Neurofeedback to balance a child's brain or Drugs?What would you choose?

Through some of the therapies that we use in Ysgol Pen Coch children's behaviour can improve. However, once their behavioural problems are under control their learning disabilities sometimes become more obvious. Even though therapies can help pupils to relax and be more ready to take part in education their learning skills often need specialised help.

In pupils with learning disabilities there is often loose connections between the auditory and word processing systems. They sometimes have poor eye to hand coordination and issues with the sensory integration systems. Pupils with a marked auditory delay find it difficult to follow and remember instructions from a teacher. 

 Children with ASD or ADHD brains are hyper alert to danger and their brains are always in the fight or flight mode. The brainwaves of children with ASD and ADHD are often loosely coordinated and don't come together in a coherent pattern. They are unable to filter out irrelevant information and so cannot get on with what they have been asked to do. Children with autism often have excessive activity in the right temporal lobe, the fear Centre of the brain, combined with too much frontal slow wave activity. This means that their hyper-aroused emotional brains dominate their mental life.

 Research has shown that by calming the fear centre you produce more relaxed brain patterns. At least 36 studies in America have shown that neurofeedback can be at least as effective as drugs in alleviating symptoms. The psychiatric drugs industry makes millions of pounds every year. In contrast to drugs once neurofeedback has trained the brain to produce different patterns of electrical communication, no further treatment is necessary. Drugs however do not change fundamental brain activity and work only as long as the patient keeps taking them.

 Neurofeedback has been proven to help the brain to charge up areas in the brain that are not working and also create new brainwave patterns. The feedback can reinforce selected brainwave patterns while discouraging others. Neurofeedback has no negative side effects.

 Neither drugs nor conventional therapy have been shown to activate the neuroplasticity necessary for people to learn better. Neurofeedback may succeed where these have failed.

 It surely is  time for us to return to understanding the brain in relation to electrical communication and stop relying on the drug industry to answer our problems when they may in fact add to them.

Staff from Ysgol Pen Coch will be trained in Neurofeedback in July 2016. We aim to provide pupils with the opportunity to have neurofeedback training in the autumn of 2016.There are several different types of Neurofeedback machines on the market. They are all expensive . We are currently raising funds .