(Editor’s Note: Neu­ro­feed­back is one of the tech­nolo­gies that peo­ple often ask us about.  It is a promis­ing inter­ven­tion in a vari­ety of areas, and has got sig­nif­i­cant trac­tion in help­ing kids with ADD/ ADHD. Now, given the sig­nif­i­cant cost it poses for par­ents, we need to ask the ques­tion: “How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment of Chil­dren with ADHD”? We are hon­ored to present the thoughts of Duke University’s Dr. David Rabiner, a lead­ing author­ity on the field, on that impor­tant issue. As a bonus, you will enjoy his detailed descrip­tion and sug­ges­tions of how to design a high-quality sci­en­tific study.)

(Update as of March 2009: Dr. David Rabiner has writ­ten an update to the arti­cle below based on a newer study. You can read it click­ing on link: New Study Sup­ports Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD)
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How Strong is the Research Sup­port for Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment of Chil­dren with ADHD?

Nei­ther of the two promi­nent approaches to treat­ing ADHD — med­ica­tion treat­ment and behav­ior ther­apy — are expected to effect long term changes in the child. Med­ica­tion treat­ment induces short-term changes in brain activ­ity that is asso­ci­ated with a reduc­tion in symp­toms for many indi­vid­u­als. Behav­ior ther­apy attempts to cre­ate a set of envi­ron­men­tal con­tin­gen­cies that pro­mote desired behav­ior in the child, but which is unlikely to endure when those con­tin­gen­cies are removed.

In recent years, researchers have begun devot­ing greater atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­ity that chil­dren — and adults — may be pro­vided with par­tic­u­lar kinds of expe­ri­ences that may induce alter­ations in brain func­tion­ing that are asso­ci­ated with more endur­ing changes, i.e., they do not dis­si­pate as soon as treat­ment ends.

Neu­ro­feed­back — also known as EEG Biofeed­back — is reflec­tive of this approach and has a his­tory that goes back Read the rest of this entry »

Start­ing this week, you will start see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of Expert Con­trib­u­tors writ­ing in our blog and web­site, so that we can col­lec­tively dis­cuss the lat­est research and trends on cog­ni­tive and emo­tional train­ing, brain fit­ness and health, and the impli­ca­tions of brain research in gen­eral for our every­day lives. All of it, spiced up by stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to sub­scribe to our newslet­ter (above) and our RSS feed (on the right).

Let me intro­duce, In alpha­bet­i­cal order, the Expert Con­trib­u­tors who will share their knowl­edge with us in Jan­u­ary and February.

- Wes Car­roll, SB in Com­puter Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing from MIT, and Puz­zle Mas­ter for Ask a Sci­en­tist lec­ture series.

- Simon Evans, PhD., and Paul Burghardt, PhD., who col­lab­o­rate in the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan’s Depart­ment of Psy­chi­a­try and the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Behav­ioral Neu­ro­science Insti­tute, to study the effects of nutri­tion and exer­cise on brain function.

- Greater Good Mag­a­zine, a quar­terly mag­a­zine pub­lished by a UC-Berkeley cen­ter to “high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tific research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altruism.“ 

- Gre­gory Kel­lett, a recent grad­u­ate from the Cog­ni­tive Neurology/Research Psychology Masters pro­gram at SFSU.

- Eric Jensen, author of Enrich­ing the Brain: How to Max­i­mize Every Learner’s Poten­tial, and well-known syn­the­sizer of brain research infor­ma­tion with impli­ca­tions for K12 education.

- Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, Psy­chol­ogy Department.

- Tom O’Brien, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus in math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion, South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity, and author of prize-winning games.

- Joshua Stein­er­man, M.D., Post­doc­toral Clin­i­cal Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­ogy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Center.

- David Rabiner, Ph.D., Senior Research Sci­en­tist and Direc­tor of Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke Uni­ver­sity. Dr. Rabiner main­tains the highly-regarded Atten­tion Research Update.

Please Note: if you would like to become an Expert Con­trib­u­tor, Read the rest of this entry »

There has been an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the issues related to the aging of the legal pro­fes­sion. Stephanie intro­duced us to the arti­cle “the Gray­ing Bar: let’s not for­get the ethics” by David Giacalone.

In short: sta­tis­tics about the increas­ing ratio of lawyers over 70 in active prac­tice, on the one hand, and the gen­eral inci­dence of Alzheimer’s and other demen­tias, on the other, lead David to point out an increas­ing like­li­hood that some lawyers may be prac­tic­ing in less than ideal con­di­tions for their clients, beyond a rea­son­able “brain age”. The ques­tion then becomes: who and how can solve this prob­lem, which is only going to grow given demo­graphic trends?.

We are not legal experts, but would like to inform the debate by offer­ing 10 con­sid­er­a­tions on healthy aging and job per­for­mance from a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal point of view, that apply to all occupations:

1– We should talk more about change than about decline, as Sharon Beg­ley wrote recently in her great arti­cle on The Upside of Aging — WSJ.com (sub­scrip­tion required).

We dis­cussed some of these effects with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, who wrote his great book The Wis­dom Para­dox pre­cisely on this point, at The Exec­u­tive Brain and How our Minds Can Grow Stronger.

2– Some skills improve as we age: In our “Exer­cis­ing Our Brains” Classes, we typ­i­cally explain how some areas typ­i­cally improve as we age, such as self-regulation, emo­tional func­tion­ing and Wis­dom (which means mov­ing from Prob­lem solv­ing to Pat­tern recog­ni­tion). As a lawyer accu­mu­lates more cases under his/ her belt, he or she devel­ops an auto­matic “intu­ition” for solu­tions and strate­gies. As long as the envi­ron­ment doesn’t change too rapidly, this grow­ing wis­dom is very valuable.

3– …whereas, yes, oth­ers typ­i­cally decline: Read the rest of this entry »