teacher-ratings

Neu­ro­feed­back — also known as EEG Biofeed­back — is an approach for treat­ing ADHD in which indi­vid­u­als are pro­vid­ed real-time feed­back on their brain­wave pat­terns and taught to alter their typ­i­cal EEG pat­tern to one that is con­sis­tent with a focused, atten­tive state. This is typ­i­cal­ly done by col­lect­ing EEG data from indi­vid­u­als as they focus on stim­uli pre­sent­ed on a com­put­er screen. Their abil­i­ty to con­trol the stim­uli, for exam­ple, keep­ing the smile on a smi­ley face, is con­tin­gent on main­tain­ing the par­tic­u­lar EEG state being trained. Accord­ing to neu­ro­feed­back pro­po­nents, learn­ing how to do this dur­ing train­ing gen­er­al­izes to real world sit­u­a­tions and this results in improved atten­tion and reduced hyperactive/impulsive behavior.

Neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD has been con­tro­ver­sial in the field for many years and remains so today. Although a num­ber of pub­lished stud­ies have report­ed pos­i­tive results many promi­nent ADHD researchers believe that prob­lems with the design of these stud­ies pre­clude con­clud­ing that neu­ro­feed­back is an effec­tive treat­ment. These lim­i­ta­tions have includ­ed the absence of ran­dom assign­ment, the lack of appro­pri­ate con­trol groups, raters who are not ‘blind’ to chil­dren’s treat­ment sta­tus, and small sam­ples. For addi­tion­al back­ground, you can find a recent review I wrote on exist­ing research sup­port for neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment of ADHD — along with links to exten­sive reviews of sev­er­al recent­ly pub­lished stud­ies -: How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back in Atten­tion Deficits?

- Results from a New Study of Neurofeedback -

Recent­ly, a study of neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD was pub­lished that address­es sev­er­al lim­i­ta­tions that have under­mined pri­or research [Gevensleben, et al., (2009). Is neu­ro­feed­back an effi­ca­cious treat­ment for ADHD? A ran­dom­ized con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­al. Jour­nal of Child Psy­chol­o­gy and Psychiatry.]

The study was con­duct­ed in Ger­many and began with 102 chil­dren aged 8 to 12. All had been care­ful­ly diag­nosed with ADHD and approx­i­mate­ly over 90% had nev­er received med­ica­tion treat­ment. About 80% were boys. Chil­dren were ran­dom­ly assigned to [Read more…] about New Study Sup­ports Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD