Neurofeedback therapy - anyone tried?

[Brb5mins]

Just that really, a clinic has opened near me promising good results for neurofeedback, but of course it’s expensive…dd has ASD and DCD.

[TomeTome]

What is it supposed to do?

[Brb5mins]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7889708/

https://www.kedrasclinics.com/neurofeedback/

brain gym? Many claims on improving executive functioning, anxiety, sensory processing. But there are many therapies that claim they work…

[CurlsnSunshinetime4tea]

I have two cousins who are psychiatrists and they swear by Neurofeedback especially for ADHD. Claim it’s very helpful.
But I don’t know if their type/tools is the same as online or chains.

[Brb5mins]

Thanks @CurlsnSunshinetime4tea that’s interesting, I can see there are a few positive medical studies on if, my dd does stiffly with focus, anxiety and sleep all of which it’s supposed to help with.

[TomeTome]

Sounds like snake oil

[BertieBotts]

I had a go on one a while ago at a conference. Very interesting experience - very clever.

It is essentially biofeedback though. Very expensive biofeedback. You can do biofeedback by yourself at home for free - it's essentially learning what the physical body symptoms are of the brain state you're trying to reach (usually relaxation) so for example heart rate, warmth of hands, or just paying attention to your own bodily sensations, and then you try out different tools (so meditation, breathing, different sensory tools etc) and you see what effect those things have on those biological markers so you are getting feedback (hence, bio-feedback) about what effect what you're doing is having and you can find out if it's a helpful tool for you or not, if you're doing it right, it just sort of gives you a marker or like an indicator of "how relaxed I am".

Neurofeedback claims that it goes a step further than this by directly tying gamification, ie a literal game with points, designed to spike dopamine which is the reward neurotransmitter in response to the desired brainwaves being produced and so it claims that the effect is more automatic without the person having to consciously think about what they are doing and they claim that this causes the brain to then continue to produce more of those desired brainwaves in an effect which persists past the session.

The evidence at least for ADHD is pretty poor - it doesn't persist very long at all. It is likely that the effectiveness you see for the relaxation ones is probably similar to biofeedback, and is a result of the person having learnt techniques (consciously or not)/gained experience of how to slip into a meditative state, which does get easier with practice. So you can likely get the same effect simply by doing anything along the lines of meditation practice, the only benefit of neurofeedback is that you can confirm whether or not they are actually meditating. When a study claims something is effective it's useful to look at what they're saying it's effective compared to. Basically anything is effective compared to doing nothing, because people get a kind of placebo effect just from having done something, particularly if the results you're comparing are self-report.

The marketing is very good which is probably why people are convinced by it. I was definitely impressed when I saw it for the first time - it's such a great idea, and I do think it has some benefits. Unfortunately for most people I think the cost/benefit analysis is not weighted very well.

[Brb5mins]

Yeah it’s really expensive! Thanks - it’s interesting though, we are already trying to make dd more aware of the bodily sensation/markers of various states as somewhat easier to identify than the feeling and that sounds like a good thing to do!

[Brb5mins]

Thanks @BertieBotts there are so many clinics doing this and that with rave reviews from people…

[BertieBotts]

The biofeedback has been so incredibly useful for me - I have ADHD and struggle with emotional regulation as well as poor interoception so actually paying attention to my body signals has been a complete revelation. It should really help her hopefully. And the benefit of biofeedback over neurofeedback is that you have the tools to do biofeedback on yourself at any time because all you need is your own body - whereas you don't generally have access to an EEG headset and all the setup. I know there are bands you can buy to have at home, because I looked at these, but they are not that good either apparently.

[Brb5mins]

Thanks @BertieBotts this is good to know - I wish there was a better way of assessing which therapies work and making that feedback available to people, it’s so tricky to piece info together and so many ‘professionals’ happy to take money for poorly defined outcomes.

whole sector of ND therapies needs regulation and better assessment.