Neurofeedback

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. [Read more…] about Study shows promis­ing results of EEG-based brain train­ing in help­ing adults with ADHD

Survey of 2500 families finds what ADHD treatments seem to work/ not work as applied in the real world

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Cred­it: CDC Vital Signs

While care­ful­ly con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­als are essen­tial for estab­lish­ing sci­en­tif­ic sup­port for dif­fer­ent ADHD treat­ments, it is also impor­tant to exam­ine how par­ents feel about the treat­ments they actu­al­ly select for their child.

How par­ents feel about ADHD treat­ments they have tried for their child pro­vides an impor­tant com­ple­ment to pub­lished clin­i­cal tri­als data, and can also help guide par­ents’ treat­ment choic­es. [Read more…] about Sur­vey of 2500 fam­i­lies finds what ADHD treat­ments seem to work/ not work as applied in the real world

November 15–16th in Palo Alto, CA: Transformative Technology Conference & Expo 2019

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When: Novem­ber 15–16th, 2019

Where: Elks Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA 94306

What: The Trans­for­ma­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence is an inspir­ing con­fer­ence focused on tech for men­tal health, emo­tion­al well­be­ing, and human flour­ish­ing, at the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science, psy­chol­o­gy, tech, entre­pre­neur­ship, and inno­va­tion. It fea­tures expo­nen­tial tech­nolo­gies like AI, AR/VR/XR, net­works and sen­sors, biotech, neu­ro­feed­back, robot­ics and more to build tech to enable human well­be­ing at scale. [Read more…] about Novem­ber 15–16th in Palo Alto, CA: Trans­for­ma­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence & Expo 2019

Update: Only 5% of US children ages 8–11 follow guidelines recommended for brain development

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Dear read­er,

Time for Sharp­Brains month­ly e‑newsletter, dis­cussing the lat­est inno­va­tions for brain health and men­tal health, and open­ing in this occa­sion with an impor­tant wake-up call.

New research:

New tools:

New thinking:

 

Hap­py Hal­loween and have a great month of November,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Neurofeedback or medication to treat ADHD?

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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 direct­ly com­pared neu­ro­feed­back to ADHD med­ica­tion. [Read more…] about Neu­ro­feed­back or med­ica­tion to treat ADHD?

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

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Image result for neurofeedback adhd kids___

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., keep­ing the smile on a smi­ley face keep­ing a video play­ing, depends on their main­tain­ing an EEG state that reflects focused attention.

Over time, most indi­vid­u­als bet­ter at this. Sup­port­ers of neu­ro­feed­back argue that learn­ing to alter EEG activ­i­ty and focus bet­ter dur­ing train­ing even­tu­al­ly gen­er­al­izes to real-world tasks that require strong atten­tion skills, e.g., read­ing, home­work, etc.

Although many experts remain skep­ti­cal of this approach, despite numer­ous sup­port­ive stud­ies, a recent­ly pub­lished meta-analy­sis of neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment pro­vides impor­tant new sup­port. [Read more…] about Meta-analy­sis finds sus­tained ben­e­fits of neu­ro­feed­back for kids with ADHD