Study shows promising results of EEG-based brain training in helping adults with ADHD

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Man­ag­ing atten­tion deficit dis­or­der by train­ing the brain (Sci­enceDai­ly):

Atten­tion Deficit Hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (ADHD) affects about 7% of chil­dren, with a two out of three chance of per­sist­ing into adult­hood. This neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­der is char­ac­terised by con­cen­tra­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, increased dis­tractibil­i­ty, impul­siv­i­ty and hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty. Today, ADHD is treat­ed with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs that may have unwant­ed side effects. This is why sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gene­va (UNIGE) and the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals of Gene­va (HUG), Switzer­land, explored a new tech­nique called ‘neu­ro­feed­back’, which enables ADHD patients to train their atten­tion, based on instant feed­back from the lev­el of their brain activity.

The team of neu­ro­sci­en­tists found that not only did the train­ing have a pos­i­tive effect on patients’ con­cen­tra­tion abil­i­ties, but also that the atten­tion improve­ment was close­ly linked to an enhanced response from the brain- the P3 wave — which is known to reflect inte­gra­tion of infor­ma­tion in the brain …

Neu­ro­feed­back is a type of neu­rocog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion based on the train­ing of “real-time” brain sig­nals. Using an elec­troen­cephalo­gram (EEG) with 64 sen­sors, the sci­en­tists cap­ture the elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty of cor­ti­cal neu­rons and focus their analy­sis on the spon­ta­neous Alpha rhythm (with fre­quen­cy around 10 Hertz), cou­pling its ampli­tude fluc­tu­a­tion to a video game that the patients can con­trol with the pow­er of their atten­tion. “The aim of neu­ro­feed­back is to make the patients aware of the moments when they are no longer atten­tive. With prac­tice, brain net­works then “learn” to reduce atten­tion­al laps­es through neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty,” explains Tomas Ros, researcher in the Depart­ment of Basic Neu­ro­sciences at UNIGE Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine and at the Cen­tre for Bio­med­ical Imag­ing (CIBM) … “The ulti­mate goal is to enable patients to learn to con­cen­trate with­out med­ica­tion and to be able to train their brain in the com­fort of their home,” con­cludes Tomas Ros.

The Study:

Elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal cor­re­lates of improved exec­u­tive func­tion fol­low­ing EEG neu­ro­feed­back in adult atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (Clin­i­cal Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy). From the Abstract:

  • Meth­ods: We record­ed high-den­si­ty EEG in 25 adult ADHD patients and 22 neu­rotyp­i­cal con­trols dur­ing a Go/NoGo task, before and after a 30-minute NFB ses­sion designed to down-reg­u­late the alpha (8–12 Hz) rhythm.
  • Results: At base­line, ADHD patients demon­strat­ed impaired Go/NoGo per­for­mance com­pared to con­trols, while Go-P3 ampli­tude inverse­ly cor­re­lat­ed with ADHD-asso­ci­at­ed symp­to­ma­tol­ogy in child­hood. Post NFB, task per­for­mance improved in both groups, sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanc­ing stim­u­lus detectabil­i­ty (d‑prime) and reduc­ing reac­tion time vari­abil­i­ty, while increas­ing N1 and P3 ERP com­po­nent ampli­tudes. Specif­i­cal­ly for ADHD patients, the pre-to-post enhance­ment in Go-P3 ampli­tude cor­re­lat­ed with mea­sures of improved exec­u­tive func­tion, i.e., enhanced d‑prime, reduced omis­sion errors and reduced reac­tion time variability.
  • Con­clu­sions: A sin­gle-ses­sion of alpha down-reg­u­la­tion NFB was able to reverse the abnor­mal neu­rocog­ni­tive sig­na­tures of adult ADHD dur­ing a Go/NoGo task.
  • Sig­nif­i­cance: The study demon­strates for the first time the ben­e­fi­cial neu­robe­hav­ioral effect of a sin­gle NFB ses­sion in adult ADHD, and rein­forces the notion that ERPs could serve as use­ful diagnostic/prognostic mark­ers of exec­u­tive dysfunction.

The Study in Context: