Changes in cognitive evoked potentials during non pharmacological treatment in children...

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most widely spread condition of school aged children affecting 5% of children of this age. The unified consensus of the precise diagnosis of this condition is still absent. This fact encourages the researchers to seek the alternative neurometric tools which will help the clinicians in diagnosis making process of ADHD. The neurophysiologic approaches especially event-related potentials (ERPs) are mostly important from this point of view. The later response of ERPs (P3) reflects the most important parts of executive functioning frequently affected in ADHD children - the process of mental effortfullness to select the appropriate behavior and decision making. Besides the diagnosis the treatment of ADHD is also the point of concern of neurologists and neurophyschologists. In recent years EEG biofeedback ( Neurofeedback-NF) have become the alternative treatment as in some cases pharmacological drugs are non effective. The positive impact of NF was based on improvement detected by various questionnaires which are less valid but its effectiveness on ERPs parameters is still unknown. Thus we aimed to study the changes of ERPs after NF therapy. Methods: We have studied 93 children with ADHD of combined subtype (ADHDcom) without any kind of pharmacological treatment. Age range 9-12 years. The children were divided into two subgroups: The first ADHDcom-1 (48 children) were children where NF treatment was carried out and the second subgroup of ADHDcom-2 (45 children) were non treated children. Results: We have observed statistically significant improvement of parameters of later response like P3 in ADHD-1 compared with ADHD-2 whereas NF was non effective for earlier component like N1. Conclusions: NF can positively affect on the P3 parameters which is very important in ADHD children as P3 reflects the speed of information processing as well as selection of appropriate action and decision making which are frequently affected in ADHD children.

Georgian Med News. 2011 Mar;(192):47-57. Bakhtadze S, Janelidze M, Khachapuridze N. S. Khechinashvili Univeristy Clinic, Tbilisi, Georgia; G. Zhvania University Clinic, Tbilisi, Georgia.