In the last newsletter, we looked at what a burned-out brain might look like in terms of EEG measures.

We looked at how mental fatigue impacts focus and performance, and how me might be able to detect burnout before it sets in for real.

I’m Nicolas, and I help ambitious professionals master their mental energy so they can excel at work and enjoy life.

Today, I will focus in on one specific and well-known EEG marker; Theta–Beta Ratio.

I will look at how it might help us understand our baseline capacity for attentional performance and how this could be an important marker to train, when we are trying to improve our mental energy.  

🧠 Theta–Beta Ratio may predict stress resilience

People with a higher theta/beta ratio showed weaker attentional control and greater vulnerability to stress. This ratio could act as a simple EEG marker of how efficiently the prefrontal cortex regulates focus under pressure.

⚡ Neurofeedback can train brainwave balance

By using real-time EEG feedback, the science seems to suggest that people train their brain in order to improve their attentional skills.

In today’s main study (Putman et al, 2014), the authors examined whether the well-known EEG marker, theta/beta ratio could serve as a biomarker for attentional control and resilience to stress.

EEG is a technique that records the brain’s electrical signals as different types of waves, which are grouped by their speed (measured in hertz, Hz).

The Theta-Beta ratio is the balance (in power) between slower (theta) and faster (beta) brain waves.

In the study 80 students first underwent EEG recordings at rest, and completed questionnaires assessing trait anxiety and attentional control.

They were then assigned to either a stressful or control condition and completed some of the questionnaires again after the stress or the control condition.

In the stress condition, participants took part in a fake oral math test: they were filmed, received negative feedback, and were told their performance would be evaluated by peers - creating social and cognitive pressure.

The control group completed simple arithmetic tasks privately on a computer.

The researchers found that stress increased anxiety and reduced attentional control.

But interestingly, this effect was strongest in people with higher theta/beta ratios.

Theta-Beta ratio also correlated negatively with trait attentional control.

The authors argue that the Theta-Beta ratio reflects how efficiently the prefrontal cortex regulates attention.

Overall, the study concludes that a higher theta/beta ratio signals weaker top-down control and greater vulnerability to stress, making it a promising biomarker for cognitive performance under pressure.

However, it important to note what while this study was extremely interesting, there is a few limitations to it, that one must. Consider before drawing firm conclusions.

First of all, and most importantly, attentional measures where only measured through questionnaires and not through actual attention tests. 

Second, the stressful condition was a fake test, and no matter how nicely they designed it, it will never resemble a real-world stressful event.

It’s interesting to see how the Theta–Beta Ratio might serve as a useful marker of attentional control and resilience to stress.

But for that information to be truly useful, one would hope that if someone discovers their Theta–Beta Ratio is suboptimal, it could actually be trained.

Luckily, it’s quite common to train and improve such imbalances. One does this with neurofeedback.

In neurofeedback, a person’s brainwaves are measured in real time using EEG. The individual then receives auditory or visual feedback whenever their brain activity moves toward a desired pattern - for example, when the Theta–Beta Ratio approaches an optimal range.

Over time, through this feedback loop, the brain learns to self-regulate.

I haven’t found a study specifically testing whether training to improve the Theta–Beta Ratio directly enhances stress resilience.

However, a review by Kimura et al. (2024) reported overall positive effects of neurofeedback training on attention skills in healthy adults.

Likewise, a review by Lee et al. (2022) found that similar neurofeedback protocols produced improvements in attention among children with ADHD.

To me it seems promising to use EEG scan to understand a personas specific baseline resilience to stress in terms of attentional performance.

Although there where some limitations to today’s main study, Theta-Beta ratio is a well established EGG measure of attentional abilities, so it makes intuitively sense for me.

Moreover, its quit common to train to improve such imbalances in neurofeedback, and there is good evidence to suggest that neurofeedback overall works well to improve attentional performance for people challenged here. 

And, with EEG equipment becoming more and more available, it’s easier than ever to used his in ones efforts to improve performance and well-being.

Articles used for this newsletter:

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