NBA star, misdiagnosed with ADHD, uses neurofeedback to regain calm thoughts

Today's Los Angeles Times has an incredible article about L.A. Clippers center Chris Kaman and his discovery of neurofeedback.

Before he was 3 years old, Kaman was misdiagnosed as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. For years he took medicine that compounded his actual problem, which was an anxiety disorder, but now neurofeedback is helping him regain calm thoughts.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

After discovering the misdiagnosis, Kaman started working with [Dr. Tim Royer of Hope139] on a system called "neurofeedback," a method of reading brain wave activity to reinforce calm thoughts.

Kaman sits in front of a computer and if his brain waves are at a desired level, the screen will show it. If not, Kaman attempts to calm his thought process. During the off-season, he also worked with a wireless device that allowed him to measure his brain waves while on the court.

"It's a very fast-paced game, and for me to be able to slow it down in my head, it really has been a lot easier and a lot less stressful in the games," Kaman said.

Read the full article here.

Chicago Tribune reports on neurofeedback

A few days ago, the Chicago Tribune published an outstanding article on neurofeedback, something that has helped my family.

Here's a link:

http://brainwave.typepad.com/brain_wave/2007/11/chicago-tribune.html

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Here's a recent family photo:

'Mindfulness' training might help schoolchildren relax, pay attention

Patricia Leigh Brown's article in The New York Times Saturday explained a promising approach to quieting the minds of schoolchildren.

OAKLAND, Calif., June 12 — The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground....

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept...

Brown wrote that some big research institutions are studying "mindfulness" and how it works.

“Parents and teachers tell kids 100 times a day to pay attention,” said Philippe R. Goldin, a [Stanford University] researcher. “But we never teach them how.”

That's not to say that "mindfulness" training is completely advocated by researchers.

Although some students take naturally to mindfulness, it is “not a magic bullet,” said Diana Winston, the director of mindfulness education at the U.C.L.A. center. She said the research thus far was “inconclusive” about how effective mindfulness was for children who suffered from trauma-related disorders, for example. It is “a slow process,” Ms. Winston added. “Just because kids sit and listen to the bell doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be more kind.”

A-ha! So moral, ethical and religious trainings are still necessary. As Winston suggests, there never really is a single silver bullet to human problems, is there? But this research indicates that "mindfulness" can be a tool.

Some teachers told Brown that the techniques have not worked for every student.

But [Yolanda Steel, a second-grade teacher at Piedmont,] noted that some students tapped pencils and drummed on desks instead of closing their eyes and listening to the bell. “The premise is nice,” Ms. Steel concluded. “But mindfulness can’t do it all.”

Words like "Tibetan" and "Buddhist" and "mindfulness" will alarm some parents, especially many more conservative religious folk, but I think they could suspend worry until they have considered two points.

First, focusing attention is not the same as "emptying" the mind, which produces a state that might make children more susceptible to manipulation -- or, as some religious folks will contend, dark spiritual influences. Focusing the imagination on something healthy and positive is not, at very least, the same as emptying the mind. I cannot remember who told me this, but somewhere along the way I heard someone define the Biblical word for meditation as "mulling over" or "chewing over" a certain idea. Could relaxing and repeating certain Biblical or liturgical phrases be detrimental? To me, this is not the same as repeating songs over and over in a revival service.

Second, some research suggests that focused meditation strengthens the brain. An article in the June edition of Men's Journal addressed meditation techniques in which a person will relax and focus on a repeated phrase. "When Harvard researcher Sara Lazar recently compared the brains of American meditators to a control group, she found that parts of the cortex responsible for attention were on average 5 percent thicker," the article said.

To me, techniques for focusing attention (as long as they do not involve "emptying" the mind) involve the same electrical patterns in the brain that are addressed in neurofeedback. Neurofeedback helps people redo the electrical patterns in their brains. Before neurofeedback can begin, the clinician must record the electrical patterns in the brain (an electroencephalograph). Clusters of electrical activity in certain parts of the brain can indicate attention-deficit disorder, depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, and other problems. After the diagnosis, to help remedy these problems, a clinician specializing in neurofeedback will program a computer system based on the diagnosis. When the time comes for the patient's office visit, the clinician will attach sensors to the head of the patient. The patient will sit in front of a screen that might have a video-game style race track or a movie. When the patient's relaxation and focus get into the right zone -- when the electrical patterns move away from those clusters and into other parts of the brain -- a car will move along the race track or the movie will fill the entire screen.

