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Neural Feedback Training as Therapy for ADHD?
"If you haven't heard of it, the idea is that by attaching sensors to the head, brainwaves can be measured, and by providing visual feedback, you can actually train your brain to regulate its activity. An ADHD person supposedly has a brain which isn't very good at keeping itself in 'concentration' mode. In a child, the feedback takes the form of a game or in the case of an infant, a pleasing pattern on the screen (an infant would probably be treated for sleep disorders, not ADHD, in case you were wondering). When the brainwaves are in the 'right' state, the game proceeds or the patterns get prettier. When the brainwaves are erratic, it all slows down.
Because it is a trendy new thing, it's been put forward as a possible treatment for many other things including sleeplessness, epilepsy and other disorders, but one of the better successes has been in the treatment of ADHD.
The whole thing sounds quite plausible, but it is also quite expensive. All of the stuff I've read has been either from the suppliers of the treatment, or from people trying to discredit it."
The trouble with this approach is that as of yet, there is no way to say for sure what the 'right' state of neural activity is. You can say in this group at that age there is some sort of range of common neural activity (field potential, specific regions firing, etc.), but training that is harder than it sounds.
... But a lot of that activity is regulated by chemical processes, which can be easier (and more quickly!) influenced by drugs at this point in time. It's just that the research in the neurosciences changes so fast, that WHICH drug to use is often contentious. But my money is that that is still the best approach for the next few years.
With current Brain Machine interfaces for, eg, paralyzed people, it takes months to train them to a state where they can control cursors via internal rhythms or other non-conscious means. And, yes, it's probably possible to train the brain for a specific range of activity, given enough time.
I'd write more, but I have to go control my robo-Monkey. (-:
My parents adopted a young boy who was diagnosed with ADHD and was taking Ritalin (which then caused severe Tourette's like symptoms, so they diagnosed him with Tourette's and gave him drugs for that.)
As soon as the adoption was final, my parents had him taken off of all of the drugs, and while he still has behavioral problems, the Tourette's has all but gone away, and he is generally happier than he was before.
Billions of people survived just fine with Ritalin, and I personally see no use for it in any situation.
What?
My uncle who uses this treatment has a bicycle "race" where you go faster if you generate a certain type of brain waves. He brought it to a family party and my relatives checked it out. The people who seemed to be best at it (who actually didn't have ADD) were ones who could meditate, did yoga, or otherwise had some experience trying to relax.
I'm ADHD and took Ritalin as a child to treat it. Bad idea, because it activated apparently dormant Tourettes Syndrome. Like the poster said, the tics were mild, all physical (rolling my eyes compulsively still continues today at age 19). After the Tourettes diagnosis treatment became a bitch since most ADHD meds aggravate it.
"I always call attention to the fact that many of our greatest minds, a perfect example being Albert Einstein, would today have been diagnosed with ADD..."
I agree with your point that ADD is not a disorder. Well, I should rephrase that, the diagnosis of ADD is probably faulty. There may be a disorder or condition where the human brain just cannot stay focused on something or another. I doubt, though, that a lot of the people diagnosed with it really have a neural wiring problem. Rather, the content is just not interesting.
I find myself tuning out people at times. It's like they talk too slow. I've noticed this problem especially with the older generation. They feel they must talk in very precise terms and verbally illustrate their ideas. Problem is, I often get their point long before they've finished babbling. So I find myself drifting in and out of attentiveness with them.
Honestly, I don't think this is a neural problem. I think it's an artifact of growing up in a generation where we're expected to understand stuff faster. So yes, I agree, 'treating' it would be a bad idea. Instead, I'd rather learn at the speed my mind will allow.
"Derp de derp."
there are special schools for students with ADHD and other learning disabilities, I work at one such place, www.theodysseyschool.org.
drugs are probably a bad idea, i also agree that ADHD is probably just a different way of thinking. a good friend of mine is ADHD and she is quite amazing!
