Neurofeedback Could Fight Depression–or Just Empty Your Wallet

Things went sideways in the brain room.

Neurocore LLC’s newest office, housed in a strip mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., looks like an Apple Store crossed with an outpatient clinic. The company, owned in part by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is one of the nation’s largest providers of “neurofeedback,” part of the fast-growing $2 billion brain-training market. Neurocore says technicians at its nine offices in Florida and Michigan can analyze the electrical impulses in your head to improve cognitive performance, diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and provide a “lasting solution” for depression with a series of 40-minute training sessions (30 for $2,200). For what it’s worth, my $250 initial assessment had at least one big glitch.