Neurofeedback for Alzheimer's with Robin Luijmes & Sjaak Pouwels

Mar 19, 2018

Neuorfeedback therapy for Alzheimer's today has not yet been widely proven. Our guests today were the first ones to publish in a medical journal on this subject. 

Robin Elisa Luijmes is a psychologist from the Netherlands. She started working with patients with aquired brain injury. Wanting a broader knowledge of the psychological impact in patients with various forms of medical conditions, she completed her training as a medical psychologist. While working in a hospital in the Netherlands, Robin met Dr. Sjaak Pouwels, MD PhD, an aspiring and highly motivated surgeon and research physician. Because of their common interest in neurobiology together they published the article: "The effectiveness of neurofeedback on cognitive functioning in patients with Alzheimer’s disease: Preliminary results."  These results were ultimately published as an original article in the Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology in 2016.

 

In this episode we discuss their journal publication and their results. You'll get an inside look at the challenges of academic research - recruitment, funding, and personnel. 

 

In brief, they studied a small group of 10 people with Alzheimer's type cognitive decline and performed Neurofeedback. Over the course of getting 2 treatments for 15 weeks these patients had no further decline and 3 patients had improvements in memory/cognitive scores.