This is the downfall of most applications of neurological insight to consumer behavior. If I had my brain wired to a machine and could see what it was doing at every moment of the day, I would make many fewer mistakes. To some extent, cognitive bias could be reduced and as you point out anxiety can be mitigated or maybe even eliminated… but in the real world where I live my everyday life, I don’t have my brain wired to a machine and I can’t control actors on a screen with my thoughts (referring to the experiment you presented).

I agree with you that we are headed in the right direction with consumer-facing applications of neurological enabled technology, and it’s great to point out the research on testing this technology in clinical settings, but we don’t want to go too far as to say that neurofeedback can help manage or control a person’s anxiety at this stage.

Thanks for writing this!