There are actually several studies that link playing video games to improvements for ADHD. http://www.cet.edu/gstw/adha.html (center for educational technologies)
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
As the computer programs provide a similar type of activity (teaching the brain how to work properly) I believe it would work as well.
People, please don't discount mental disorders (including ADHD) as being just made up.. for those who are suffering from them and those around them they are very real conditions.
Keep in mind that this isn't just some guy preaching "fuck the system", this is a guy who went through all the stuff. I'm sure there are a lot of people that share your plight, but I'd say that the vast majority of people are misdiagnosed, that ADD is often used as an easy excuse to a more complex problem.
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
I suffered from ADHD as a child as well, and believe I still do suffer from it in some form as an adult, although I have many of the problems under control through conditioning and strong willpower. I disagree very strongly with your statement that it is not a disease.
I also do not believe those stimulants (none of which I take) are a hindrance. As a child, I was on ritalin, and I was still in the gifted and talented program. In Kindegarten, I had ADHD issues so severely, I was originally suspected to be suffering from a mild form of mental retardation (ADHD didn't cross their minds at the time). As a result of this suspicion, I was given an IQ test. I was discovered to have a high IQ (~145 range at the time in Kindegarten), which ruled out mental retardation, and brought up suspicion of ADHD.
I couldn't sit still in class, I couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention, I couldn't learn. What good is intelligence if one can't manage to focus long enough to learn how to read and write? What good is intelligence or brilliance without an educational foundation and the ability to focus and employ one's abilities?
Ritalin was a godsend for myself and my parents - I could finally focus in class, and my mother wasn't being driven crazy by an overactive 5 year old. I was in the gifted and talented program in elementary school, and began reading material well beyond my grade level.
Now, that is not to say I believe Ritalin is a wonder drug. I am merely stating my experience with it during my childhood. Misdiagnoses of ADHD IS a problem. Treatment of correct diagnoses is not.
You can listen to what this person has to say, not treat your daughter, and put her school years at risk of being wasted time. Or you can seek treatment for your daughter.
- MaineCoon
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I was diagnosed with ADD in elementary school and have been on and off drugs at various points in my life. I will say that they most definitely DO make a difference in my life. I take adderall and I have a really rough time going to class without it. I'm less attentive and get far less out of the experience without meds. Upon taking an IQ test my score went up a full 30 points when drugged. That kind of thing has real world effects on my life.
Is ADD overdiagnosed? It's probable given the lax screening practices I've heard of. I myself spent weeks being diagnosed at great expense and had to submit to a battery of tests. In response to another user in this thread posthumous diagnoses are considered speculative and not conclusive.
I find it disconcerting that you have formulated your judgement without any real world evidence other than your own personal experience. I have a rough time dealing with people upon admittance of my ADD as a result. It's terrible when people suddenly percieve you as having an imaginary illness. For me life is more 'real' when I'm on Adderall. I can think clearly, have conversations without being distracted and am generally more productive. The only downside to being on Adderall is a bit of drymouth and sleep problems (which don't occur if you take it in the morning as I do). I have no symptoms of addiction, in fact I occasionally forget to take Adderall and usually choose not to on the weekends or for low key events. I can live without Adderall; but my life is just so much more fulfilling being able to use it.
I implore you and everyone who reads this to take into consideration the seriousness of ADD for certain people, and ask that you not spread invalid, generalizing, anecdotal evidence about what is an important part of my life.
Photos.
I read some time ago that a study had been done where they took a group of hyperactive children, and put them on a very strict diet of natural foods (the four basic food-groups WITHOUT preservatives or dyes or any other additives) and the kids hyperactivity cleared right up.
Think about it; we ingest A LOT of chemicals in our diet these days, much more than a few generations ago, when this problem was non-existent.
I'm not saying that this is THE cure, but don't you think ou should at least check it out before subjecting her young, developing mind to even MORE drugs?
And this means NO cheating, ie. "snacks" or "treats" have to be out of the question.
