Neurofeedback or medication to treat ADHD?

By Dr. David Rabiner | October 17, 2018

___ Neu­ro­feed­back (NF) is an approach for treat­ing ADHD in which indi­vid­u­als receive real-time feed­back on their brain­wave activ­i­ty and taught to alter their typ­i­cal EEG pat­tern to one that is con­sis­tent with a more focused and atten­tive state. While con­sid­er­able research sup­ports the effec­tive­ness of neu­ro­feed­back for many chil­dren with ADHD, rel­a­tive­ly few stud­ies have…

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Initial study finds promise and limitations in using virtual reality (VR) to treat ADHD

By Dr. David Rabiner | May 9, 2018

___ Giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions of exist­ing evi­­dence-based ADHD treat­ments, i.e., stim­u­lant med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­a­py — research on nov­el inter­ven­tion approach­es con­tin­ues to be impor­tant. Cog­ni­tive train­ing is one such approach that has been sug­gest­ed as a poten­tial adjunct or even replace­ment for med­ica­tion treat­ment. While cog­ni­tive train­ing takes dif­fer­ent forms, e.g., com­put­er­ized atten­tion training,…

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5 Must-Read Articles, and an Online Course, to Help Children with ADHD

By SharpBrains | June 21, 2017 |

—– Giv­en the ongo­ing changes and con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing ADHD diag­no­sis and treat­ment, let us high­light 5 key arti­cles writ­ten by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Dr. David Rabin­er to sum­ma­rize recent sci­en­tif­ic find­ings and their impli­ca­tions, plus a very rel­e­vant online course to help par­ents and pro­fes­sion­als help chil­dren with ADHD. 1. Study finds large gaps between research and practice…

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Growing awareness of the opportunities and risks posed by pharmacological cognitive enhancement (aka “smart drugs”)

By SharpBrains | April 3, 2015

. More research need­ed on use of ‘smart drugs’ by healthy peo­ple (Med­ical News): “Drugs such as methylphenidate and modafinil, mar­ket­ed as Rital­in and Provig­il respec­tive­ly, are used by some healthy indi­vid­u­als in order to boost their cog­ni­tive per­for­mance, despite a gen­er­al lack of knowl­edge about 

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Study: Use of methylphenidate-based ADHD medication increases the risk of heart problems

By SharpBrains | August 20, 2014

ADHD med­ica­tion enhances the risk of heart prob­lems in chil­dren (Sci­ence Nordic): “The risk of devel­op­ing heart prob­lems is twice as big for chil­dren tak­ing med­i­cine for Atten­tion Deficit-Hyper­­ac­­tiv­i­­ty Dis­or­der (ADHD) when com­pared to chil­dren not receiv­ing the medicine…The study builds on data from 714,000 children 

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Use and misuse of ADHD drugs and nootropics among teenagers and toddlers

By SharpBrains | May 19, 2014

Rital­in may pose brain risks for young peo­ple with­out ADHD, study shows (Fox News): “Smart” drugs, like Rital­in, also known as nootrop­ics, are known to increase a person’s atten­tion span, mem­o­ry and abil­i­ty to stay alert. As a result, they have become increas­ing­ly abused by stu­dents seek­ing an extra edge in their stud­ies. Accord­ing to a…

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