Focus on the Brain and the Limitations of AI
Oct 01, 2025 06:00AM ● By Paul Chen
We’re pleased to present this brain-focused issue with three articles: one is an overview of things to do to enhance and maintain brain health, the second is about neurofeedback and this month’s Conscious Eating article explores brain-healthy eating. We’re particularly pleased because, according to our 2025 reader survey, you all want to know about brain training. We asked readers to rate and rank their interest in six topics. “Brain Training” came in #2, noticeably ahead of the rest of the pack.
Neurofeedback has been shown through research to be effective in addressing attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic syndrome disorder (PTSD), anxiety/stress and insomnia. That’s great, but I tried to address a problem I’ve always had with articles like this.
The issue is this. On the one hand, research demonstrates that neurofeedback is most effective when addressing the above conditions. On the other hand, there are many modalities that address those conditions. With readers’ interest at heart, we want to tell you where neurofeedback sits within the context of all modalities for a given condition. I figured ChatGPT would make the task much easier. It did, but we still don’t have an answer. Here’s why.
First, when I asked ChatGPT, “What are the top three healing modalities that demonstrate the most success in addressing ADHD as a function of research?” medication topped the list, followed by behavioral therapy—including cognitive based therapy (CBT)—and then physical activity. When I modify the search to ask about “holistic healing modalities,” drugs drop out and behavioral therapy was broken into two separate items: CBT and parent/classroom interventions. When I asked about neurofeedback, the AI said that it isn’t necessarily the case that neurofeedback is less effective; it simply wasn’t listed because it didn’t have as much research behind it as the others!
For giggles, I then asked Google’s AI about holistic health modalities for ADHD with no mention of research and it listed neurofeedback as #1. That begs the question as to what Google’s AI uses to determine what constitutes “#1”. Moreover, I decided to start a second, new thread with ChatGPT and found it came up with a new answer! So, not only do AIs disagree with each other, ChatGPT disagrees with itself! That makes these things far more like humans than we might imagine, but also, unfortunately, it means that we can’t deliver to you the more qualified information that I had hoped to.
As I write, we are five days removed from the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Sadly, this country has never been closer to exploding in my lifetime, with the possible exception of the violence in the 60s. To be fair, as a child, I had no sense of the national political mood during the civil rights movement, and I was only beginning to get a sense of that as the Vietnam war wound down.
I have written about my hair-trigger anger issue around injustice in this column several times, most recently in June when I admitted that I could no longer sincerely feel compassion for those in this country who are purposely causing untold suffering across a broad swath of people in America. I reported that I could no longer sincerely practice taking and giving, the Buddhist practice, mounted on the breath, to take away suffering and to give love to the perpetrators. So I started a purification practice to clean up the karma associated with this anger. I wanted to once again practice taking and giving sincerely.
The weekend prior to the shooting, I took a personal retreat. During the retreat, I received an energy healing session that, remarkably, rid me of a lot of anger. And last Monday, for the first time this year, I offered taking and giving—sincerely—for those on the opposite side of the political fence.
I tell you this for three reasons. First, regardless of how angry one is, there are ways to bring the temperature down, if one really cares about doing so. Two, energy healing is like magic. Because I can’t use, much less try out, all the services of all customers, it would be unfair of me to speak of the provider in these pages. But I will talk about what I’ve found works in a future, online-only letter. Third, there is only one viable way out of our regretful national predicament, and no words express it better than those of the Rev. Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Neurofeedback has been shown through research to be effective in addressing attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic syndrome disorder (PTSD), anxiety/stress and insomnia. That’s great, but I tried to address a problem I’ve always had with articles like this.
The issue is this. On the one hand, research demonstrates that neurofeedback is most effective when addressing the above conditions. On the other hand, there are many modalities that address those conditions. With readers’ interest at heart, we want to tell you where neurofeedback sits within the context of all modalities for a given condition. I figured ChatGPT would make the task much easier. It did, but we still don’t have an answer. Here’s why.
First, when I asked ChatGPT, “What are the top three healing modalities that demonstrate the most success in addressing ADHD as a function of research?” medication topped the list, followed by behavioral therapy—including cognitive based therapy (CBT)—and then physical activity. When I modify the search to ask about “holistic healing modalities,” drugs drop out and behavioral therapy was broken into two separate items: CBT and parent/classroom interventions. When I asked about neurofeedback, the AI said that it isn’t necessarily the case that neurofeedback is less effective; it simply wasn’t listed because it didn’t have as much research behind it as the others!
For giggles, I then asked Google’s AI about holistic health modalities for ADHD with no mention of research and it listed neurofeedback as #1. That begs the question as to what Google’s AI uses to determine what constitutes “#1”. Moreover, I decided to start a second, new thread with ChatGPT and found it came up with a new answer! So, not only do AIs disagree with each other, ChatGPT disagrees with itself! That makes these things far more like humans than we might imagine, but also, unfortunately, it means that we can’t deliver to you the more qualified information that I had hoped to.
As I write, we are five days removed from the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Sadly, this country has never been closer to exploding in my lifetime, with the possible exception of the violence in the 60s. To be fair, as a child, I had no sense of the national political mood during the civil rights movement, and I was only beginning to get a sense of that as the Vietnam war wound down.
I have written about my hair-trigger anger issue around injustice in this column several times, most recently in June when I admitted that I could no longer sincerely feel compassion for those in this country who are purposely causing untold suffering across a broad swath of people in America. I reported that I could no longer sincerely practice taking and giving, the Buddhist practice, mounted on the breath, to take away suffering and to give love to the perpetrators. So I started a purification practice to clean up the karma associated with this anger. I wanted to once again practice taking and giving sincerely.
The weekend prior to the shooting, I took a personal retreat. During the retreat, I received an energy healing session that, remarkably, rid me of a lot of anger. And last Monday, for the first time this year, I offered taking and giving—sincerely—for those on the opposite side of the political fence.
I tell you this for three reasons. First, regardless of how angry one is, there are ways to bring the temperature down, if one really cares about doing so. Two, energy healing is like magic. Because I can’t use, much less try out, all the services of all customers, it would be unfair of me to speak of the provider in these pages. But I will talk about what I’ve found works in a future, online-only letter. Third, there is only one viable way out of our regretful national predicament, and no words express it better than those of the Rev. Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
For most of us, this is a call to be Super Humans. I trust many of you wish to be more like MLK and help lead the way. ❧
Publisher of Natural Awakenings Atlanta since 2017, Paul Chen’s professional background includes strategic planning, marketing management and qualitative research. He practices Mahayana Buddhism and kriya yoga. Contact him at [email protected].
