Feb. 21, 2000 (San Francisco)
--- WebMD
It looks like a scene from a 1950s science fiction
flick: Patients with electrodes attached to their skulls sit deep
in concentration, focusing their minds to control the beeps and
squiggly lines produced by an electronic monitor.
Now these fantastic visions are unfolding with increasing
frequency in real medical clinics around the country; people with
epilepsy, attention deficit disorder, and other forms of serious
mental illness are treating these ailments by learning to control
electrical patterns in their own brains. This therapy, known as
neurofeedback, is emerging as the hottest new twist on biofeedback.
Though biofeedback was first developed by psychologists,
its primary uses have been for illnesses below the neck. Standard
biofeedback teaches you first to become conscious of normally unconscious
functions such as pulse, digestion, and body temperature, then teaches
you to control them in response to sounds or other cues from monitoring
devices. These techniques have allowed patients to lower their blood
pressure, banish their headaches, and control their incontinence
without using drugs.
Now new insights into the biology of mental illness
have made it possible to treat them in a similar fashion.
Aerobics for the Brain
In neurofeedback (also known as neurotherapy), therapists
attach electrodes to patients' unshaved scalps. Through these electrodes,
a device measures electrical impulses in the brain, amplifies them,
and then records them. These impulses are divided into different
types of brain waves.
For example, in order to concentrate on a task, parts
of the brain must produce more high-frequency beta waves. To relax,
the brain must produce more low-frequency theta waves
Using a program similar to a computer game (only without
a joystick), people learn to control the video display by achieving
the mental state that produces increases in the desired brain wave.
Some practitioners call it "aerobics for the brain."
In epilepsy, where once only medications and surgery
could reduce seizures, neurofeedback is showing results. A German
study published in the April 1999 journal Clinical Neurophysiology
found that two thirds of epilepsy patients could reduce their seizure
rate by learning to control very low frequency brain waves in the
cortex.
"In people with epilepsy, part of the brain has
become unstable, and occasionally it triggers the rest of the brain
into seizure," explains Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D., an Encino,
Calif. physicist who trains biofeedback therapists. Neurofeedback
may help stabilize those circuits and reduce the probability of
seizures."
New Understanding
The use of neurofeedback for psychiatric problems
depends on recent understanding about these diseases. In the 1960s,
when biofeedback was developed as a therapy, schizophrenia and attention
deficit were considered mainly the result of emotional trauma or
poor upbringing. Consequently, biofeedback practitioners first focused
on obviously physical problems. Now scientists understand better
the electrical and chemical components of mental illness, creating
opportunities for neurofeedback.
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