A little bit of advice would be appreciated here.

Post Reply New Topic

OK, so I have been looking in to Asperger's solutions/understanding recently. (sorry This is all new to me and want to learn it inside out)

I tried to go out to get help but cant get exactly what I want. But today I came across something very interesting.

2 secs of history, If you allow me:
I was doing some research and searched for "superficial conversation" on you tube. Nothing related popped up ( this was before discovering the hand book on this site which is great ! )

The unrelated video that did pop up was some bs about meditation. For me, this is the equilivent to hocus pokus. Fiction like this had no place in my research.

God knows why I played the video. Maybe, I just wanted to see why so many people fall for such stuff. I listened and it actually made sense. (This post it is not about meditation). It wasn't just about trying to relax for hours. It was about using attention to separate yourself from your feelings,thoughts and memories.

A more detailed explication if you want to know a bit more. Otherwise, skip this part:

You focus on your your thoughts. You don't entertain your thoughts. You just take note of them. Like "oh this thought popped up" and then see what other thought pops up. You never get involved with the thought process. Using your attention, you'r actually distracting yourself by keeping track of thoughts, or your tendencies. This keeps you busy. You are now separated from your thoughts and feelings as you no longer are giving them attention, you are now an observer rather then a player of them. ( you are only aware of what you give attention to) . By not partisipating in your thoughts, your brain automatically slows down. Aslo, in initial stages you learn about things that don't usually get attention from yourself as other "noise" is to prominent and focused on. People report that they attain great happiness from this. Possible, as happiness and love is something that is in us and not something that is given to us by a partner. Many people have great difficulty doing this as there is a point that it becomes apparent that you are loosing yourself. This is seen almost like death. A great fear comes along during this stage and most can't deal with moving to this new unknown world as they feel they will die! People that do this no longer depend on the world for happiness or any emotions. They live only in there head which they now control and can access any emotion they want. This is why they go live in a mountain, as all stimuli is simply an addition of the crap they just got rid of. In essence it is like formating your brain and putting the operating system on another drive. So The info that was in your brain is now a secondary drive that is there but used minimally. You have isolated the "you" (your attention, or the operating system) and distanced everything else.

But enough of that you can look it up. Lets get back on track. I wondered if it was possible, what effect it would have on me in relation to asperger's? But, it seemed too scary.


Back to the present:

So, I went to a place for aspies/autistic people. She explained to me about this biofeedback. I know it has been mentioned a bit. In essence it is very similar to the meditation above but not having to loose yourself.

Using a "game",a reward stimulus, your brain waves are recorded and compared with other NT's. I was told, I think, that my theta waves would probably be really high and causing me to always be thinking and trying to process information. This kept my brain busy going deep in to things and trying to analyse things too much. Which in turn, didn't let me quickly interpret a conversation and be able to quickly change topics as is needed for small talk. I agree so far, makes sense or at least doesn't not make sense.

This system would show all my waves and see what part of my brain was overworking and what part was under working. Lets say my theta was 90% higher then most. So, what they would do is set the machine to reward me once I lower my theta wave to 89%. Yay! i get a stimulus. As time goes on they lower the seting on the machine to 85%, 80%, 70% and so on ect. I soon realize what it is that needs to be done to relax that part of my brain. Rather then have to wait for it to decrease by luck thanks to the reward/feedback.

I'm pretty confident that this actually results to lowered waves when desired if practiced to a point that it becomes natural.
I must say to this point, everything makes sence regardless of the proof. That is to say there is a scientific reasoning behind it that I buy. And I'm a hard sell. As for the outcome and scientific studies I'm not so sure. Even studies I have found are often questionable.

So my over active thinking, has been controlled. Further, I have learnt how to control it. Since I can now ease up my analyzing, I can now have small talk, be able to not try to interpret a conversation, but just kinda let the words flow through me like an NT. I'm told.

I was also told that this can be used for my learning disablilties like dyscalculia. All these problems, it was implied, was not due to miss-wiring, but rather to some parts of my brain overworking and taking away from other parts Which I can see. Mis wiring, would be a simple way to explain it to NT's kind alike a metaphor.

