Advanced Neurotherapy

Boston Tutoring Services contacted local Executive Function and ADHD Coaches to learn more about their experiences working with children with these needs. This week we are featuring an interview from Dr. Jolene Ross of Advanced Neurotherapy.

Boston Tutoring Services: What experience drove you to want to support children with ADHD/Executive Function needs/Autism?

Dr. Ross: This is what I call the Doctor Mom story.  When one of my daughters was in second grade, I was told by her teacher that she had the worst ADD of any one the teacher had ever seen, “Worse than the worst kid on Ritalin.  Get her on Ritalin right away!”  That was not going to be my first line of defense.  I was psychologist with a specialty in behavioral medicine.  At the time I was on a board of directors of a group of behaviorally oriented professionals.  I was on the speaker committee.  I invited a local practitioner who was doing neurofeedback to come to speak.  Another person there was from McLean Hospital and he was doing neurofeedback as well.  He was available so I brought my daughter to see him. After a year of every other week neurofeedback treatment he told us to take the summer off.  I would never suggest to people that they only train every other week, nor would I suggest that they take the summer off.  Neurofeedback is best if a person trains consistently.  

By that time my daughter was doing much better in school and liked that very much.  By fall when school started, she was losing benefit and was getting quite upset about it.  The practitioner we were seeing was no longer working at McLean and had left the state, and the person who spoke was no longer doing neurofeedback.  I had three children, all with ADD so I decided to get training.

As I saw more and more people for neurofeedback,  it became clear that many of the children who were coming in for ADD actually had Asperger’s Syndrome.  I found that neurofeedback was very helpful and effective for them.  I grew up with a sibling with Asperger’s so working with those folks was natural for me.  So, of course, the desire to help extended to children with Autism.  I had had experience with children with Autism back at a time when Autistic spectrum disorders were very rare and Asperger’s was not yet recognized.  Anything we can do to help these folks in a durable and corrective way is very important.  

In my effort to assess the efficacy of neurofeedback I tried using a number of different self-report measures for ADHD as well as some computerized cognitive tests.  The most informative and reliable is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions.  Using that tool as a dependent measure lead me to further investigation into executive functions which, as it turns out are primarily in the front of the brain which is the control center of the brain and the main area where we concentrate our neurofeedback training efforts.

BTS: What types of services do you offer?

DR: We offer neurofeedback, heart rate variability biofeedback, which calms anxiety and lowers blood pressure, cognitive behavior therapy, parent coaching, therapy for trauma, grief and loss and support and assistance for those suffering from Lyme Disease.   We also offer neurotransmitter testing, food sensitivity testing and health coaching.  We use certain vitamins and supplements in a targeted fashion.  

BTS: In establishing your practice, what were your goals for providing individuals’ growth?  

DR: More than anything else, I have spent my career searching for approaches that were effective and corrective.  We always say here at Advanced Neurotherapy that we are in the quality of life business.  When I first started my practice, I was seeing a lot of patients with Tempo Mandibular Joint Dysfunction or TMJ.  In those days, chronic pain patients were thought to be “crazy” and that their mental illness was the cause of the pain.  My view was the opposite.  My experience with these folks was that the pain was real and that pain can make a person crazy.  So I developed the goal of finding out what was at the root of the problem and correcting that by paying attention to the physiological as well as the psychological.     

BTS: What sets you apart from other practitioners that offer services for children with similar needs?

DR: I am very practical, goal oriented and interested in corrective care.  I have been a helping professional for decades and have been a neurofeedback practitioner longer than anyone else in the area.  Do to the rigor of our approach, people come from multiple states to work with us.  As for neurofeedback services, I perform a very comprehensive Quantitative EEG (QEEG) brain mapping assessment.  I use the only methodology that examines the brain’s functioning in what are called “active states”.  Neurofeedback practitioners who do a QEEG typically collect data in one or two passive states, typically eyes closed and sometimes also eyes open.  However, it is the active states such as reading, doing math or drawing, listening and watching a social competence video that tell us what is going wrong when a person tries to use their brain.  It is usually the reading record that is the most informative. It is rare for a practitioner to do a follow up QEEG. I do that about two-thirds of the way through treatment.  This allows me to see what the person’s brain has learned so we can change the treatment protocol to capitalize on what the brain has learned so we can push the envelope and maximize results.  This also has allowed us to “check our work”.  What that means, is over the past nearly 19 years, we have learned a great deal about what is and is not effective in terms of neurofeedback interventions.  This and the studying we have done have contributed to the development of the high reliability and efficacy of our neurofeedback methodology.  

I also screen for vision function, which is often a problem in ADHD, reading disability and brain injury/post concussion syndrome.  Vision trumps everything in the brain.  More of the brain is devoted to vision than to anything else.  If vision is not working properly in the brain itself (not usually a visual acuity problem) vision robs mental energy from the rest of the brain reducing the brains ability to perform other functions.  I have a team who process and interpret the QEEG’s we perform here.  We also process and interpret QEEG’s for Oxycare, a clinic in Amman Jordan which is dedicated to servicing the autism community in the Persian Gulf.  We have been doing this for the past six years and are proud of the improvements they achieve with their clients using our methods.  

My husband, who is the head of our QEEG team, and I trained with a psychologist who was trained by Dr. Frank Duffy, recently retired chairman of the Epilepsy and Applied Neurophysiology unit at Children’s Hospital Boston.  We also trained in QEEG and Neurofeedback with the founder of the field, Dr. Barry Sterman Emeritus UCLA and with Dr. Elkhonan Goldberg, one of the foremost neuropsychologists internationally.  It is from Dr. Goldberg that we came to understand the crucial role of the frontal lobes in controlling the entire brain.

BTS: How do you support the family as a whole, beyond the child’s individual needs?

DR: I am a seasoned couple and family therapist and spent my formative years in the field of psychology as a Behavior Specialist working with behaviorally, emotionally, intellectually and developmentally involved children and adults.  I coach families in behavioral interventions, coping with the patient and his or her challenges and helping with the effects of a challenged individual in the family.  I also help with relationships within the family as well as the grief and sadness that often accompanies these problems.  I have a DVD of a point system that rewards improvements in behaviors and I introduce it to families once the young person has had 10 neurofeedback sessions.  Typically, by then, the young person has shown response to neurofeedback and is neurologically ready to respond to a reward system.  This system is very practical and flexible, lending itself to adaptation to the needs of each family.

BTS: Do you facilitate communication between the students’ academic teachers/other therapeutic services to provide a well-rounded support system?

DR: I prefer a team approach so I am always happy and eager to coordinate with other therapists, teachers, physicians and other treaters.  A team approach increases effectiveness. 

For more information about Advanced Neurotherapy visit their website: http://advancedneurotherapy.com/