Effect On Functional Brain Network Of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Children By Neurofeedback Training

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)is a common neurological disorder syndrome in children and adolescents.It is characterized by inattention,impulsivity,hyperactivity,and behavioral control difficulties.The traditional method for treating ADHD is medication treatment,but these treatments may have problems,such as side effects and drug dependence.Neurofeedback is a non-medication treatment of ADHD,and its core is through the regulating of imbalanced EEG rhythm waves thereby to affect and improve abnormal nerve activity,and eventually to relieve inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms and other behavioral symptoms of ADHD.Although scale can assess children with ADHD and straightforward reflect the degree of abnormality or abnormal psychological behavior on children,but it is imprecise.Whether neurofeedback affects certain characteristics of EEG,and whether the changes of these characteristics can be used as a quantitative assessment of the neurofeedback training effects are worth studying.EEG coherence analysis is an effective method for studying brain connectivity.Low-resolution tomography analysis(LORETA)method is an effective method for neuronal localization.Therefore,this study mainly analyzes and discusses the change of resting state EEG coherence before and after neurofeedback as well as the change of its neuronal localization at each frequency band in order to provide a theoretical and technical support for quantifying the effects of ADHD neurofeedback training.In this study of ADHD children’s behavioral changes in ADHD symptoms before and after neurofeedback,brain network connectivity and neuronal localization changes,research methods include:(1)Participants: 16 children with ADHD and 16 normal children.Children with ADHD were diagnosed with DSM-IV and scales.Normal children had neither history of mental illness nor family history of mental illness.(2)Experimental data: 60 times(about 5-8 months)were treated with neurofeedback training.The EEGs of children with ADHD before and after neurofeedback training,and the EEGs of normal children under awake and closed-eyes conditions were collected.(3)Acquiring the feedback of ADHD children’s parents and teachers by using SWAN parent and SWAN teacher scales before and after the neurofeedback training on ADHD children..(4)Data was collected according to the 10/20 system with 19 channels of EEG selected and pretreated,such as,removing baseline shift,electrooculogram,electromyogram,eye movement artifacts,50 Hz power frequency interference,etc.And 120 s of data was selected for analysis.(5)The coherence in each frequency band from channel i to channel j of ADHD children is calculated based on the EEG coherence algorithm to obtain the coherence matrix of ADHD children.The coherence matrix of normal children should be obtained in the same way.(6)The changes of ADHD children brain connections of intrahemispheric and interhemispheric were compared between before and after neurofeedback training in different brain regions.(7)The low-resolution tomography analysis(LORETA)method was used to compare the changes in neuronal localization.According to the above methods,the following four results have been obtained: 1.SWAN scale scoresThe scores showed significant differences in both inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity between before and after the neurofeedback training.The scores of both SWAN parental scale and SWAN teacher scale after neurofeedback were significantly lower than before neurofeedback.2.Intrahemispheric coherenceAfter Theta/Beta neurofeedback training participants decreased short-medium intrahemispheric coherence in the Theta band.Higher Theta and Alpha coherences in long distance intrahemispheric coherences were also observed.3.Interhemispheric coherencesAfter Theta/Beta neurofeedback training participants have increased frontal interhemispheric coherences in the Alpha band and reduced in Theta band in comparison to the ones before neurofeedback training.Temporal coherences have been reduced in Theta band but increased in Alpha band and the central-parietal-occipital coherences have been reduced in both Delta and Theta bands.4.Low resolution tomography analysisThree bands Delta(0.5-4 Hz),Theta(4-8 Hz),and Alpha(8-13 Hz),which have changed in coherence before and after neurofeedback training,are explored with LORETA method in the frequency domain.Before the neurofeedback training,the main focus was on the frontal lobe.After the neurofeedback training,the results showed that it mainly occurred in the frontal lobe and parietal lobe.Theta/Beta neurofeedback training as a non-medication treatment can significantly improve the neurological disorders in children with ADHD,and then improve the behavior of ADHD.The SWAN scale found that neurofeedback can improve the symptoms of abnormal ADHD in children.Theta/Beta Neurofeedback training has a positive effect on EEG coherence.Theta/Beta neurofeedback can improve the EEG coherence in different frequency bands between intrahemispheric and interhemispheric in children with ADHD,which is closer to healthy children.Using the LORETA source location finding,the change of neuronal localization happened mainly in the Theta band before and after ADHD child feedback training.The neuronal localization after neurofeedback training showed that it mainly occurred in the frontal lobe and parietal lobe,which is similar to the healthy children.These results indicate that neurofeedback training can affect the brain activity in children with ADHD,and changes in EEG coherence and neuronal localization may serve as quantitative parameters for the evaluation of neurofeedback training and provide an objective quantitative assessment method of the overall change in ADHD symptoms.