Is this what aspergers actually is? The fact that we just can't regulate our brain to be in the same harmony (over focusing) as others for that is what she would be suggestiing.


2. Does this translate to no longer having aspergers or learing disabilities?



Aparently, 98 % of the people retain this change in brain waves for over 10 years. (lack of long term data i guess) that is if it is done for 40 sessions 3 times a week (probably dont need that much, but they gotta pay some bills. Having people come in to play a bad video game for 80$/hour will defiantly help paying some bills.)

Naturally, people who have only done it a couple of times will have noticed little change as they probably only got rewarded for correcting their brian waves by 2 %. Reward has to be given often at the begging so that you learn what direction to go in to get to the 100% correction level which you probably never have done and dont know how to do. So the first steps rely on the probability that you will lower by 2% on your own. This allows for a stimulus to be given which sets the course to guide you to higher %'s

Ok, so what does this mean? I think if I really want to stop myself from thinking I can. But, I dont see it being something I will enjoy doing. It may feel like trying to over concentrate or a similar feeling. This also makes us take a better look at out condition and ask our selves, Do we really want to lower our thinking? In essecne making us dumber, so that we dont think things out too much just so we can be on par with the rest of the world?

Well in my case, Im guessing that my aspergers (undiagnosed) is hindered by some learning disabilities which limits my capacity to retain alot of what a typicall asperger would excell at. So, why not train my brain to be dumber? keeping in mind that other parts will now be functioning better.

How will this feel? After seeing the video on the meditation I learnt that it is big change. But, the mediation is different. You are seperating you from your feelings, thoughts and memories. Thats a bit scary. Many people cant let go of that and I dont think I would want to. In essence your deleting your brain. This is not that same thing here, you'r just adjusting things to a wanted level while still being in your own head.

Lets recap questions that I have and others thinking about this type of therapy may have:

1. Is this what aspergers/ Ld's actually is? The fact that we just happend to not regulate the distribution of energy in our brian from birth, to the standards of the general population?

2. Does fixing this translate to no longer having aspergers or learing disabilities?

3. How will this feel ? As in, will it be something I will have to strain for? Will I be able to go back and forth alternating from my old and new distribution pattern? Will this mean I will be able to access one pattern during social situations and another during work?

4. If instead of watching the reward, ,which is based on maybe 1-5 wave lengths that are abnormal. If I focus more on the graph of all the waves for stimulus will I be able to learn how to adjust my brain to many situations and dim things on and off?

5. Will there be negative effects

6. Will it simply be the equivalent of kinda zoning out or smoking some reefer or something that is not life changing?

7. It should be mentioned that she did quote some studies. I didn't catch the details but it was some thing like this.
When overworked, the brain can't process certain tasks. Taking a 20 minute break and coming back they will find all of a sudden they can process the task. So, the study she mentioned was comparing a group of people that took a 20 minute break compared to a group that meditated for 20 mins. The group that meditated preformed better. I should hope so! But by how much ? I mean we are comparing to people that went out for a smoke, the bar's pretty low here. On the other hand it was mentioned that this was not a long term 40 sessions. Which makes us ask, would all of this tally up the equivalent of taking a 1 hour nap? Cause as far as I know I'm still Aspie after I nap.

8. Will people be able to view this as a serious topic and analyze it from a neurological , or scientific stand point rather then brush it off as something that wont work. Or say that they went a few times and it did'nt work when actaully they probably only got rewarded for a 2% change in waves?

9. Does any one have any results of studies they can post.. ill probably end up finding some eventually.

10. Do we have a volunteer guinea pig ?

In this case, would it be better to buy a device that measures brain waves and hopefully has software that graphs the brain waves in a way that compares a Aspie's waves to that of a NT. Just watch the graph, the reward would be lowering the high waves to normal. Anyways the reward they us is simply a picture coming in to focus.

Does anyone know of such a device or the cost of it, someone had mentioned something about getting a device from radio shack. The device they use has multiple electrodes that correspond to different parts of the brain.

I spent a few months doing neurofeedback a few years ago. The practitioner went over my brain map beforehand, pointing out the curves he wanted to change. After three months of training we looked at the map again, and the things he'd wanted to change appeared to have changed.

