Neurotech shares are up 67 per cent after early results show that its device can lead to major brain changes for children with autism.

Just the abstract of a US clinical trial was accepted last week by medical journal Frontiers in Neurology, but that was enough to send the company’s shares bananas.

The company bounced to 20c after reaching a 52-week low last week.

Neurotech’s (ASX:NTI) main device is called Mente Autism and this was being trialed by the Carrick Institute, with data collection finishing in February.

“Our results show that a short 12 week course of NFB [neurofeedback] using the Mente Autism device can lead to significant changes in brain activity (qEEG), sensorimotor behaviour (posturography), and behaviour (standardized questionnaires) in ASD children… Similar changes were not detected in the control group,” the abstract in the journal said.

Neurotech shares over the last 12 months.

The company’s device is designed to “relax” autistic children’s minds by playing back to a person their own brain waves — neurofeedback — in the form of sounds.

The idea is to stimulate brain waves that aren’t functioning as well as they should — Alpha and Beta waves — while moderating two other kinds of brain waves to make a person more responsive, communicative, focused and interactive.

The fact that changes were observed across all three areas [brainwaves, behaviours and balance], and not in the control group, is significant in its own right and the best outcome we could have hoped for,” said Neurotech founder Dr Adrian Attard Trevisan.

Neurotech listed at the end of 2016 and the trial of its device began last year.