Good luck, may your daughter find peace.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I do the same thing, often tuning out what others are saying and "checking in" with their monologue every twenty seconds or so to see if they've finished the thought I got the gist of in the first ten or fifteen words. But I find myself adversely affected as well, because of the need for me to "fit in" with the rest of the world (have to be able to hold a job to keep the mortgage paid and all). Often I have to actively ignore my impulse to task switch at work, because I know that if I get onto something more interesting, I'll never come back and finish the less-interesting-but-important-to-the-boss task that I'm working on. The impulses come often enough to be like background noise to my forefront thought processes. I find that listening to music helps quite a bit, though familiar songs draw me to pay attention to the lyrics. When I really have to concentrate, I play electronica intrumentals.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Perhaps you ought to try alternatives to chemical therapy regimens before you discount them.
I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit in the 4th Grade, and after that diagnosis, my teachers worked with me to accomodate the issue. I went from barely passing to very nearly acing my classes, without a change in class difficulty.
Unfortunately for me, the information was lost in a move from one state to another, or never forwarded. I've been on chemical therapy in the past, and frankly, I got more comments about how the medication seemed to be working well after a week or two off of it than I did when I was on it. (This doesn't even BEGIN to mention the fact that someone with a tendency to absentmindedness is particularly unsuited to a regimen that requires they remember to take a drug to remember incidentals.)
I have to agree with the previous poster. Anything that affects the better part of 20% of the world's population isn't properly classified as a disorder. Medicating us is not the answer. Working with us to make sure we adapt to the society that the other 80% have created is where we should be going. As it is, far too many kids get medicated these days because their parents don't want to take the time to raise them properly, and the prevalence of Ritalin for "hyperactivity" is one of the main causes of this.
If parents and educators looked at this as a "Leadership Challenge", as the military would call it, and not a disease or flaw, then more people would be well-adjusted individuals without a need for prescription medications.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
As the father of a son with ADHD, I have to disagree that ADHD is not a disorder and, therefore, should not be treated.
A little background is in order here. I am absolutely certain that I am/was ADHD myself and that I made it through school because of the nicotine in the second-hand smoke (5 pack a day combined habit of my mother and father) at home. Nicotine, except for its highly addictive tendencies, is an wonderful stimulant. I hit college away from home and the smoke and I felt as if I was completely disoriented and unable to concentrate on anything - this from the high school valedictorian who had never struggled with any learning issues except for pensmanship (a clue that I have/had ADHD, as I was to discover 20 years later).
My son was struggling to finish even simple assignments. I've watched him struggle for three hours to write five simple sentences! His grades were mediocre, far below what a child of his intelligence would be expected to score. The psychologist evaluated him as having a moderate case of ADHD and recommended Concerta (time-released Ritalin, essentially).
I was as anti-drug therapy as you could imagine but decided to give it a trial run. Within a month, he was a new kid. His ability to concentrate allowed him to perform his homework with much more dedication and concentration. He had a fair amount of catching up to do, but over the last two years he's moved from a C student to all A's except one B (English, generally the most challenging for him) on his last two report cards (sixth grade).
I would agree that there have been some very bright people who had ADHD and were never treated, your Einstein example, for instance. However, when ADHD begins to affect your ability to learn at an early age, given the requirements of the society in which we live dictate that some level of competency be achieved with basic intellectual skills, that the option of drug therapy, carefully monitored for progress and side-effects, be considered. I don't say this lightly. I can't emphasize how adamant I was that drugs were undesirable. I'd heard too many stories about Ritalin, its side-effects, and the dependency issues. But when the psychiatrist, a 30+ year veteran who himself has moderate ADHD and by his own admission no more than a 30 minute concentration span (!), presented me with a list of symptoms for adult ADHD, and I had nearly every one of them (!), I began to dig into why I did so well in K-12 school only to be so swamped in college. Well, I was on drug therapy of a sort in those early school years - nicotine. I suspect that this is why many people can't kick the habit; there's more than just an addiction issue here.
