Neurofeedback for Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive motor disease occurring in young children after birth trauma or intrauterine pathology. Abnormal motor reflexes and abnormal motor development characterize it. You frequently see ataxia, hemiplegia, paraplegia, seizures and either muscle flaccidity or muscle spasticity. In athetosis cerebral palsy you see ceaseless slow, involuntary muscle movements occurring. In an EEG study (Al-Sulaiman, 2001) of 151 children with cerebral palsy, 81 had seizures and 70 were seizure free. Epileptiform activity included spikes, sharp waves, and polyspike-wave complexes. In the CP children without seizures, there were synchronous slow waves. At the pediatric medical school in Nagoya, Japan, Maruyama and colleagues (2002) found that the EEG, if used on either the first or second day after birth, could predict the development of cerebral palsy in 295 children. Since no two cerebral palsy cases are alike, controlled research with EEG feedback does not exist. I have treated individuals with cerebral palsy for over 25 years and have seen hundreds of these cases. I have done neurologically specific site feedback with either analog or Neuropathways all digital real time EEG and documented their EEGs. In these EEGs I have also seen excessive slow wave activity, mostly in the theta range, and when there is severe damage there are also delta waves. Knowledge of the neurological reflexes is critical when using feedback with these individuals. This knowledge, in conjunction with real time feedback and MRI, CT and PET scans constitutes the armamentarium necessary to approach this clinical entity. Bipolar instrumentation is necessary to eliminate artifact from muscle spasticity. The EEG protocol is always neurologically based and site specific. For example, if the child can stand but not walk, we place the electrode over the leg areas on the sensorimotor cortex with one electrode on the sensory cortex and one electrode on the motor cortex, and the