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BCIA Continuing Education Posts
The BioSource Faculty Explain Peer-Reviewed Science


The Willpower Myth
The idea that willpower is a finite mental fuel, burned up by each act of self-discipline and replenished by rest or sugar, is one of the most widely believed myths in psychology.

Zachary Meehan
Apr 2925 min read


Continuous Glucose Monitoring: Biofeedback for Type 2 Diabetes Patients
Clients should not chase every glucose peak, but rather turn patterns into safe, psychologically informed decisions. Behavioral health clinicians have a particular contribution to make. They can help clients receive sensor data as feedback rather than surveillance, especially when shame, perfectionism, disordered eating, or diabetes distress are already in the room.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 2620 min read


Cortisol Myths Debunked: What Healthcare Professionals Should Know
Cortisol is rhythmic, context-dependent, and clinically meaningful only when interpreted in light of timing, symptoms, medications, comorbidities, and validated testing. Cortisol supports arousal, blood pressure regulation, glucose availability, immune balance, and survival itself. The risk emerges when secretion is excessive, deficient, poorly timed, pharmacologically altered, or uncoupled from normal feedback.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 2519 min read


Inflammation Links Biomarkers, Glucose Variability, and the Heart–Brain Axis
When the body experiences chronic low-grade inflammation, the effects extend far beyond localized tissues because inflammatory cytokines, meaning immune signaling proteins, instruct the brain and autonomic nervous system to shift their operational states. The result is widespread systemic distress that crosses traditional diagnostic boundaries.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 2128 min read


A New Cochrane Review on Monoclonal Antibodies for Alzheimer's Disease
Clearing amyloid from the brain does not produce a clinically meaningful benefit, a finding that directly challenges three decades of drug development guided by the amyloid cascade hypothesis.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 1815 min read


The Heart-Brain-Gut Connection: How Three Axes Maintain Stability Through Change
The heart-brain axis and the gut-brain axis are not separate systems. They share the same nerve, immune mediators, and stress hormones. Their shared purpose is allostasis, meaning stability through change.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 819 min read


New Discoveries About How Your Brain Cleans House While You Sleep
When you fall asleep, your brain shifts from a tightly controlled, one-way traffic pattern of blood and fluid flow into something more like a washing machine.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 715 min read


Emerging Links Between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Alzheimer’s Disease:
Adults with autism are approximately 2.6 times more likely to develop early-onset dementia than the general population, even after adjusting for known risk factors
Fred Shaffer
Apr 617 min read


Resilience Is Brain Network Reorganization Following a Stressor
The moment that tells you the most about a client's regulatory capacity is not the first spike of distress. It is the recovery window, when the brain actively reorganizes its networks.
Fred Shaffer
Apr 411 min read


Sample Drift Threatens ADHD Assessment Accuracy
When the person sitting across from you looks different from that sample, the diagnostic accuracy you learned about in training starts to drift.

Zachary Meehan
Mar 178 min read


Neurofeedback for Peak Performance in Sports
Elite athletic performance is often explained not only by physical skill but also by how efficiently the brain controls movement. In precision sports such as shooting, even tiny variations in attention, motor control, or neural processing can determine whether a shot hits the center of the target or misses entirely.

John Davis
Mar 1718 min read


Increase Your Clients' HRV Measurement Accuracy
HRV is exquisitely sensitive to how, when, and under what conditions you measure it. Get the protocol wrong, and you will be chasing noise rather than signal.
Fred Shaffer
Mar 511 min read


Thinking About Brodmann Areas for Neurofeedback: Dyslexia
Today, neuroscientists view single BAs as participating in multiple networks depending on the task at hand.

John Davis
Feb 2823 min read


Smarter Diagnosis, Fewer Surprises: An Introduction to Bayesian Reasoning in Clinical Assessment
Your confidence in a conclusion should update as new evidence arrives, and the size of that update depends on how informative the evidence is.

Zachary Meehan
Feb 228 min read


Parkinson's Disease as a SCAN Disorder
The central discovery is that M1 is not simply a mosaic of body-part territories. Woven among those effector-specific zones (the patches that control the hand, the foot, the mouth) lies a second system called the somato-cognitive action network, or SCAN.
Fred Shaffer
Feb 1212 min read


Inter-Organ Communication: A Paradigm Shift
Scientists are now discovering that organs engage in a rich, multidirectional web of “crosstalk” that extends far beyond what nerves and hormones alone can account for.
Fred Shaffer
Feb 1020 min read


Spotlight on György Buzsáki: What Brain Rhythms Mean for Neurofeedback
György Buzsáki argued, with decades of evidence behind him, that brain rhythms are not passive reflections of "brain states" but functional organizing tools that help the brain coordinate large populations of neurons in time.

John S. Anderson
Feb 88 min read


John S. Anderson on Brain Flexibility, Resilience, and Choice as Goals for Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback training develops flexibility, resilience, and choice—skills that enhance any endeavor without altering personality or eliminating existing strengths.

John S. Anderson
Feb 111 min read


Revitalizing EEG Neurofeedback
Methamphetamine cues directly undermine response inhibition by activating brain networks that compete with self-control.

John Davis
Jan 258 min read


Learning to Learn: How Better Reinforcement Design Makes Neurofeedback and Biofeedback Work (and Stick)
Neurofeedback outcomes improve when we stop treating feedback as “information” and start treating it as an engineered learning environment.
Fred Shaffer
Dec 19, 202515 min read
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