Drake Institute
Uniqueness of Each Patient Requires Individualized Treatment Protocols
A research study just published in the scientific journal Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback reported that treating ADHD patients with neurofeedback based on “the patient’s individual brain activity measured by quantitative EEG” or QEEG brainmap produced much more improvement than seen in previous treatment studies that did not use brain mapping.
This further confirms what we have experienced for the last 6 years at the Drake Institute. That neurofeedback treatment protocols need to be “tailored” to help normalize the specific abnormal brainwave patterns linked to the symptoms in each individual patient. One patient may have attentional weaknesses due to the left frontal part of the brain producing too many slow brainwaves. Whereas another ADHD patient may have difficulty focusing for task completion because the right frontal part of the brain is generating too many fast brainwaves. In either case the brain is out of balance.
These 2 patients could have the same symptoms but require different neurofeedback protocols to normalize brain functioning. One has an underactive frontal brain and the other patient has an overstimulated frontal brain, both disrupting normal brain functioning. Think of the analogy of a muscle that is flacid and will not contract for usage versus a muscle that is in spasm. Both conditions make the muscle dysfunctional.
Similarly, an Autistic or Asperger’s syndrome patient may have too many slow brainwaves in the right posterior region of the brain that would interfere with being able to pick up on social cues. Another patient on the Autism Spectrum could have the same difficulty with processing social cues but it could be a result of too much fast brainwave activity. Obviously, these 2 patients would require completely different treatment protocols to improve or resolve their similar symptoms.
In the practice of medicine, this is no different than doing a bacterial culture first to both identify the cause of the infection and the most specific,effective antibiotic to treat the infection.
David F. Velkoff, M.D.
Medical Director
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