Large study with twins highlights the limited role of genetics in mental health and the importance of effective early interventions for ADHD

By Dr. David Rabiner | November 28, 2018

___ Mul­ti­ple stud­ies have indi­cat­ed that, on aver­age, youth with ADHD have poor­er out­comes in young adult­hood in mul­ti­ple areas com­pared to their unaf­fect­ed peers. A lim­i­ta­tion of these stud­ies, how­ev­er, is that they have not typ­i­cal­ly dis­tin­guished between indi­vid­u­als whose ADHD per­sists into adult­hood from those where the con­di­tion remits.

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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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Meta-analysis finds sustained benefits of neurofeedback for kids with ADHD

By Dr. David Rabiner | July 3, 2018

___ In neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD, indi­vid­u­als learn to alter their typ­i­cal pat­tern of brain­wave activ­i­ty, i.e., EEG activ­i­ty, to one that is con­sis­tent with a focused and atten­tive state. This is done by col­lect­ing EEG data from indi­vid­u­als as they focus on stim­uli pre­sent­ed on a com­put­er screen. Their abil­i­ty to con­trol the stim­uli, e.g.,…

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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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Consistent use of ADHD medication may stunt growth by 2 inches, large study finds

By Dr. David Rabiner | March 16, 2018 |

___ The Mul­ti­modal Treat­ment Study of ADHD (MTA Study) is the largest ADHD treat­ment study ever con­duct­ed — near­ly 600 7–9‑year-old chil­dren with ADHD were ran­dom­ly assigned to one of four inter­ven­tions: 1) Care­ful­ly mon­i­tored med­ica­tion treat­ment; 2) Inten­sive behav­ior ther­a­py; 3) Med­ica­tion Treat­ment com­bined with Behav­ior Ther­a­py; or 4) Com­mu­ni­ty Care (par­ents obtained what­ev­er treatment…

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