Neurofeedback for attention and exec. function ??

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Hi, has anyone tried neurofeedback. My 15 year old son with aspergers suddenly looked up ritalin and saw that it can cause suicide and hallucinations, etc. and has decided it's poison. He's got serious selective attention and selective learning problems. Smart kid, great IQ, good at tech stuff. Goes to a robotics programming class once a week. Loved at school, has great friends (I've worked my butt off for that result). But not motivated to study unless it's something he particularly wants to do.

He sees a therapist twice a week and she's doing cognitive behavior therapy with him, but I wonder about adding neurofeedback to the therapy. Gotta take advantage of that window of opportunity while his brain is developing to do as much as possible before he's too old to get enough benefit from it.

So since I live in Spain and there's not great info here, I was wondering what experiences there are out there. On the internet, I either see technical articles on it, or what seems like clinics and companies who are pushing the product, so it's hard to judge from this perspective.

I usually post on the general forum, but no one has answered me, so I turn to the parents forum.

Thanks ! !

Russell Barkley says the research says it doesn't work for ADHD.

Is this Russell Barkley an important doctor ?

Quackwatch has the following comment on Neurofeedback as a therapy:

His aprehension is about the Ritalin's possible side effects.

He thinks neurofeedback sounds cool. (he loves computers)

But my problem was finding opinions by serious doctors and researchers about whether it works for improving attention and executive function.

At this moment i dont expect to find (because i know there are none) multicenter double blind studies, but I was hoping to find expert opinions.

The reason I wrote on this forum is in case someone has tried it themselves or has found experts opinions or promising preliminary studies. I did find an article on a nasa site http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2013/cg_2.html and some nimh.gov studies.

This is from wikipedia: Neurofeedback is approved by the American Society of Pediatrics with their highest rating: Level 1 evidenced based treatment for ADHD. Neurofeedback has held this status since 2012

So just wondering if anyone has read about or experienced it.

All opinions are helpful (pro and con) ! !! !!

I've heard one person who thought it was helpful, but many more who found it a complete waste of money. A close friend who tried it with her son ended up in the later category.

If you have money to burn, then it probably won't hurt your child. But you aren't going to find it effective, the ratios really say otherwise, and the occasional "it was helpful" is most likely due to a subconscious need to feel the spending and time was worth it.

Cognitive therapy is the route that seems to have the most advocates. I would stick with that.

Neurofeedback is a legit area of early research into applications to improve cognitive performance in different areas, but the emphasis is on early, definitely not yet ready for therapeutic applications.

Something that costs a lot of money and is advertised as neurofeedback therapy is probably a scam or quack doctor kind of approach to taking your money and making you believe something has improved through placebo effect, similar to what I suggested in other thread about paid brain-training services like lumosity.

A free brain games site is http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/.