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Below is a brief description of the symptom change data (phase one) and some selected comments from the family members.
Beatrice & Ronnie
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Clinical Effectiveness of Neurofeedback in Treating High-Functioning Autism or Asperger’s Disorder
Some of the important breakthroughs in medicine have occurred through clinical intuition and discovery. A modern example of this is the serendipitous discovery of neurofeedback helping children on the autistic spectrum.High-functioning autistic children, in addition to their autistic symptoms, frequently exhibit some of the same symptoms as children with ADD/ADHD such as lack of sustained concentration, distractibility and hyperactivity. The linkage or similarity was that the slow brainwave activity characteristic of ADD children is also seen in high-functioning autistic children.
We know that neurofeedback has been clinically proven for many years to enable ADD children to improve brain functioning by reducing slow brainwave patterns. This produces a reduction or resolution of their symptoms. Expanding scientific research has supported the safety and effectiveness of neurofeedback as a preferred non-drug treatment of ADD.
Since neurofeedback has been proven to help ADD symptoms in children with ADD, can it also help these same symptoms in high-functioning autistic children?
In 1997 a family brought their 6 year old son to us who had been diagnosed with high functioning autism. He also exhibited all the symptoms of hyperactive impulsive ADHD. We never had treated an autistic child before and did not know if our treatment protocols for ADHD would help him. We offered to administer a limited number of neurofeedback treatments to him to at least see if we could help the ADHD component of his disorder. Remarkably, some of his core symptoms of autism began to improve as well as his ADHD symptoms. We ended up providing him with the full treatment course and his clinical improvement was quite dramatic in the autism as well as the ADHD symptoms.
In our more recent clinical trials with neurofeedback, we have seen this treatment improve language, emotional and social skill deficits, as well as attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity in our autistic patients. This is not to overlook the reality that autistic children have more complex deficits than ADD children. Our clinical results range from fair to exceptional.
With the aid of Quantitative EEG (QEEG) brain mapping, we are able to further pinpoint the location and specific type of abnormal brainwave patterns in high-functioning autistic children. This enables us to use the most relevant neurofeedback protocol for each individual patient to improve or normalize functioning, in addtion to using our existing ADD neurofeedback protocols.
In our treatment program, an autistic child that we recently treated showed excessive slow brainwaves in the right frontal part of his brain. This region is involved in interpreting facial/emotional expressions and social cues. Through QEEG directed neurofeedback treatment, he was able to improve the functioning of this region of his brain which produced clinical breakthroughs for him in social interactions and reading body language in others.
Parents of children with ADD, as well as autism, are obviously exposed to more challenges and frustrations in parenting. Our providing additional psychosocial support to the parents of our patients, whether it is ADD of high-functioning autism, enhances the improvement and development of the child from our treatment.
Clinic Reports Dramatic Results in Treating Children With Autism
LOS ANGELES, CA. – She was a mother without hope. Diagnosed with autism, her six year old son, EJ, bit other children, threw tantrums and chairs. “He had no future,” says Beatrice Tan, whose family stopped going to church--too risky to put EJ in the nursery.Now, after several months of specialized neurofeedback therapy at Drake Institute of Behavioral Medicine (www.drakeinstitute.com) in Los Angeles, EJ no longer bites: he hugs. He has friends, and “we have hope,” says Beatrice, now back in church with EJ and husband, Ronnie.
“We see autistic children coming out of their social comas, it’s huge,” says Dr. David F. Velkoff, Drake’s medical director. “We’re excited whenever we can help jump start a child’s life.”
Read About Drake Institute's Dramatic Clinical Results
Impacting on Autistic Patients and Families
For more than one year Drake has been actively treating High Functioning Autism patients with very satisfying results. We are now presenting our data to the medical scientific community. To date, we have been treating more than 70 high-functioning autistic patients, and the results have been clearly dramatic. We are arranging a separate research project with the Child Development Center at the University of California at Irvine to further explore and expand on these findings so as to further improve our care systems. This new research program begins a long term study using collected data in two different but connected spheres of influence of Drake Care.First, which symptoms have been affected and by how much? How have the patient’s symptoms improved? Have the patient’s symptoms improved? This information appears in the graph below with a brief description of the symptom improvement. The second sphere is the impact felt by the patient’s family. Detailed findings are available on our website, including data and parental interviews (video).
The graph shows that the patients improved in all problem areas compared to their level of symptom severity prior to treatment at the Drake Institute, with social skills showing the most improvement.
ADD/ADHD • Autism
• Language Disorders • Stress
Disorders
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Behavioral Medicine & Medical Associates
