Using neurofeedback to teach self-regulation to children living in poverty

In this paper we describe a neuro-feedback system and applications we designed and deployed to help vulnerable children at an NGO-funded school, called Nepal House Kaski, in Pokhara, Nepal. The system, called Mind-Full, enables traumatized children to learn and practice self-regulation by playing simple, culturally appropriate games using an EEG headset connected to an interactive tablet. Children can interact with Mind-Full using body actions that may change their physiology and brain states, which are sensed by the EEG headset and used as input to the games. One of the key challenges was to build an application that the children could immediately understand how to use when they are illiterate, don't speak English and have no computer experience. We describe Mind-Full and highlight the design principles we used to meet these constraints. We report on a subset of findings from a 14-week field experiment in which we use a mixed-methods approach to determine if children improved their ability to self-regulate during gameplay as well as in the classroom, playground and in therapy sessions. Findings from quantitative and qualitative assessment measures suggest that the treatment group significantly improved their ability to calm down and focus in a variety of contexts.