Autism Therapy: neurofeedback

We have used neurofeedback (NFB) for our Asperger son. I don't know how well it works for autistic people. For Asperger syndrome, it can work very well, but it's a long process.

We started the therapy when my son was 9 years old, having extreme difficulties at school because he couldn't cope with anything. His anxiety was so high even the NFB doctor thought it was remarkable. The initial assessment showed that my son had high delta-theta waves (associated with ADD-like attention span), low sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) waves (associated with sensory issues,fidgeting, tics, agitation, and anxiety), and high high-beta waves (associated with intense anxiety). This profile is pretty much exactly what all Asperger kids look like.

We liked the NFB approach because unlike virtually all other ASD treatments we tried or looked at, this was the first one that looked inside our son's brain to see what was going on. The assessment wasn't based on theory, observation, or cookie-cutter practice, but on the actual output from the kid's head.

The NFB treatment involved playing computer games via electrodes stuck to the scalp and ears. It sounds more fun than it is, because the games are very slow. We had to bribe my son to do the therapy. We are very tech-savvy, so we trained at the centre so that we could do the sessions at home (we live hours away from the clinic).We did the sessions every day so that we could see the results faster. We kept a log sheet of observations, hours of therapy, and game points, and included any observations from his teachers.

After 30 hours of treatment, he suddenly figured out how to control his high-beta waves. Where he used to get scores of 10, he could now get scores of 200, then 400, then 1000. He had no idea how he was controlling the levels, but he was doing it. Within a few days, we noticed that his anxiety was GONE. I mean GONE. Suddenly nothing bothered him anymore. He wasn't afraid of the dark, or of barking dogs, or of rain, or of traffic. He stopped fretting about death and getting older and started simply living.

We continued the therapy for another 30 hours and got his SMRs up. That's when he started eating a bunch of new foods and playing outside. He'd even ask to try out something new. However, the SMR's are the hardest wave to fix, because they're deep in the brain, and he didn't maintain the high SMR's for long.

The one we had the least success with was the delta-theta, which ironically is usually the easiest to treat. Oh well. So he's still a space cadet!

We wrapped up the therapy at 100 hours, very pleased with the results.

My son is now 14 and doing well. We've noticed in the ensuing years since doing his NFB that it's worthwhile to do tune-ups three to four times a year. Video games, sedentary activities, and long car drives all seem to push his brainwaves back into the old patterns. We can tell when this occurs because suddenly he can't cope with anything, he's screaming a lot, and the teachers are phoning us to ask what's going on. All we need to do is a week of NFB, a half-hour per day, and the problems disappear. We've now trained our son to do his own sessions, so it's very easy for us.

If you want to learn more about NFB, you need to do some reading first. The best book on the subject is one that's probably in your public library: A Symphony in the Brain. It explains how the brain works. There is a chapter on NFB near the end. Besides that, there are many books available discussing the applications for NFB treatment. It works so well for anxiety disorders, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (which are all disorders in which the brainwaves get into bad patterns and get stuck there) that its popularity is growing. NFB is expensive. There are some people trying to develop simpler, more user-friendly technology, but the practitioners are used to the old systems. We have to wait for a younger generation of NFB doctors to move into the field to take it in new directions.