I am sorry to hear of your subsequent methamphetamine dependency. I believe that is not an inevitable consequence, however, and that drug therapy can do wonders. But it is truly a two-edged sword.
A friend of mine has suggested I look into the work of Dr.Michael Persinger at Laurentian University, and Todd Murphy. Some of the machines Murphy sells (cheap, he's obviously not trying to become a millionaire off this stuff) might be useful in home treatments, especially if you can get a neuropsychologist to help you determine a protocol. (with standard disclaimers: IANAD, neuro-scientist/psychologist. Nor am I associated with Laurentian University, Persinger or Murphy)
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The clothes thing was a joke. Laugh.
And even if it wasn't, $400 is not a lot to spend on clothing for 2 adults and 3 kids. One of which has feet which don't fit comfortably in any but reasonably expensive shoes. (take note - take care of your kids feet when they're young. $100 is nothing to spend on shoes if it saves a heap of problems later!!!)
None of which adds up to me not taking care of my kids. I don't see how you can gather enough evidence one way or another from anything i've ever posted to slashdot, even if you take it grossly out of context.
I don't know if you have kids or not, but it is so hard to see them having a hard time with day to day things (eg getting dressed in the morning), and being completely at a loss as to what to do about it. I've already answered on another post about why I asked the slashdot community. This isn't a substitution for professional advice, it's an addition to it.
Diabetes is treated with medication. Epilepsy is treated with medication (some of which has side effects far nastier than Ritalin). Various other psychological diseases are treated with medication. People are irrationally touchy about ADHD though.
Hope I didn't just feed the trolls!!!
Believe it or not, food can be the root of all evil.
... so, most Americans are pesticidal shit.
What you feed your child is *everything*.
Like most Americans, if you don't feed your kid mostly if not all Organic and raw foods... then your kid can easily pick up some fucked up disease or disorder.
Most Americans are too busy with their daily work life and social activities to realize how many fucked up pesticides and hormones they are dosing themselves with on a daily basis.
My friend, who is a parent of two young girls, switched her children to a raw/organic (vegan) diet, and the childrens behaviour and mental clarity did a U-Turn.
"You are what you Eat"
Sorry for the blunt-ness... but I'm just trying to speak the truth.
Your kids don't need more drugs to *fix* the problem.
Wish you the best.
I will even think to myself "OK, now I am going to balance my checkbook and pay my bills on time." Then I will sit down with the checkbook and stare at it, unable to even bring up the will to open it up and write a single check.
God I can relate to this, although I came up before the ADHD diagnosis. It was called neurosis then.
I remember sitting at the desk looking at my schoolbooks, having the feeling described as "impending doom" if I were to try to pick up the pencil to write. The idea of doing something that could possibly turn out to be the least bit boring was scarier to me than physical pain. Sometimes I would get an A in Physics and a D in Algebra. I failed required classes in High School and barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA. I ended up not going to college.
Nevertheless, I was able to self-train to be a software developer. Instead of schoolwork, I had been spending my time studying computer hardware and software.
Instead a seeminly unrelated story. My father was a parapelegic (waist down paralysis) and in a wheelchair for 30 years from a broken back. He suffered horrendous pain for years. We lived in a small town. Small town doctor. Small town pharmacist. They new he was on pain medication, new what it was and if he asked for a refill, well, he must need it, so he got it. Hell, as I child I walked into the pharmacy and asked for it for him all the time and just got it.
One day the pharmacist happened to actually read his refill history. He was taking enough on any given day to kill someone who'd never taken it before. Coincidentally, Dr. C. Norman Sheeley, author of "Occult Medicine can Save Your Life" and founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, was speaking at the local university. Dad went, and volunteered as a "test subject" for that very lecture. He was treated with accupuncture and completely, albeit temporarily relieved. (I'm talking 30+ years ago when acupuncture was as foreign to the west as open source is to Microsoft)
So he started acupuncture treatements. It never worked again. He finally contacted Dr. Sheeley who invited him to his compound.
