Development of Serious Games for Neurorehabilitation of Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder through Neurofeedback

Abstract

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that affects approximately 6 % of the child and adolescent population and 5% of the young adult population. Pharmacological treatment is the most used and is performed with the administration of psychostimulants. However, the use of the medication achieves an efficiency of 70 to 80% with the disadvantage of side effects. An alternative to this type of treatment is the use of the neurofeedback (NFB) technique. The NFB training has a repetitive appearance and may be long lasting for treatment to take effect. Nevertheless, it is often necessary to use a tool to increase the engagement. A widely used tool that can be integrated in training is the use of serious games. This work presents the development of a serious game as a strategy for neurorehabilitation of children with ADHD using a neurofeedback system. Three metrics were selected to evaluate the participant's progress: score, an attention index and the ability to sustain attention. In general, the metrics improved throughout the sessions during the experimental validation. Most importantly, it was noticed that motivated patients were able to obtain better results, showing the importance of motivation in NFB strategies for rehabilitation.