What is it about?
The standard treatment for children from age 6 onward consists of psychostimulant medication (mainly methylphenidate). Neurofeedback is a relatively new, non-invasive treatment alternative. Neurofeedback gives people the ability to consciously control their own neurophysiology by behavior modifications. This review assesses randomized head-to-head trials that compare neurofeedback to methylphenidate.
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Why is it important?
Psychostimulant medication has limitations: short treatment effects, achieving no or partial remission in some children, side effects, and it may lead to long term growth restriction. This underlines the importance of finding alternative treatment methods. Neurofeedback is a promising alternative that may prevent the use of psychostsimulants in children or may decrease its required dosage. This review assesses the effectiveness of neurofeedback and summarizes which children may benefit from it, based on the literature. This review also points out the importance of finding the most favorable neurofeedback targets.
Perspectives
Neurofeedback is an elegant method that teaches people to control something as complex as their neurophysiology by simple behavior modifications. It is already widely used in epilepsy, depression, OCD, learning disabilities, stroke, addiction, and more. Whereas medication requires daily adherence, is not effective in all children with ADHD and may lead to relapses if not taken properly, neurofeedback is a form of training that, once learned, one can use throughout their life. A remarkably astute analogy is found in the following piece of proverbial wisdom: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
Bashar Razoki
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Neurofeedback versus psychostimulants in the treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review, October 2018, Dove Medical Press,
DOI: 10.2147/ndt.s178839.
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