Presented by Diana Martinez, MD: Children with epilepsy experience cognitive deficits and well-being issues that have detrimental effects on their development. Pharmacotherapy is the standard of care in epilepsy; however, few interventions exist to promote cognitive development and to mitigate disease burden. The earlier patients are treated with this condition, the more likely it is to prevent severe disabilities over time. This lecture will show the results of the published study in Epilepsy and Behaviour journal in October 2019 where the aim was to examine the impact of two different modalities of neurofeedback (NFB) on cognitive functioning and quality-of-life (QOL) measurements in children and adolescents with controlled focal epilepsy. The study also explored the effects of NFB on clinical outcomes and electroencephalography (EEG) quantitative analysis.
The methodology included participants (n=44) with controlled focal epilepsy were randomized to one of three arms: sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) NFB (n=15), slow cortical potentials (SCP) NFB (n=16), or sham NFB (n=13). All participants received 25 sessions of intervention. The attention switching task (AST), Liverpool Seizure Severity Scale (LSSS), seizure frequency (SF), EEG power spectrum, and coherence were measured at baseline, postintervention, and at 3-month follow-up.
This lecture will provide the first data on two NFB modalities (SMR and SCP) including cognitive, neurophysiological, and clinical outcomes in pediatric epilepsy. Sensorimotor rhythm NFB improved cognitive functioning, while all the interventions showed improvements in QOL. The study supplies preliminary data to support that SMR neurofeedback training as an intervention should further be explored as a therapeutic option for children who suffer from focal epilepsy. During the lecture, we will discuss and demonstrate the powerful placebo effect that we can observe in the use of these interventions and how they can be explained inside the clinical practice and in research. We will uncover the current position of the medical field about neurofeedback to be used for psychiatric and neurological disorders.
