AboutNeurofeedback			information, perspective, and advice
Home | About | Contact | What we offer | FAQ-Intro to Neurofeedback| Listen to Experts

How is Neurofeedback being used clinically?    

Common CNS symptoms that are commonly reported as clinically responsive to neurofeedback

• Think CNS problem.  There are clearly others not listed which have responded to neurofeedback, though in much smaller N's,  including Schizophrenia, and Parkinson's. 
• Neurofeedback is not targeting each disorder. It's used to change timing and activation patterns. It's creating changes in feedback loops and pathways that make up the brain.
• This creates improvement in brain regulation, which impacts a variety of symptoms.
• Different problems may require different training targets. As examples, many clinicians report that depression may involve frontal lobe training, anxiety may involve some parietal training. 
• Just as there are different ways to exercise the body, there are different approaches to training or exercising the brain.  
• When does neurofeedback not work?  There are a variety of reasons

Here's a bit of commentary on neurofeedback regarding each disorder.

Still under construction

ADD/ADHD - More kids and adults with ADD/ADHD are using neurofeedback than any other problem. Experienced clinicians estimate that at a minimum, they have significant impact with 80-85% of these patients who complete 30-40 training sessions.  Is is the most commonly treated because it's the easiest problem to deal with?  Not really - ADD/ADHD is often many different symptoms rolled into one diagnosis. These must be sorted out as part of doing neurofeedback.  Though ADD it does respond well to neurofeedback and it has the most studies by far, there are a few practical reasons that it's the most common use for neurofeedback.  .

1. Parents are far more motivated to help their children succeed than to bring themselves.
2. There are increasing concerns than putting a child on medications for years is not a good thing.  Many parents want an alternative that works. 
3. For many kids medications just don't work very well.  They have side effects, make the kid feel less normal, or create as many problems as it solves. 
4. There are thousands of neurofeedback success stories around the country - many in ADD. More clinicians are adding neurofeedback because their patients are asking for it or talking about it (word of mouth).  
5. There's more solid published research on ADD/ADHD and neurofeedback.  
6. There's increased awareness of the role of the brain in ADHD (as well as other disorders) generally.  In the last 5 years, every magazine seems to have a brain imaging picture on its cover.  As a result, neurofeedback as a brain based intervention doesn't seem so foreign, and there is much more openness towards the concept.

Anxiety. 
In surveys - and when you talk to many health professionals report these as the most common applications for neurofeedback.  The greatest amount of research exists around ADD/ADHD.  Child psychologists and specialists in ADD/ADHD say they see improvements in 80-85% of the kids and adults they see from neurofeedback.  But for most of them, they include neurofeedback as part of a program, not by itself.

Most clinicians say generalized anxiety is one of the first symptoms to start to respond to training.  Significant improvements are typically estimated at 80-90% of those being trained.  However, it also depends very much on what other comorbidities exist. More complex cases that have multiple other problems may take more expertise and time to respond.  We still expect that these more complex cases in fact will respond to neurofeedback (listen to Dr. Angelo Bolea talk about some of his most difficult cases).  However, they take more time, expertise, along with clinical skills.  That means not everyone will achieve good results with these cases.  

It doesn't mean that these are the best problems for neurofeedback. They're the most common problems that clinicians who use neurofeedback often work with.   neurofeedback is about improving brain regulation.  When the brain is better regulated, a lot of problems work better.   Here are other problems that many clinicians are reporting consistent improvement for.

Depression.

Even for long term non-responsive depression cases, neurofeedback typically responds.  It's can also help reduce multiple medications, which is not uncommon.   From depression to dysthymia it's one of the more common conditions neurofeedback is used for.  This is not to say it's easy. Clinical skills are important.  There are a variety of protocol options might be important, depending on the comorbidities associated with the client. 

Learning Disabilities (LD).    Over the last few years, two professionals in particular published data about new training techniques they are using to target learning disabilities and qEEG.  This was really big news for the field of neurofeedback.  It's common for reading, math and other problems to improve with neurofeedback and they may be enough.  But some clients still could have significant deficits after neurofeedback training, even after some improvement. By adding in this new technique (coherence training - a fairly sophisticated component of training) several very solid professionals are reporting more consistent improvements - in dyslexia, reading and math deficits, and visual and auditory processing problems

Conduct Disorders  

Anger and Rage

Bipolar Disorder              

Clinical reports from psychiatrists and psychologists indicate that neurofeedback helps bipolar patients become more stable, and better able to reduce medications

Cognitive Impairment (Traumatic Brain Injury, Stroke)

Neuropsychologists have reported that improvement with TBI often occurs even many years after the injury – that neural plasticity still exists.  Emotional and behavioral improvements are significant for this group.

• Migraines and headaches         

• Chronic Pain

Therapists and MD's report that the incidence and intensity of migraines are often reduced – and sometimes eliminated.  For chronic pain, it helps reduce pain or perhaps how the brain manages pain, even in severe cases

• Sleep Dysregulation

The first changes clients typically observe after Neurofeedback is sleep.  Sleep can include improvement in insomnia, bruxism, poor sleep quality, difficulty waking, frequent waking, and nightmares.  

• Autism & PDD                                        
• Reactive Attachment Disorder

Autism, PDD and RAD are the fastest growing areas of Neurofeedback.  The calming effects of Neurofeedback produce noticeable results quickly in these severely affected populations.  

Substance Abuse                                      

In a study soon to be published, Neurofeedback was compared with a successful 12 step program for crack, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin users.  Sustained abstinence was significantly greater (2 times or greater) with the group that also got Neurofeedback training.  Previous published studies show similar results for alcoholics.   Substance abuse is an obvious form of poor self-regulation, and self-medication. 

• Epilepsy               

Multiple peer-reviewed studies show a reduction in seizures that are non-responsive to medications – and that the training effect holds.  This literature is compelling in respected journals, and the clinical reports consistently reflect improvement.  But for several reasons – including a lack of funding to educate MD's, the research is not well known. 

Why aren't more pediatricians/MD's recommending or offering neurofeedback?       next question

Back to List of questions (FAQ Index).