EEG INFO – Articles on Neurofeedback
Weekly newsletter covering Neurofeedback & Biofeedback: Research, Application, Testimonials
by Lorrie Fisher
ADHD? How could that be? My son would engage in video games for hours with no break in concentration. Robert wasn’t wiggly in class like the other ADHD kids. In fact, I suspected that ADHD might be a myth — an excuse for poor teaching or lack of parental discipline. I couldn’t understand how parents would let anyone put their kids at risk with narcotic drugs, no matter how unruly their behavior. All in all, I held a fairly typical attitude.
It goes without saying that mainstream thinking about neurofeedback to date has been mistaken. The original attempts at replication of Kamiya’s work on alpha training for anxiety were misguided in their methodology and in their conclusions. The rejection of Sterman’s and Lubar’s collective body of work was a blunder of the first magnitude. The continued dismissal of the claims of neurofeedback in the face of mounting evidence is indefensible. On the other hand, nothing here really surprises. A paradigm shift of such magnitude will be resisted by the mainstream on all fours. Everything has gone true to the historical pattern with respect to scientific revolutions.
Dr. Siegfried Othmer the Chief Scientist for the EEG Institute goes onlinewithandrea to discuss Neurofeedback and how it is used to help conditions such as Anxiety, Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Depression, Seizures, Post Traumatic Syndrome, ADD/ADHD, Sleep Disorders, and many others.
Hosted by Andrea R. Garrison
This interview is approximately 2.5 hours in length.
To listen to this interview:
Click on the image of the multimedia player below to be taken to the blogtalkradio.com website.
There is one field in which an extensive mutually beneficial relationship has existed between amateurs and professionals. It is in astronomy, and the phenomenon was recently taken up in Science Magazine by John Bohannon (Volume 318, 12 October 2007, pp 192-3). Significantly, this symbiosis is occurring in a science in which we have only limited ability to do experiments. Mostly the science is observational. Most of the scientific observations are specifically targeted and hypothesis-based. They are so numerous that time on the big observatories for each project is scarce and therefore precious. But there is another crucial aspect of astronomy that focuses on celestial events that are not predictable either in time or place. This is mostly where the amateurs come in. They represent a world-wide army of knowledgeable observers that is on watch every night around the globe. Continue reading “The Role of Amateurs in Science”
If one leaves aside for a moment the horrors that are unfolding in the Gaza strip and in Iraq, the memorable image of the past week was the headbutt by Zinedine Zidane during the World Cup final between France and Italy. Until the moment of Zidane’s ejection from the game, France had to have been content with the way things were going for them in the overtime. One can only assume that in reflection on his loss of poise Zidane would very much have wanted to rewind the film and replay the scene.
From our perspective as neurofeedback practitioners, one can easily sympathize with the dilemma faced by Zidane. Players in his league are surely distinguished from their lower-ranked compatriots in their physiological reaction time, among other criteria. They compete in that zone where many of their reactions are almost reflexive. In our offices we get to measure this every day with our continuous performance tests, and we get to witness that domain of rapid decision-making that is just at the threshold of voluntary control. With neurofeedback training, we get to witness the emergence and consolidation of inhibitory control that makes even rapid responses subject to volition. The pure reaction time measured in an impulsive error becomes the choice reaction time that we had intended to measure. Continue reading “Impulse Control”
The July issue of Scientific American features an article about cognitive therapy as an alternative to ADHD drugs. The work proceeds from the assumption that cognitive deficits in general, and working memory deficits in particular, are among the defining features in ADHD, and yet are only marginally addressed with stimulant medication. According to Rosemary Tannock of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, the effect of stimulants on working memory is positive but small. Working memory deficits are thought to underlie a number of disorders beyond ADHD, and that argues for a direct approach to training working memory.
In a recent paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Torkel Klingberg of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden reports that some 12 out of 20 ADHD children could no longer be diagnosed as ADHD after a mere five-week training program. Moreover, a follow-up to the $6M Multi-site study of ADHD found that after two years the behavioral treatment arm was functioning better than the medication-only arm, a reversal from the findings after only one year. Moreover, only 8% of the children in the behavioral arm added medications in the second year. Most of them continued to rely totally on the benefit they had derived from the behavioral treatment and the acquired parenting skills. Continue reading “More on ADHD”