skin surface temperature, cardiovascular reactivity, and electrodermal response. Clinical biofeedback therapy broadly involves either the direct feedback learning model or the therapeutic/stress-management/biofeedback model, which emphasizes the need to understand each patient as an individual. Biofeedback interventions have been deemed efficacious or probably efficacious in treating a number of medical disorders, and are increasingly embraced by the public as well as by health care providers and payors.