Exciting times for brain research.

Read Brown's article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/us/16mindful.html?ex=1182830400&en=981d7c4981c880cc&ei=5070

-Colin Burch

Neurofeedback gets into the toy market

Just as my family has become convinced of the value of neurofeedback, the science behind it is being used to create a new generation of toys -- perhaps the most "interactive" toys ever.

My wife, daughter, and I have have benefited from sessions with neurofeedback, a clinical process that trains the mind to rewire itself to overcome attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and a host of other struggles. When an individual has one of these problems, it is sometimes due to a clustering of the brain's electrical patterns in one area, rather than a more typical distribution. These electrical patterns are observable through electroencephalographic brain imaging.

I was skeptical when my wife and daughter began going to neurofeedback sessions, but then I observed their progress. I especially considered my daughter's progress, and figured a six-year-old couldn't be faking consistent improvements in emotional stability and comprehension of her school work.

My daughter sometimes watches movies during neurofeedback sessions. With gentle clips on her ears and a sensor on her head (attached with a conductive medical paste), she relaxes and focuses on the screen. When her attention laps or she tenses up, the movie frame might shrink, or the sound might stop. She learns how to focus and relax, reinforcing the accompanying electrical patterns in the brain, thus keeping the full movie experience. In my experience, I usually have a video-game style image of a race car on a track. The more focused and relaxed I am, the faster the car goes around the track.

Lately I've been seeing news articles about NeuroSky, a California company that is tapping the brain's electrical waves to control toys. This one is from News.com.au:

In California, a life-sized Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light sabre.

It isn't a man in a silly costume. It's a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user's forehead and reads the brain's electrical signals. It then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the sabre which in turn lights up when the user is concentrating.

The player maintains focus by channelling thoughts on any fixed mental image or by thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.

Engineers at NeuroSky have big plans for brainwave-reading toys and video games.

(Read the full story at http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,21711660-7486,00.html?from=public_rss .)

The psychologist we see for our sessions said many in the U.S. medical community remain skeptical of the clinical value of neurofeedback.

However, an article in the January 2007 edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry said that studies have shown that neurofeedback has produced "performance improvements in real-life conditions," as well as "improved cognitive and behavioral variables" in children with ADHD. The article was written by researchers at two Germany universities.

For my own testimony, I'll just say my organizational abilities are improving and my ability to focus on my studies (without my mind wandering) has improved.

-Colin Burch

The Mind-Brain problem gets an EEG

Despite my old-school, Christian-Platonic presuppositions about the mind and soul, I'm realizing just how much we are predisposed (not predetermined) to certain traits due to the wiring in our brains.

And yet there is hope for some of the problems through neurofeedback.

My daughter, like both of her parents to some extent, has met the diagnostic criteria for having attention-deficit disorder (ADHD) and probably its incumbent dyslexia.

We gave neurofeedback a try. Our daughter improved dramatically in matters of mood as well as attention. My wife was also going to neurofeedback sessions, but her assessment, not to get myself in trouble, hasn't meant as much as my observations of my daughter. My daughter is 6, and six-year-olds don't have agendas and presuppositions in clinical settings. Adults will either be skeptical or wholesale believers or something in between, and their beliefs will impact their assessments of their clinical experiences. A child is less self-conscious of her behavior, and in my daughter's case, her moods and abilities to concentrate improved.

The idea behind neurofeedback is that people will self-correct the unproductive concentrations of electrical currents in the brain. My own recent, personal experience with neurofeedback went like this. I had a wire clipped to each ear lobe, and another wire stuck on my head. I looked at a TV screen that displayed a race car on a race track, like a video game. When my attention was relaxed and focused on the screen, the car began to move. The more focused, the faster the car moved around the track. When I was distracted, or became self-conscious, or my thoughts turned inward, the car stopped.

University researchers in Germany have recently added to the research that suggests neurofeedback is highly effective in addressing ADHD. This apparently was the first study of neurofeedback in which the researchers tracked progress with electroencephalographic brain imaging (EEG). Read about their findings here:
http://au.health.yahoo.com/061123/3/zj94.html

Perhaps neurofeedback will increasingly become the cure for the kid about whom it has been said: "He's got a good mind. Why doesn't he use it?" Maybe many kids just need a little help in moving more of their brains' electrical activity into their frontal lobes.