Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
With EEG neurofeedback, the weaker the study, the better the results look. Six large trials using sham feedback, with parents and teachers kept unaware of who received what, found nothing beyond placebo.
That shrinking with rigour is itself the finding. Blinding matters especially here because the outcome is a rating made by adults who have watched their child sit through months of sessions and badly want it to have been worth it. Anyone about to pay for a course of it deserves to be told that.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He made the night so that you can rest in it and the daylight so that you can see (Quran 10:67). Being able to see clearly is provided for, and in research that means designs that stop us seeing only what we hoped for.
هُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ لِتَسۡكُنُواْ فِيهِ وَٱلنَّهَارَ مُبۡصِرًاۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَسۡمَعُونَ
It is He who made the night so that you can rest in it and the daylight so that you can see- there truly are signs in this for those who hear
Qur’an 10:67read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Two trials sit side by side. A triple blind trial in adults found EEG neurofeedback did no better than sham feedback. A separate small trial of real time fMRI neurofeedback in adolescents did improve some symptoms against an active control, at an early stage and on quite different technology. Early and small is worth watching, and it is not what is being sold in clinics.
Schönenberg M, Wiedemann E, Schneidt A, Scheeff J, Logemann A, Keune PM, Hautzinger M. (2017). Neurofeedback, sham neurofeedback, and cognitive-behavioural group therapy in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a triple-blind, randomised, controlled trial.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Alegria AA, Wulff M, Brinson H, Barker GJ, Norman LJ, Brandeis D, Stahl D, David AS, Taylor E, Giampietro V, Rubia K. (2017). Real-time fMRI neurofeedback in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.. Human brain mapping doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
When the measure is a hopeful adult's opinion, hope has to be designed out or it ends up in the result.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Programmes built on tones through headphones and balance drills have not been shown to help ADHD. If a child does seem steadier during them, the likeliest reason is that something is occupying the part of them that goes looking for stimulation.
If a stimulant that was working suddenly is not, ask what else the person has started taking before deciding the dose needs to go up.
Several professional bodies came together to say that vision therapy is not a treatment for ADHD. A joint statement like that is unusual, and it is worth quoting to a family word for word.