ISNR-Research Foundation Donor Information
to the ISNR Research Foundation | Downloadable and printable .pdf version of this Donor Packet
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ADHD“My child healed from the issues 90% of what
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Autism“Even three weeks into neurofeedback we started seeing improvement--and it’s a year later and my daughter’s been doing really well. She can maintain eye contact and dialog for longer periods of time. As an added bonus, her quality of school work is improving. Now there’s a hope
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Traumatic Brain Injury"When I started biofeedback, I had memory
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Epilepsy"When Beth was diagnosed with Epilepsy, her neurologist put her on anti-seizure medications that caused symptoms ranging from sleepiness to clumsiness to headaches and constant nausea. We decided to try neurofeedback in hopes to get her off the medications. After 50 sessions of neurofeedback, Beth’s seizure activity was reduced by 75% and they were much less intense.
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History of the ISNR Research Fund Grants
Research Foundation Board Members, Advisory Board and Executive Director
Comprehensive Neurofeedback Bibliography
What is ISNR?
The International Society for Neurofeedback and Research was founded in 1992 "to promote excellence in clinical practice, educational applications, and research in applied neuroscience in order to better understand and enhance brain function." The Society is composed of nearly a thousand practitioners and academicians who are interested in affecting human behavior in health and disease by influencing brain physiology, principally by brain wave biofeedback. The society has fostered research directly through its own funding (the ISNR Research Committee), has published a peer reviewed scientific journal (the Journal of Neurotherapy) and has held annual scientific meetings. Details about the Society, its meetings, its directly sponsored research, and its journal can be found at the this Web site.
What is the ISNR Research Foundation?
With the emphasis on research and development of neurotherapy - through four years of direct sponsorship of research projects, through twelve volumes of the Journal of Neurotherapy and through seventeen annual scientific meetings, the Society is embarking on a new phase of research emphasis. Through the Research Foundation – a separately established and governed 501(c) 3corporation, ISNR seeks to channel funding from individuals and foundations to qualified academic researchers to conduct well designed large-scale studies that will determine efficacy of neurofeedback. To this end the research foundation will engage in a number of strategies. One will be to dialog with academics and departments interested in neurofeedback to foster research capabilities and interest and graduate studies. A key part of this process is to identify researchers and institutions capable of performing large-scale studies. Another will be to collaborate with researchers and research-supporting institutions to establish criteria for definitive studies, and determine – for instance – what conditions are suitable for sham controls, and which study designs are optimal for conditions studied. A third will be ongoing support and monitoring of research funded through the Foundation, with strict performance, ethical and accountability standards. Finally, the Foundation will inform the general public and health care providers about advances in knowledge, quality, credibility and availability of neurofeedback services.
To finance these strategies the Foundation will pursue funding from interests that share the objective of improved and accessible patient care for the disorders that appear to benefit the most from neurofeedback and other neurotherapy interventions. Identifying and contacting and dialoging with these interests will be ongoing.
Why More Research is Vital
Practitioners of neurofeedback know how potent this therapy can be in a wide variety of disorders. Many times our patients/clients have been inadequately treated with other therapies and adding neurotherapy to their treatment regimes makes a huge clinical difference. Yet neurofeedback remains a therapeutic option available to the few – most often those who have become convinced of the effectiveness of neurofeedback through word of mouth and who have the ability and motivation to self-pay. Because neurofeedback lacks large randomized and controlled studies that can demonstrate its efficacy and specificity, it is not widely accepted as a mainstream therapy and is not recognized by third party payers. As a result hundreds of thousands of people with afflictions including autism related disorders, post concussive disorders, attention deficits disorders, substance use disorders and other disorders known to respond to neurofeedback can not avail themselves of this therapy. These include children with ADHD and Asperger's syndrome, returning veterans with brain injuries and PTSD, and a growing incarcerated population of persons with substance abuse. The societal impact of more treatment options for these and other conditions is obvious. The objective of the Foundation is improved quality of and accessibility to neurofeedback through sound science. The Foundation believes that it is possible scientifically to further assess the efficacy of non-medication, brain physiology based treatments. To do this requires substantial funding. While some public funding is available through governmental agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, competition for these funds requires substantial data and experience from other studies. The Foundation intends to facilitate these other studies, enlisting the best of academia in this pursuit.
Why We Need Help Now
The Foundation is just starting – beginning its first year and has a vision (above) that will refine through dialog and collaboration and insight as it evolves. The focus of this first year is to initiate and guide a long-term process that will yield advances in quality and accessibility of care for those who suffer from brain dysfunctions such as autism, attention deficits, brain injuries, addictive disorders, affective disorders and others amenable to neurofeedback. The economy is stressed at many levels, and foundations and academic institutions and other endowment-holding organizations are forced to reorganize and reallocate increasingly scarce resources. Nevertheless, the Foundation believes that now is the time to begin its quest of long-term development in support of improved care.
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