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The Brucker Biofeedback Method
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The Story
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Dr. Bernard S. Brucker, PhD, ABPP, started his first researches in New York in the late sixties. It is with the upcoming microprocessor technology in the seventies and the development of useful EMG measurements and computers in the eighties that he developed the method we know today.
He has been called a legend by the ACRM (the American Congress of rehabilitation) for all his professional and personal accomplishments.
Dr. Bernard S. Brucker was an associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation and Radiology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He was a psychologist and a leader in the field of rehabilitation and was chief of the Division of Psychology and director of the Biofeedback Laboratory at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
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Dr. Brucker received several awards as the Gil Moss Award from the National Spinal Cord Injury Association for outstanding scientific and clinical contribution to spinal cord injury, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dade County Chapter of the Florida Psychological Association, the Distinguished Service Award, Division of Rehabilitation, American Psychological Association and the Karl F. Heiser Presidential Award from the American Psychological Association.
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He served on the International Committee of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. ACRM is pleased to honor him each year at the International Networking Group’s Brucker International Luncheon in conjunction with the ACRM Annual Conference. (1)
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Dr. Brucker was one of the founders, and the original co-director of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. He was world renowned for developing specific behavioral procedures for restoring function in people with physical disabilities and had numerous publications, chapters, and presentations at scientific meetings. (1)
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In 2002 a new center was opened in Munich/Germany where Dr. Brucker came for supervision twice a year. And in 2006 the center in Munich became the official european training facility under the direction of Mr. Ralf Nickel.
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Dr Bernard S. Brucker passed away in February 2008 and today we are still so grateful for his legacy.
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(1) ACRM | American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine International Networking Group History
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The method
”When axons are severed or neurons die, surviving neurons provide potential alternative pathways to carry the electrical impulses that make movement possible. The pathways are there already! The brain is incredibly plastic, but it doesn't happen unless you demand it,” Dr. Brucker explains.
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The Brucker Biofeedback Method® finds its origin in behavioural medicine. The basic method of how we learn should be familiar to all of us. It is based on ‘operant conditioning’, which reinforces or inhibits behaviour based on our past experience, and of course on ‘trial and error’. This is how we learn to walk, swim, cycle, etc... Neuroplasticity has a very important role in the recovery process.
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