Neurocore

A group of brain performance centers backed by Betsy DeVos, the nominee for education secretary, promotes results that are nothing short of stunning: improvements reported by 91 percent of patients with depression, 90 percent with attention deficit disorder, 90 percent with anxiety.

The treatment offered by Neurocore, a business in which Ms. DeVos and her husband, Dick, are the chief investors, consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when the viewers become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains. With eight centers in Michigan and Florida and plans to expand, Neurocore says it has assessed about 10,000 people for health problems that often require medication.

“Is it time for a mind makeover?” the company asks in its advertising. “All it takes is science.”

But a review of Neurocore’s claims and interviews with medical experts suggest its conclusions are unproven and its methods questionable.

Neurocore has not published its results in peer-reviewed medical literature. Its techniques — including mapping brain waves to diagnose problems and using neurofeedback, a form of biofeedback, to treat them — are not considered standards of care for the majority of the disorders it treats, including autism. Social workers, not doctors, perform assessments, and low-paid technicians with little training apply the methods to patients, including children with complex problems.

In interviews, nearly a dozen child psychiatrists and psychologists with expertise in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., expressed caution regarding some of Neurocore’s assertions, advertising and methods.

“This causes real harm to children because it diverts attention, hope and resources,” said Dr. Matthew Siegel, a child psychiatrist at Maine Behavioral Healthcare and associate professor at Tufts School of Medicine, who co-wrote autism practice standards for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “If there were something out there that was uniquely powerful and wonderful, we’d all be using it.”

Neurocore rejects any suggestion that its treatments do not work as advertised. Dr. Majid Fotuhi, Neurocore chief medical officer, said, “There is significant research to support the efficacy of neurofeedback for a variety of mental and behavioral health issues.”…

At Neurocore’s clinics, children and adults with A.D.H.D., anxiety, depression, autism and other psychological and neurological diagnoses sit before monitors watching movies or television shows ranging from “Frozen” to “Mad Men,” with sensors attached to their scalps and earlobes…

Whenever they become distracted or anxious, the video automatically freezes. That feedback, known as conditioning, leads the vast majority of clients, company officers say, to experience improvements in their disorders after 30 45-minute sessions costing about $2,000. Some insurers cover the treatments, while others have denied payment…

Experts said that thus far, studies of neurofeedback for attention deficit disorder were unconvincing. It “isn’t shown to be better than placebo, and the effects are not long-lasting,” said Sandra K. Loo, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written about neurofeedback and quantitative EEG, a brain-wave test that Neurocore performs as part of its diagnosis…

“People pay a ton of money,” Dr. Loo said. “They’re desperate to help their kids. Many are desperate to not give medications.”

Dr. L. Eugene Arnold, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University who is enrolling children in a large, blind, controlled trial of neurofeedback — the main approach Neurocore says it uses in its sessions — said the idea was theoretically appealing, but there was not yet solid evidence of its effectiveness for A.D.H.D. Neurocore’s claims for the treatments “poison the well,” he said. “They oversell it.”…

Over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission has begun to crack down on some companies promoting the successes of brain training programs for treating a variety of problems.

Last January, Lumos Labs, the creator of Lumosity games, agreed to pay a $2 million fine over advertising claims that said its educational-oriented games could help children perform better in school by targeting specific areas of the brain. A few months later, the F.T.C. imposed sanctions on the developers of the LearningRx “brain training” programs for advertisements that claimed its product could “permanently improve serious health conditions” like A.D.H.D., autism and dementia…

Dr. Fotuhi, Neurocore’s chief medical officer, said that there were no physicians on site at the clinics, but social workers supervise lower-level technicians, who administer the neurofeedback. Employment ads show that Neurocore’s social workers are offered less than $20 an hour to start, yet are responsible for diagnostic assessments of patients with complex problems…

Dr. Fotuhi has impressive credentials: an M.D. from Harvard and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins. However, his short-lived previous venture, NeurExpand Brain Centers in Maryland, folded after Medicare refused to reimburse services and demanded repayment for lack of scientific evidence of their effectiveness, Dr. Fotuhi said in 2015 to Bethesda Magazine.

In an interview, Dr. Fotuhi said Neurocore’s chief executive, Mark Murrison, who has been at the company for about two years, “has an emphasis on research and development and using science-based protocols.” He said the company would be publishing its results in peer-reviewed scientific literature soon…

Neurocore is the creation of Timothy G. Royer, a licensed psychologist with a master’s degree in theology, who served as division chief of pediatric psychology at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Originally called Hope 139, after Psalm 139 from the Bible, the company marketed itself to schools — especially religious ones — in Michigan to help children improve academic scores and lessen the need for medication to treat certain ailments.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/politics/betsy-devos-neurocore-brain-centers.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

Courtesy of a colleague

See:  http://childnervoussystem.blogspot.com/2016/01/lumosity.html