Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25870550›Full record

ReviewFrontiers in human neuroscience2015

Are treatment effects of neurofeedback training in children with ADHD related to the successful regulation of brain activity? A review on the learning of regulation of brain activity and a contribution to the discussion on specificity.

Agnieszka Zuberer, Daniel Brandeis, Renate Drechsler

Abstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
43citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

43 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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  7. The efficacy of Ritalin in ADHD children under neurofeedback training.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2018
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  11. Learning curves of theta/beta neurofeedback in children with ADHD.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2017
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Agnieszka ZubererDepartment of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland.
Daniel BrandeisDepartment of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland ; Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Zurich, Switzerland ; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/ Heidelberg University Mannheim, Germany ; Center for Integrative Human Physiology, University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland.
Renate DrechslerDepartment of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

While issues of efficacy and specificity are crucial for the future of neurofeedback training, there may be alternative designs and control analyses to circumvent the methodological and ethical problems associated with double-blind placebo studies. Surprisingly, most NF studies do not report the most immediate result of their NF training, i.e., whether or not children with ADHD gain control over their brain activity during the training sessions. For the investigation of specificity, however, it seems essential to analyze the learning and adaptation processes that take place in the course of the training and to relate improvements in self-regulated brain activity across training sessions to behavioral, neuropsychological and electrophysiological outcomes. To this aim, a review of studies on neurofeedback training with ADHD patients which include the analysis of learning across training sessions or relate training performance to outcome is presented. Methods on how to evaluate and quantify learning of EEG regulation over time are discussed. "Non-learning" has been reported in a small number of ADHD-studies, but has not been a focus of general methodological discussion so far. For this reason, selected results from the brain-computer interface (BCI) research on the so-called "brain-computer illiteracy", the inability to gain control over one's brain activity, are also included. It is concluded that in the discussion on specificity, more attention should be devoted to the analysis of EEG regulation performance in the course of the training and its impact on clinical outcome. It is necessary to improve the knowledge on characteristic cross-session and within-session learning trajectories in ADHD and to provide the best conditions for learning.

Indexed as

ADHDlearning curveslearning indicesneurofeedbackself-regulated brain activityspecificity

Identifiers

PMID25870550
PMCPMC4376076

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.