TY  - SER
TI  - Biofeedback Treatment for Tourette Syndrome: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial
SN  - 0894-878X
KW  - biofeedback
KW  - electrodermal activity
KW  - sympathetic autonomic arousal
KW  - tics
KW  - tourette syndrome
N1  - PDF en biblioteca; Bibliografía: p.23-24
N2  - Objective: To study the clinical effectiveness of biofeedback treatment in reducing tics in patients with Tourette syndrome.
Background: Despite advances in the pharmacologic treatment of patients with Tourette syndrome, many remain troubled by
their tics, which may be resistant to multiple medications at tolerable doses. Electrodermal biofeedback is a noninvasive
biobehavioral intervention that can be useful in managing neuropsychiatric and neurologic conditions.
Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled trial of electrodermal biofeedback training in 21 patients with Tourette syndrome.
Results: After training the patients for 3 sessions a week over 4 weeks, we observed a significant reduction in tic frequency and
improved indices of subjective well-being in both the active-biofeedback and sham-feedback (control) groups, but there was no
difference between the groups in these measurements. Furthermore, the active-treatment group did not demonstrably learn to reduce their sympathetic electrodermal tone using biofeedback.
Conclusions: Our findings indicate that this form of biofeedback training was unable to produce a clinical effect greater than
placebo. The main confounding factor appeared to be the 30-minute duration of the training sessions, which made it difficult for patients to sustain a reduction in sympathetic tone when their tics themselves were generating competing phasic electrodermal arousal responses. Despite a negative finding in this study, electrodermal biofeedback training may have a role in managing tics if optimal training schedules can be identified
ER  -