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Foundation for Neurofeedback and Applied Neuroscience Awards Prize for Study of Brain's Response to Neurofeedback

Posted on: Friday, 18 August 2006, 18:00 CDT

The Foundation for Neurofeedback and Applied Neuroscience has announced its first annual award recognizing the most significant contribution to the advancement of the field of neurofeedback during the previous year.

The recipients of this year's award, which includes a one thousand dollar (USD) cash prize, were Johanne Levesque, Mario Beauregard and Boualem Mensour of the Universite de Montreal for their article, "Effect of neurofeedback training on the neural substrates of selective attention in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study." The article appeared in the February 20, 2006 issue of the journal Neuroscience Letters.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a relatively common neurodevelopmental disorder, characterized by symptoms such as restlessness and an inability to maintain concentration. In children, psychostimulant medication is frequently prescribed as a mechanism for managing this disorder. But, since its symptoms tend to recur if the medication is discontinued, this approach generally requires ongoing use of psychostimulants.

Neurofeedback - also known as neurotherapy or EEG biofeedback - seeks to change an individual's cognitive functioning or affective state through operant conditioning of patterns of electrical activity within his or her brain. Electrodes are placed on the head of the person who is to be trained. These electrodes allow the clinician who will be overseeing the training to monitor the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in a selected area of the trainee's brain. The trainee is then rewarded for making patterns of brainwave activity that are most appropriate to the task at hand through a combination of audio and visual feedback based on a videogame that he or she is watching.

Because neurofeedback involves "teaching" the brain new patterns of neural activity, it is reasonable to assume that these patterns - and the changes in behavior that are associated with them - might be expected to be retained once they have been "learned."

While this hypothesis appears to have been confirmed by various studies in which a reduction in ADHD symptoms equivalent to those achieved by psychostimulant medication has been shown to continue long after the subjects completed neurofeedback training, little has been done to document corresponding changes in brain activity until now.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a mechanism for imaging patterns of ongoing activity in various regions of the brain. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that individuals suffering from ADHD exhibit significantly less activation in the region of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) when they are asked to perform tasks requiring selective attention than do individuals who do not suffer from this disorder.

In their study, Levesque, Beauregard and Mensour compared the fMRI patterns of a group of fifteen children who suffered from ADHD and were treated with neurofeedback with those of a control group of five ADHD children who did not receive neurofeedback training. None of the children were on psychostimulant medication or suffered from any other disorders. The fMRI scans took place while the children were performing a Counting Stroop task - a measure of focused cognitive functioning. The scans were performed one week before the onset of neurofeedback training and one week after completion of the training.

Neither group of children exhibited activation in their anterior cingulate cortices before the start of neurofeedback training. Subsequent to completion of neurofeedback training, however, the children in the experimental group showed significant ACC activation - analogous to what would be found in children who were not diagnosed as suffering from ADHD - while there was no change in the level of activation found in children in the control group.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Harold Burke of the FNAN Scientific Advisory Committee said: "This substantive, controlled study has made an important contribution in that it shows specific brain changes after neurofeedback, and it utilizes one of the most respected imaging technologies to substantiate that change."

The Foundation for Neurofeedback and Applied Neuroscience is a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation, based in California, dedicated to encouraging research into the mechanisms underlying neurofeedback and its clinical applications. FNAN seeks to foster meaningful scientific research by providing technical assistance and other types of support to individuals seeking to extend the horizons of the field.

Source: Business Wire

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