[j45]

Would love to learn more about how this is the case (both assertions). Mind sharing?

Neuroscience seems to be coming through with more and more understanding using technologies like fMRI and others the past 5-10 years. There is definitely some understanding there.

[dns_snek]

Amen are definitely fraudsters. Russell Barkley talks about this topic in this video: https://youtu.be/R_HCw-QePaA?t=900

The short version, as I understand is, is that brain scans show differences at the population level but not on the individual level. Amen claim to both diagnose ADHD through brain scans (which is already impossible) and also diagnose various "subtypes" of ADHD like "Limbic ADD" which have no scientific backing for their existence.

[j45]

Thanks I’ll check out the video.

I didn’t think their clinics only worked on ADHD.

Other types of imaging like fMRI are being used successfully by others as well for things like TBI, so I won’t jump to ruling out all types imaging.

Is it true that psychiatry doesn’t prescribe off imaging but symptom clusters?

[Jach]

You can pirate a copy of the DSM-V and see the diagnostic criteria for yourself. It's particularly interesting to me (as I believe the field has "crystalized" more than it has right to) that two people can be diagnosed with "ADHD" but share few overlapping symptoms. Separately, fMRI evidence is still not solid on its own, it has to be paired with stronger science to be at all useful, but even so studies based on it tend to suffer from numerous problems. The most infamous case being a "study" that found brain activity using fMRI of a dead fish. That was in 2009. In 2020, Botvinik-Nezer et al. published a paper about 70 different research teams analyzing the same fMRI dataset and producing wildly different results. It's a blunt instrument but people are deceived into thinking it's really solid; it's not.

[flyingkiwi44]

Amen Clinics have been covered on sciencebasedmedicine.org a few times (2008 and 2013) from the look of it.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/spect-scans-at-the-amen-cli...

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/dr-amens-love-affair-with-s...

Both https://sciencebasedmedicine.org and https://theness.com/neurologicablog/ are good resources for detailed research into science and medicine. With Neurologica having some good deep dives into Neuroscience topics https://theness.com/neurologicablog/category/neuroscience/ as the author is a recently retired academic clinical neurologist

[j45]

Insightful, thanks. I typically separate the personality from the assertions and look at the assertions individually in present time due to the incredible lag time between knowledge and it becoming practiced in the clinic. Professionals can best practice 5-10-15 year old information because they haven't caught up, there's a lot to stay on top of.

The first link is from 2008 and claims EMDR doesn't work (I believe it emerged in the 90's and new things are generally resisted in health until they're not), and that Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy doesn't help the brain, both are understood to be helpful in ways beyond this article in 2026. Unrelated to Amen, fMRI is helpful with TBI imaging.

[convolvatron]

not clinical understanding, not in any useful way. its another tool for study, but my understanding is that aside from some very high level structural information, there's sadly not that much to be learned from watching the flashing lights.

[quietsegfault]

fMRI just measures the BOLD signal (blood oxygenation). It's a proxy for neural activity, meaning any conclusions drawn from it are inferences, not direct observations of the brain 'thinking'.

[j45]

fMRI can be relevant for TBI.

Technologies like qEEG also seem to have some applicable uses.