Rate My Professor Harley Macnamara

Harley Stuart Macnamara conducted his doctoral research in the School of Psychology at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia. His PhD thesis, supervised by Dr. Graham Jamieson, titled "Individualised Alpha Neurofeedback in Left Versus Right Motor Strip: Learning Phenomenology and Functional Neural Networks," investigated the efficacy of individualised alpha neurofeedback in enhancing alpha activity over sensorimotor regions. The study aimed to determine if this training could improve cognitive performance, particularly in attention networks, by examining learning phenomenology and associated functional neural changes.

Complementing the thesis, Macnamara published a comprehensive dataset in 2021 through the UNE Research Data repository. This dataset encompasses roughly 450 hours of EEG recordings from 20 participants across 12 weekly neurofeedback sessions. Key components include raw training amplitudes, pre- and post-training full scalp EEG with eLORETA source localization, Attention Network Test (ANT) scores assessing alerting, orienting, and executive control functions, and self-reports of conscious experience via the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI) and Dissociative Experiences Scale short form (DAQ). Macnamara's earlier work includes a 2012 conference abstract co-authored with Graham A. Jamieson, "Alpha peak training in sensory motor areas increases efficiency of executive attention networks," presented at the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience conference. Additionally, he contributed statistical expertise to the 2016 cross-sectional study "Self-reported physical and mental health of Australian carers," published in BMJ Open, which examined health outcomes among informal carers. His research contributes to the fields of neurofeedback training, EEG-based interventions, and cognitive neuroscience, particularly the modulation of alpha rhythms for attentional enhancement.