Biofeedback Technique

A biofeedback technique is a mind-body method in which real-time sensor readings of physiological activity — such as heart rate variability, respiration, skin conductance, muscle tension, or brain activity — are displayed back to a person so they can learn to voluntarily modulate that activity and gain self-regulatory control over autonomic, muscular, and central nervous system processes.

In nutritional psychology, biofeedback techniques — particularly heart rate variability (HRV) and interoception-focused protocols — can be used to strengthen stress regulation, emotion regulation, and interoceptive awareness of hunger, satiety, and craving cues, with emerging evidence for adjunctive use in food cravings and disordered eating (Meule et al., 2012; Rosenbaum et al., 2025), binge and loss-of-control eating (Farrar et al., 2024; Scolnick et al., 2014, and gut-brain conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (Popa et al., 2022, though a 2019 Cochrane review concluded overall evidence for biofeedback in IBS remains limited.