Moving on to humans with refractory epilepsy--the most severe kind--Sterman achieved a 60% reduction of seizures in 60% of his patients. Numerous other experiments at more than a dozen other institutions have demonstrated even higher success rates, and the treatment of epilepsy is the most established of the protocols for neurofeedback. Sterman, who is now research director at EEG Spectrum, has theorized that training may activate healthy adjacent neurons to take the place of damaged ones. We are still a long way from a real understanding of why neurofeedback does what it seems to, but Sterman maintains that "if the neural substrate is intact, the neurons can be trained."
One of Sterman's researchers, Joel Lubar, Ph.D., of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, took their work even further and in a different direction. He had noticed that hyperactivity decreased in patients treated for epilepsy and, based on this, created the protocol now used for treatment of ADD.
WIRED in the Schools
One place where the treatment of ADD has been put to the test is the Enrico Fermi Center for the Performing Arts in Yonkers, New York. Three years ago, Linda Vergara, assistant at the school, was faced with taking her son from a private school because he was hyperactive. Within several sessions, she says, her son began to change. Profoundly "He started sitting through dinner," she says, "and finishing his homework."
Her experience convinced her to bring an EEG neurofeedback machine into the inner-city school of about one thousand minority students. Three years and sixty kids later, the program has worked. "It has fumed people's lives around," says Vergara. The program is being expanded to two other schools in Yonkers, and eventually, school board members say, to all twenty-two schools in the district. So far, neurofeedback has kept twenty students out of expensive special-education classrooms and thereby saved the district an estimated $500,000. When I visited the school recently, parents, teachers, and children raved about this alternative to Ritalin. "If it works here," says psychologist Mary Jo Sabo, Ph.D., who helped Vergara bring the technique to Fermi, "it will work anywhere."
And here's fascinating news: even when treating ADD, therapists and teachers see other positive changes in behavior. Sterman saw ADD diminish with treatment for epilepsy, and he saw sleep improve. Rachel Campanella, a fourth-grade teacher at Fermi, told me a story about a boy in her class named Nelson. "His parents were worried about him. He would come into class and put his head down on the desk," says Campanella. "He had no self-esteem, there was no social interaction. If I spoke to him, he would nod his head. For months I never knew if he had teeth, because he never smiled. He was like an infant in a big guy's body."
Nelson started EEG training in March of 1997. "In June," Campanella says, "he raised his hand for the first time ever. He started to speak, to smile. He spoke in complete sentences. Now he comes by with a grin and says `Hello, Mrs. Campanella."' Though case-by-case examples, such as that of Nelson, do not offer proof of this or any treatment's efficacy, they do make an impression.
Another area where neurofeedback has proven successful is in the treatment of closed head injury. Symptoms of head injury can range from mood swings and irritability to short-term memory loss, confusion, headaches, nausea, and blurred vision. There are no drugs to treat closed head injury; any recovery usually occurs on its own within two years. Psychologist Steven Stockdale, Ph.D., director of the Neuro-Health Center in Colorado Springs, is one of several practitioners using neurofeedback for mild closed head injury. In an ongoing three-year study of sixty patients already past the two-year recovery mark yet still suffering from symptoms, he has found that "about 80% of the people we work with learn to do the feedback. In those patients, there is a 75% reduction in symptoms. They just clear up."
The technique may even help in post-traumatic stress disorder. New York City psychiatrist Daniel Kuhn, M.D., treats veterans of the Israeli war of 1973. Even if PTSD is resolved with standard psychotherapy, there are residual cognitive problems. "You can't talk people out of these. Nothing works as well to clear them up as EEG neurofeedback," says Kuhn.
FEEDING MY HEAD
Beta training was where I started my journey with neurofeedback. I was curious about the technology, especially after I heard talk of the Clean Windshield Effect. Bernadette Pedersen, an EEG technician from the local hospital, came and helped me hook up the first few times. Though the equipment--two computers, a neuroamplifier, and some EEG electrodes--is relatively easy to use, one does need training, and, for therapeutic uses, a trained doctor or psychologist is necessary. For a half hour or so, I watched a game: white lines formed in the middle of the highway and a beep sounded when I produced the right brain waves. About an hour after that, it was as if someone had flipped a switch. The world looked sharp and crystalline, its colors richer. My thinking was sharper and I had a quiet kind of energy It lasted a couple of hours.
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