Dr. Sheeley only took pain patients that everyone else had given up on. IIRC, the treatment period was 3 weeks, and required your spouse to attend if you where married. The program was simply "try everything" (well, except drugs - those had all been tried already). Acupuncture, faith healing, bio-feedback, massage, electro-stimulation, and I don't know what else. IIRC, he even had an African "witch-doctor" in occasionally. (I still have a pair of goofy, hand-made with parts from Radio-shack, dark goggles with lights inside that pulsate at alpha and theta frequencies. They will relax you completely or put you to sleep in just a few minutes. And I use them when I get migraines.)
Bottom line -- Dad came back and never took another pain pill until he was on his death bed with cancer. The goggle thingy + bio-feedback + electro-stimulation was his cure. Other patients who where there at the same time had their cure.
Sheeley's philosophy was "If it works, it works." So what if we can't explain it? The human physiology is extremely complex and the mind even more so. If we don't consider things just because we don't understand them then we are making a conscious decision to be bound by our own ignorance.
His success rate, again on patients that "traditional" doctors had completely given up on, was over 80%.
So, yeah. if the drugs work for you fine. If neural feedback works, fine. If stretching your left testicle over your right ear works, fine. If none of those do it for you, that doesn't mean they won't work for some one else.
Except for the left testicle one. That only has around a 50% chance of working for everyone, and I don't recommend it anyway. It's really rough on your ear.
Speaking for my loving girlfriend... "I interned with a biofeedback therapist that specialized in the neural feedback training. I worked with children who were diagnosed with everyting from ODD, ADHD, Autism, and many other behavioral problems. In the short time that I was there I saw an amazing improvement in my children with ADHD. The improvement was so drastic that many were taken off ritalin, and only used neural feedback therapy as their only treatment. From my history in Psychology and my background knowledge in Neuroscience, I would hightly recommend you place you daughter in Neural Feedback Therapy. I believe our youth is over-medicated and NFT is going to be our future answer to genetic, neuronal, and behavioral problems. Good Luck!"
Rick,
Hope you're actually reading these. You actually don't have acute ADD. You have adult-diagnosis ADD. The taking the TV apart stuff -- ADD in a high-functioning child.
ADD is like not having brakes on the car that is your brain. So you can go really fast but have to keep turning so as to not hit things. If you're fast enough, you can make enough turns that you still get to where you're supposed to. This is the high IQ/smart kid with ADD. Compensatory mechanisms get you through until you can't do it anymore, then you get diagnosed. Not uncommon with adult ADD patients, and the really nice benefit you get from the meds is classic.
I wrote specifically to tell you to ask your doctor about Concerta -- extended release formulation of methylphenidate. It's nice because a lot of the "trippy" side effects are from the short release pharmacokinetics of the normal methylphenidate -- it's peaking and dropping all day long as you take multiple doses, or just spikes and drops off. Either way -- side effect city. The Concerta smooths it out. Much better.
Kargis
(This does not represent medical advice as a physician, but rather simply describes the characteristics of the medication. Ask your doctor about it. Do not change meds without a physician's advice. This does not constitute a covenant of care.)
I went to Drake institute, summer 2002. (http://www.drakeinstitute.com/)
:)
Visual bio-feedback and all.
I also, on the advice of my japanese wife who saw study done in japan on ADD and the relationship with the brain when under video-game mode and Alzeimer's, and their treatment was three-ball juggling. For ten minutes straight.
I couldn't juggle, at all.
I got the hang of it, slowly, trying every day. If I did 5 I was happy.
That was summer of 2003.
On Dec 20, 2003 I hit 1150 juggles.
Last week, I did 1900 straight.
Now, I stop at ten minutes, and don't even count.
The level of concentration is insane when you get to above 500. The brain wants to stop, to roam, to defocus and wander.
Yet 1/2 second of defocus, and the ball is on the floor.
