Betsy DeVos will very likely get the approval of the 12 Republicans on the Senate HELP committee today, despite being totally unqualified to be Secretary of Education.
Meanwhile, the New York Times published an article about the “brain enhancement” company that DeVos and her husband invested in, and which she said she will not withdraw from. This means she has a direct conflict of interest. But Trump has demonstrated that financial conflicts of interest are no problem, so let the money flow to the investor even if she is a government official who can promote her investments.
But a review of Neurocore’s claims and interviews with medical experts suggest its conclusions are unproven and its methods questionable.
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Neurocore has not published its results in peer-reviewed medical literature. Its techniques — including mapping brain waves to diagnose problems and using neurofeedback, a form of biofeedback, to treat them — are not considered standards of care for the majority of the disorders it treats, including autism. Social workers, not doctors, perform assessments, and low-paid technicians with little training apply the methods to patients, including children with complex problems.
In interviews, nearly a dozen child psychiatrists and psychologists with expertise in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., expressed caution regarding some of Neurocore’s assertions, advertising and methods.
“This causes real harm to children because it diverts attention, hope and resources,” said Dr. Matthew Siegel, a child psychiatrist at Maine Behavioral Healthcare and associate professor at Tufts School of Medicine, who co-wrote autism practice standards for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “If there were something out there that was uniquely powerful and wonderful, we’d all be using it.”
Will the new Secretary tout the miracle of biofeedback as a cure for autism?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I mean no disrespect to anyone…I fully support LGBT rights. I wonder, however, if the DeVos brain “machine” can turn a person straight? Can it make one find her Jesus? She can’t prove it does anything, or improves intelligence, or understanding, or … anything, can she?
Here’s the entirety of the latest (second) takedown of Betsy Devos’ Neurocore:
without all the hyperlinks, of course. They are included in the actual N.Y. Times site with the article HERE:
x x x x x x x x x x x x
Betsy DeVos Invests in a Therapy Under Scrutiny
By SHERI FINK, STEVE EDER and MATTHEW GOLDSTEINJAN. 30, 2017
A group of brain performance centers backed by Betsy DeVos, the nominee for education secretary, promotes results that are nothing short of stunning: improvements reported by 91 percent of patients with depression, 90 percent with attention deficit disorder, 90 percent with anxiety.
The treatment offered by Neurocore, a business in which Ms. DeVos and her husband, Dick, are the chief investors, consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when the viewers become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains. With eight centers in Michigan and Florida and plans to expand, Neurocore says it has assessed about 10,000 people for health problems that often require medication.
“Is it time for a mind makeover?” the company asks in its advertising. “All it takes is science.”
But a review of Neurocore’s claims and interviews with medical experts suggest its conclusions are unproven and its methods questionable.
Neurocore has not published its results in peer-reviewed medical literature. Its techniques — including mapping brain waves to diagnose problems and using neurofeedback, a form of biofeedback, to treat them — are not considered standards of care for the majority of the disorders it treats, including autism. Social workers, not doctors, perform assessments, and low-paid technicians with little training apply the methods to patients, including children with complex problems.
In interviews, nearly a dozen child psychiatrists and psychologists with expertise in autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., expressed caution regarding some of Neurocore’s assertions, advertising and methods.
“This causes real harm to children because it diverts attention, hope and resources,” said Dr. Matthew Siegel, a child psychiatrist at Maine Behavioral Healthcare and associate professor at Tufts School of Medicine, who co-wrote autism practice standards for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “If there were something out there that was uniquely powerful and wonderful, we’d all be using it.”
Neurocore rejects any suggestion that its treatments do not work as advertised. Dr. Majid Fotuhi, Neurocore chief medical officer, said, “There is significant research to support the efficacy of neurofeedback for a variety of mental and behavioral health issues.”
Ms. DeVos, whose appointment as education secretary is expected to be voted on Tuesday morning by a Senate committee, had said she would leave Neurocore’s board, but would retain her investment in the company, which she valued at $5 million to $25 million, according to documents filed this month with the Office of Government Ethics.
