Author: Chan AS, Sze SL, Cheung MC, Han YM, Leung WW, Shi D.
Affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.
Conference/Journal: Evid Based Complement Alternat Med.
Date published: 2011
Other:
Special Notes: 2011:549254. Epub 2011 Mar 28. , Word Count: 157
There has been increasing empirical evidence for the enhancing effects of Dejian Mind-Body Intervention (DMBI), a traditional Chinese Shaolin healing approach, on human frontal brain activity/functions, including patients with autism who are well documented to have frontal lobe problems. This study aims to compare the effects of DMBI with a conventional behavioural/cognitive intervention (CI) on enhancing the executive functions and memory of a nine-year-old boy with low-functioning autism (KY) and to explore possible underlying neural mechanism using EEG theta cordance. At post-one-month DMBI, KY's inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and memory functioning have significantly improved from "severely-to-moderately impaired" to "within-normal" range. This improvement was not observed from previous 12-month CI. Furthermore, KY showed increased cordance gradually extending from the anterior to the posterior brain region, suggesting possible neural mechanism underlying his cognitive improvement. These findings have implicated potential applicability of DMBI as a rehabilitation program for patients with severe frontal lobe and/or memory disorders.
PMID: 21584249