You can't blink, you can't let your mind wander, you can't let your eyes stray.
Now, when I am feeling myself drift, I imagine that I am juggling fast (at 4/sec or so), and I get very focused very fast, and I can concentrate on the task at hand.
About biofeedback: It's a way for you to train yourself to relax yourself (I imagine my hands and feet are warm and do deep breathing exercises) and to focus your mind. It visually lets you know the spot you want to be at. Once you "get it" you know it, then don't need the visual feedback to know you're focused.
But like everything else, if you don't use it, you lose it.
Ultimately it's worked for me. My relationship with my wife has improved dramatically, my job is not suffering, my firends have all noticed a difference, and my schooling is progressing rapidly.
I'm 35. Yes it was expensive ($5500 for 40 1 hr sessions), yet in the grand scheme of things, it's not.
Oh, and My driving has improved greatly (I had 3 accidents in 4 years, but nothing, not even a scratch, since).
To poster: If you want to contact me, it's chris_mahan hat yahoo dotte com.
PS: The first 10 sessions were for stress reduction, learning how to drop stress levels. Very effective even though I slept through 3 sessions
"Piter, too, is dead."
False. poorly labled, over-diagnosed, missunderstood, overmedicated, yes. Unreal no.
I have what is called add/adhd, I know others with it and others without, it's very deffinately real.
It's bad to call it a dissorder however. I can do things many cannot because of it and there are somethings that are nearly impossible that many can do also.
I can track and keep up with a larger number of things than most for one (one could argue that intelligence plays a roll in this, but that alone is insufficient.) but narrow to one item and I usually just cannot unless It absorbs me and I hyperfocus (a known trait of 'add/adhd', what others above call a 'death march').
I've noticed the tendancy for add people to higher I.Q.'s than 'normal' people as well, It's one of my pet hypothesis that the brain, like other machines, when run in high performance modes all the time are more likely to develope issues. Kinda like race car engines and such, they need a lot of maintenance. My other idea was that since alot of how we think is by association and interconnecting data that add may just be more so, with the attendant lots of extraneous info/data floating through the concious mind as a result.
I know I'm probably feeding a troll, but I knew I would be posting somewhere in this anyway.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
If you want a little perspective, consider the following. When I was little, around the second grade, I was very much the kind of kid who would be separated from the rest of the group, wildly sketching, doodling, making noises, et cetera. This was perceived as a focus problem (it's true that I wasn't focused at all), and within a very short period of time, all of the teachers were bandying about labels like ADD, Tourettes, and various other mental disorders as if they were all authorities on the subject. I remember quite clearly being taken to the local Children's Hospital for a series of evaluative tests, including an electroencephalogram.
Note that I very probably displayed almost all of the traits commonly associated with ADD. I can't remember much from that time period except for the events surrounding this little investigation into my mind that the school faculty felt necessary to launch. Why? It was rather traumatic for me. The strongest memory of the time was my rejoinder to my parents' explanation of our hospital visit: "There's nothing wrong with me!"
It turns out that I was right. They found nothing. To my credit (I suppose, since I don't put much faith in these measurements) I was rated at a highly above average intelligence. I'm seventeen now, and while I've been described as a rather eccentric individual (you can laugh at that), I'm doing quite well. What my grade school teachers thought (very adamantly, actually) was ADD had in fact been nothing more than a socially detached child's attempts to entertain his very, very bored and lonely mind. To this day, I put extremely little stock into the idea of "fitting in." That is for people insecure with their identities, in my humble opinion.
I was never diagnosed with anything, thanks to my parents, who fought against labelling me with a tenacity that I'm inclined to admire. My advice to you, from having been in the position of the child, is not to allow your daughter to be labelled. It constrains the possibilities within the boundaries of a very narrow and ultimately rather misunderstood set of definitions. What helped me was intellectual challenge and a few very good friends. Never underestimate the value of those things.
On Slashdot, we don't say "thank you." We say "that's enough..." -_-;