Last Friday, a group of Democratic senators sent Ms. DeVos a letter saying that her financial disclosure raised questions about potential conflicts. The senators were skeptical of the DeVos family trusts, and also raised questions about Neurocore, which called itself educational in a trademark dispute. The lawmakers asked Ms. DeVos if she would commit that she and her family members would not “benefit financially from actions” she could take in her new role.
At Neurocore’s clinics, children and adults with A.D.H.D., anxiety, depression, autism and other psychological and neurological diagnoses sit before monitors watching movies or television shows ranging from “Frozen” to “Mad Men,” with sensors attached to their scalps and earlobes.
Whenever they become distracted or anxious, the video automatically freezes. That feedback, known as conditioning, leads the vast majority of clients, company officers say, to experience improvements in their disorders after 30 45-minute sessions costing about $2,000. Some insurers cover the treatments, while others have denied payment.
One denial concerned a 50-year-old woman with anxiety and migraines. The insurance company noted that it covered biofeedback for only a few conditions. An outside review commissioned by the Michigan insurance department supported the decision that biofeedback was not, in her case, an established therapy or medically necessary.
Experts said that thus far, studies of neurofeedback for attention deficit disorder were unconvincing. It “isn’t shown to be better than placebo, and the effects are not long-lasting,” said Sandra K. Loo, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written about neurofeedback and quantitative EEG, a brain-wave test that Neurocore performs as part of its diagnosis.
“People pay a ton of money,” Dr. Loo said. “They’re desperate to help their kids. Many are desperate to not give medications.”
Dr. L. Eugene Arnold, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University who is enrolling children in a large, blind, controlled trial of neurofeedback — the main approach Neurocore says it uses in its sessions — said the idea was theoretically appealing, but there was not yet solid evidence of its effectiveness for A.D.H.D. Neurocore’s claims for the treatments “poison the well,” he said. “They oversell it.”
He and other experts warned of potential side effects including headaches and disrupted sleep.
Federal oversight of the field is minimal. “When it comes to treatments like this, there’s no formal body,” said Scott O. Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University. “This has been a big problem. We don’t have an F.D.A. for psychotherapies,” he said, referring to the Food and Drug Administration.
Over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission has begun to crack down on some companies promoting the successes of brain training programs for treating a variety of problems.
Last January, Lumos Labs, the creator of Lumosity games, agreed to pay a $2 million fine over advertising claims that said its educational-oriented games could help children perform better in school by targeting specific areas of the brain. A few months later, the F.T.C. imposed sanctions on the developers of the LearningRx “brain training” programs for advertisements that claimed its product could “permanently improve serious health conditions” like A.D.H.D., autism and dementia.
Experts said that thus far, studies of neurofeedback for attention deficit disorder were unconvincing. It “isn’t shown to be better than placebo, and the effects are not long-lasting,” said Sandra K. Loo, director of pediatric neuropsychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has written about neurofeedback and quantitative EEG, a brain-wave test that Neurocore performs as part of its diagnosis.
“People pay a ton of money,” Dr. Loo said. “They’re desperate to help their kids. Many are desperate to not give medications.”
Dr. L. Eugene Arnold, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University who is enrolling children in a large, blind, controlled trial of neurofeedback — the main approach Neurocore says it uses in its sessions — said the idea was theoretically appealing, but there was not yet solid evidence of its effectiveness for A.D.H.D. Neurocore’s claims for the treatments “poison the well,” he said. “They oversell it.”
He and other experts warned of potential side effects including headaches and disrupted sleep.
Federal oversight of the field is minimal. “When it comes to treatments like this, there’s no formal body,” said Scott O. Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University. “This has been a big problem. We don’t have an F.D.A. for psychotherapies,” he said, referring to the Food and Drug Administration.
Over the past year, the Federal Trade Commission has begun to crack down on some companies promoting the successes of brain training programs for treating a variety of problems.
Last January, Lumos Labs, the creator of Lumosity games, agreed to pay a $2 million fine over advertising claims that said its educational-oriented games could help children perform better in school by targeting specific areas of the brain. A few months later, the F.T.C. imposed sanctions on the developers of the LearningRx “brain training” programs for advertisements that claimed its product could “permanently improve serious health conditions” like A.D.H.D., autism and dementia.
Mr. Salah said he had known nothing about biofeedback before starting the job, but received training at Neurocore, where the employees seemed “interested in improving people’s lives.”