That was the good news. The not so good news was that I couldn't identify anything much that had changed in me or my behaviour - my impression is that I may have lost that bright and fine pointed edge I'd relied on throughout my undiagnosed half century, and there's a little evidence to support that. I've talked with parents who've noticed improvements in their autistic children from the same sort of therapy, and with others who've noticed the same sorts of improvements from more conventional behavioural work. I wouldn't recommend it, unless experiencing the thing for yourself is important to you.

I have too much too loose for gaining nothing. What would push me to this is if someone said that they did it and they can now socialize at a normal level. Even then, I would have to think about it.

It's great to have someone who has tried it. From what I am understanding here, is that you had no positive change and a possible negative change. Also, it is not clear if you were able to get back to your normal state.

But, If you did loose that sharpness and had no social improvement it would indicate that the theory that our thinking, or sharp, area of the brain being over stimulated is NOT the reason for our social inadequacies.

You mentioned little negative change, maybe that is why there were no notice in positive aspects.

Is this what others also felt that tried it?

Maybe the changes are too small. Were your brain waves were closer to a NT's level (or balanced as they probably show it) or closer to your original waves?

Neurofeedback outcomes in clients with Asperger's syndrome.
Thompson L, Thompson M, Reid A.
Source
ADD Centre, Mississauga, ON, L4Z 1V9, Canada. [email protected]
Abstract
This paper summarizes data from a review of neurofeedback (NFB) training with 150 clients with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) and 9 clients with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) seen over a 15 year period (1993-2008) in a clinical setting. The main objective was to investigate whether electroncephalographic (EEG) biofeedback, also called neurofeedback (NFB), made a significant difference in clients diagnosed with AS. An earlier paper (Thompson et al. 2009) reviews the symptoms of AS, highlights research findings and theories concerning this disorder, discusses QEEG patterns in AS (both single and 19-channel), and details a hypothesis, based on functional neuroanatomy, concerning how NFB, often paired with biofeedback (BFB), might produce a change in symptoms. A further aim of the current report is to provide practitioners with a detailed description of the method used to address some of the key symptoms of AS in order to encourage further research and clinical work to refine the use of NFB plus BFB in the treatment of AS. All charts were included for review where there was a diagnosis of AS or ASD and pre- and post-training testing results were available for one or more of the standardized tests used. Clients received 40-60 sessions of NFB, which was combined with training in metacognitive strategies and, for most older adolescent and adult clients, with BFB of respiration, electrodermal response, and, more recently, heart rate variability. For the majority of clients, feedback was contingent on decreasing slow wave activity (usually 3-7 Hz), decreasing beta spindling if it was present (usually between 23 and 35 Hz), and increasing fast wave activity termed sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) (12-15 or 13-15 Hz depending on assessment findings). The most common initial montage was referential placement at the vertex (CZ) for children and at FCz (midway between FZ and CZ) for adults, referenced to the right ear. Metacognitive strategies relevant to social understanding, spatial reasoning, reading comprehension, and math were taught when the feedback indicated that the client was relaxed, calm, and focused. Significant improvements were found on measures of attention (T.O.V.A. and IVA), core symptoms (Australian Scale for Asperger's Syndrome, Conners' Global Index, SNAP version of the DSM-IV criteria for ADHD, and the ADD-Q), achievement (Wide Range Achievement Test), and intelligence (Wechsler Intelligence Scales). The average gain for the Full Scale IQ score was 9 points. A decrease in relevant EEG ratios was also observed. The ratios measured were (4-8 Hz)(2)/(13-21 Hz)(2), (4-8 Hz)/(16-20 Hz), and (3-7 Hz)/(12-15 Hz). The positive outcomes of decreased symptoms of Asperger's and ADHD (including a decrease in difficulties with attention, anxiety, aprosodias, and social functioning) plus improved academic and intellectual functioning, provide preliminary support for the use of neurofeedback as a helpful component of effective intervention in people with AS.

PMID: 19908142 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]



Its ashame that there is no way to measure social functioning. I'm having trouble finding any evidence in this that would suggest anything worth while. It does show positive but to what degree (usually when it's not mentioned its because it's low or non existent.