Alpha oscillations in sensory cortex, under frontal control, desynchronize during attentive preparation. Here, in a selective attention study with simultaneous EEG in humans of either sex, we first demonstrate that diminished anticipatory alpha synchrony between the mid-frontal region of the dorsal attention network and ventral visual sensory cortex (frontal-sensory synchrony (FSS)) significantly correlates with greater task performance. Then, in a double-blind, randomized controlled study in healthy adults, we implement closed-loop neurofeedback of the anticipatory alpha FSS signal over ten days of training. We refer to this closed-loop experimental approach of rapid neurofeedback (NF) integrated within a cognitive task as cognitive neurofeedback (cNF). We show that cNF results in significant trial-by-trial modulation of the anticipatory alpha FSS measure during training, concomitant plasticity of stimulus-evoked alpha/theta responses, as well as transfer of benefits to response time improvements on a sta...