US News reports
Neurofeedback: An ADHD Treatment That Retrains the Brain?
Neurofeedback hasn't yet proved out and isn't cheap, but it dangles the prospect of a permanent cure
They are not cheap and not proven; the lure of a cure is enticing. But the science seems wanting as well.
What ever happened to the scientific method as learned in grade school? What ever happened to rigor in investigation?
"ADHD experts until recently. They have noted that most studies showing benefits have been run by investigators with a financial stake; even a rigorously designed study "tends to find what it wants to find" under such conditions, says Peter Jensen, cochair of the division of child psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Nor have the studies met standards for rigorous design. Historically, most have been too small to be credible, with fewer than 50 patients, and have been sloppily done. Results have not been compared with results from medication or other forms of therapy, for example, nor has a control group received "sham treatment" that patients believed was neurofeedback but in fact did nothing, like a placebo sugar pill in a drug trial. A 2005 review coauthored by Russell Barkley, a leading expert on ADHD at the Medical University of South Carolina, raised some of these concerns. The first long-term results of neurofeedback, published in 2008, were similarly flawed. While positive, they reflected only 23 children who were followed for just two years."
