Experience with Neurotherapy

I have taken some neurobiofeedback, same as neurotherapy, as well as 2 of my children. We have all had concussions which have given us trouble with attention, memory, and anxiety.

My daughter had great success with her anxiety, and found that she was able to tolerate having people touch her after it. However, on the other hand, it did not stick for more than a few days at a time with my son who had violent tantrums and attention issues. I did not see a huge change.

The advantages are that it is done with a professional, and is not difficult. The disadvantage is that it is not guaranteed and is expensive.

Another way to change the way that the brain processes is to open the pathways from the brainstem to the higher parts of the brain through integration of the primitive reflexes, normally completed during infancy. If this does not happen completely, the pathways are not created for attention, memory, writing, vision development, or auditory development, and any combination of these.

The good news is that these pathways can be opened up at any time in a person's life, and the exercises to do them are only a couple minutes a day and are easy.

To get more information, you can google "integrating primitive reflexes" and the symptom or condition that you are interested in improving. The professionals who help with this are usually Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists, but not all are familiar with it. There are some DVD programs available that are inexpensive to try.

I recently, as an adult, improved my short term memory through these exercises and can now for the first time in my life remember people's names when I hear them! It was just 3 minutes a day for about a month to open that particular pathway. This should have happened before I was 1 year old, but for some unknown reason had not.

The brain is an amazing thing; there are many ways to "change your mind" - good luck with your teen and I hope you find something to help!

K. Johnson, educational therapist, speaker, author

It depends on what you mean. If it's neurological therapy (cognitive therapy, or physiological psych therapy -the neurologist of the psychological world-, or working with a neurologist & their team) then it's incredibly successful with MANY different issues (brain injury recovery, various mental/emotional disorders, spinal injury)... it's a kind of therapy which rewires the brain in cases of injury (the brain can *usually* create new pathways given enough practice... the brain rewires when we learn to walk, potty train, learn language, etc.) and in mental/emotional disorfers this kind of therapy helps patients learn to have different knee-jerk responses to certain stimuli but ****does NOT cure the disorder****. It just changes reactions to certain things (in brain injury cases, for example, patients will often mistake objects. EX injusty) the baby and the duffle bag. A frontal brain slosh patient may cradle their duffle bag gently, but be swinging the baby by it's leg as they leave the house. This kind of therapy teaches their brain to differentiate between the baby and the duffle bag. EX disorders) Adhd people are naturally impulsive. Most of us learn how to curb that to a degree. This kind of therapy speeds that process up. Or teaches a person who is chronically depressed how to recognize early symptoms so that they can 'pull themselves back from the edge' instead of jumping down the rabbit hole. It works on a REPETITION basis. Turning new concepts into solid habits. Cognitive therapists do this in an office setting sometimes using brainscans and RET but more often with talk, physiological psychologists and neurologists do this in a medical setting by and large.

If by neurotherapy you mean biofeedback for treatment of ADHD, it's largely a waste of money. What it essentially does is to teach a person to meditate and be cognizant of their physiological response in conjunction with their thoughts at about 10x the price of meditation or cognitive therapy... both of which do the same thing. As a matter of fact, a lot of meditation groups are free.

Now biofeedback can be *incrediably* useful for athletes, trauma survivors, and certain anxiety disorders... but there are EQUALLY and better treatments for them. Mapping for athletes, RET for trauma survivors, meditation for certain anxiety disorders, etc.

What, specifically, is being recommended? And do you know the cause of the neuropathy? Is the treatment supposed to slow or reverse the progress of the neuropathy, reduce discomfort, improve mobility, safety, or quality of life? There's too little information for me to make a suggestion.

I've had neuropathy in feet and hands for the last dozen years. It's not a killer, but it certainly does affect my quality of life.

If you can provide more details regarding what you are considering and what it's supposed to treat I think you'll get better answers. My son completed half a course of BIT (Brain Integration Technique, related to Crossinology). This was for AD/HD and learning disabilities. We ran out of $$ but will pick up where we left off later in the spring. There was noticeable improvement in some of the areas that were "mapped" already. I wasn't really sold on this but he enjoyed the sessions so I figured it was worth it to complete the process and see what happens. I was pleasantly surprised when a school evaluation to assess his continued eligibility for LD services showed strong improvement in many areas.