News

12/16/2009

Gulf War veteran Lynn Gibbons has awful memories of combat with her fourth-grade son, Brent. "He was an out-of-control monster whenever you asked him to do something," the former Air Force computer operations officer recalls. Brent, who had received a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, was also flailing in his classes at Saratoga Elementary School in Springfield -- unable, says his mom, to write a coherent paragraph. That was seven years ago. Today Brent is taking advanced-placement high school courses, maintaining a 3.5 grade-point average, playing guitar in a band and -- drum roll -- helping with chores. Says Gibbons: "I am no longer afraid that jail time will be in his future." What made the difference, she's convinced, is a high-tech intervention called neurofeedback, also known as EEG biofeedback. Ordinary biofeedback is a kind of mind-over-body training in which a person uses electronic equipment to monitor an involuntary physiological process such as heart rate and learns to gain some control over it. Neurofeedback operates on the same principle -- except in this case, it's mind over brain.