613-634-0609
Traumatic Brain Injury
Kay Wing
This study followed the neurofeedback experiences of a 19 year old girl who had a traumatic brain injury and a brain tumor about seven years before. She still exhibited a significant tremor in the right side, weakness, lack of coordination, and trouble with gait due to the injury. She underwent 40 sessions of neurofeedback over the course of three weeks to fix the prominent asymmetry in her brain activity found by the qEEG. Her progress was measured by testing her coordination and strength via a variety of different activities.
At the end of the neurofeedback sessions, she exhibited an increase in every measure except one. Anecdotal evidence by her family and friends also confirmed that she had significantly improved her coordination and strength. These results support the findings of many other studies that have shown the benefits of neurofeedback in rehabilitation TBI. However, this case is even more promising because it’s showing that neurofeedback still works many years after the injury.
Maria Pachalska, Grzegorz Mańko, Iurii D. Kropotov, Andrzej Mirski, Małgorzata Łukowicz, Anna Jedwabińska, and Jan Talar
This study follows a patient who was in a car accident which led to severe head injury and her being in a coma for almost a month. This left her with significant neurological and psychological deficits, such as amnesia, only talking in the third person, not recognizing her own face, confusion of sexual identity, and problems with executive function. Ten years after the accident, her symptoms had only worsened. She tried behavioral therapy but it did not help.
She then tried 40 sessions of neurofeedback. Neuropsychological testing was done before and after using the Patient Competency Rating Scale, IQ, Frontal Behavioral Inventory, and many more. Neurofeedback led to significant increases across all of these tests, such as IQ increasing by over 30 points. They also looked at physiological changes using ERPs. They did not find any statistically significant changes there, but this does not mean that neurofeedback does not work as a therapy. The behavioral improvements alone are promising for the efficacy of using neurofeedback to treat TBI.
The drawbacks of this study though are that it’s only a case study. Further research using more participants and a control group is needed.
Silent Epidemic: The Effects Of Neurofeedback On Quality Of Life
Rajakumari Pampa Reddy, Jamuna Rajeswaran, Indira Devi Bhagavatula, and Thennarasu Kandavel
Traumatic Brain Injuries can have a significant impact on all aspects of one’s life. This study looks into neurofeedback’s effect on improving quality-of-life (QOL) in TBI patients. Sixty participants, who had a TBI three months prior, were split into a waitlist group (receive treatment after study) or interventional group (receive treatment immediately). They were given 20 sessions of alpha-theta neurofeedback training over a period of 4 weeks. Their QOL was assessed before and after the treatment using World Health Organization (WHO) QOL and WHO-BREF scales. They found that the interventional group’s QOL had statistically significant improvements in all areas when compared to the waitlist group. This suggests that neurofeedback is an effective intervention for improving quality of life in TBI patients.
Bennett CN, et al.
This study examined the efficacy of neurofeedback training as a treatment for symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and for perceived stress and cortisol levels associated with TBI. 60 TBI patients were assigned to the neurofeedback treatment group and 30 patients to the control treatment group. The neurofeedback group received 20 sessions of alpha-theta neurofeedback training. The study found that there was significant improvement in symptoms (as reported by patients), perceived stress, and cortisol levels.