   |
Impact: Brain Workout
It’s like physical conditioning for the brain. NASA developed it to measure pilot stress levels and practitioners using it with children claim it improves attention and social skills. It’s called neurofeedback training and the School of Health Professions is making the first large university study to determine if it can help people with autism.
Guy McCormack monitors brain functions as Gabe Krug “plays” the neurofeedback space game.The Sinquefield Charitable Foundation has given $213,500 to fund a study by Guy McCormack, clinical professor and chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science, of 40 children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While the kids “play” what appears to be a computer video game, another computer gives McCormack a glimpse of the brainwaves that signal excitement, relaxation, drowsiness, sleep and deep sleep.
Before beginning the study, children will take social responsiveness and attention variables tests. Parents will offer similar information on their children. Each child then begins a series of 30 to 40 half-hour sessions with McCormack.
Electrode sensors measuring brainwave activity are placed on locations on the child’s scalp that correlate with brain lobes. The noninvasive and painless sensors amplify and convert the brainwaves into signals that create images and sounds resembling a video game on a computer monitor. When the child is engaged with the “game,” the objects on the screen change. The better the focus, the faster the images move through a maze of obstacles. The scoring system encourages the child to continue.
“Neurofeedback provides a ‘closed loop’ of immediate information about brain activity,” McCormack says.
Neurofeedback tests two intervention approaches for children with autism: Sensory Motor Rhythm (SMR), which can have a quieting effect and regulate impulsivity and promote body awareness; and Beta Training, which improves attention, task performance and cognitive processing.
But can neurofeedback truly help the brain “rewire” itself to reduce unwanted behaviors? “Presumably, neurofeedback is successful because the child learns how to self-regulate his or her own brainwaves by receiving visual and auditory feedback,” he says. “As the child learns what it feels like to be focused, other situations where participation is required tend to be more successful.”
Jeanne Sinquefield of The Sinquefield Charitable Foundation became interested in neurofeedback after seeing it used successfully. “Because of that I helped start a Foundation for Neurofeedback and Neuroscience. A primary goal of this foundation is to encourage universityquality research on neurofeedback,” Sinquefield says. “Several well-done studies on autism have already been published, but not at a major university.”
Neurofeedback studies have been published in several journals, including Journal of Neurotherapy, International Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, and show decreased autistic behaviors. Practitioners using neurofeedback training claim it produces permanent brain changes. Smaller investigations report improved intelligence test performance.
“They don’t claim that the children get smarter, but improved concentration helps them focus better,” McCormack says. “Neurofeedback can be compared to physical conditioning for the brain. The therapist acts as a personal trainer. The neurofeedback equipment works like a ‘mind mirror’ that shows the child instantly how his or her brain is functioning.”
Page last updated on: August 25, 2009
| Contact us | MU Alert | MU Disability Resources
Copyright © 2008–2010 — Curators of the University of Missouri, an equal opportunity/ affirmative action institution. DMCA and other copyright information. All rights reserved.