A neurofeedback protocol to improve mild anxiety and sleep quality

Neurofeedback training improves anxiety trait and depressive symptom in GAD

“…Brambilla et al found that white‐matter connectivity is impaired in the right parietal lobe in patients with GAD (Brambilla et al., 2012). July et al use neurofeedback protocol to improve a female patient’s mild anxiety and sleep quality, and found alpha changes from the pretreatment baseline were particularly prominent at P4 (Gomes et al., 2016). These findings suggested that right parietal lobe might play an important role in the pathophysiological mechanisms of GAD.…”

The Current Evidence Levels for Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Interventions in Treating Depression: A Narrative Review

“…The second assumption supported by concurrent fMRI-EEG studies (e.g., [97]) was that beta brainwaves reflect activity of brain areas and alpha oscillations are present mostly in idle regions [93]. Imbalance of frontal cortices' activity in depression may be to some extent caused by the structural abnormalities of the left frontal pole [8] and, from a genetic perspective, by polymorphism of 5-HTTLPR coding serotonin transporter [98]. Albeit a large number of studies replicated the link between rightsided prefrontal dominance and depression, a recent metaanalysis demonstrated no such an effect [99].…”

“…Some researchers modified the protocol, e.g., by additions such as beta-3 band downregulation to improve anxiety symptoms [91,98] or central beta-1 upregulation [98] to strengthen motivation and executive functions or by shifting focus to left beta upregulation [110] with additional photic stimulation [106]. Hammond [93] in a review summarized their own study based on [106] protocol and showed that unmedicated subjectively depressed adults improved on the MMPI depression score posttreatment.…”

“…Hammond [93] in a review summarized their own study based on [106] protocol and showed that unmedicated subjectively depressed adults improved on the MMPI depression score posttreatment. A few studies [91,98,111] utilized slow/fast brainwave balance within one lateralized lead instead of left-right balance within a frequency band. Protocol by Dias and van Deusen [91] has anecdotal support from a single case.…”

“…Protocol by Dias and van Deusen [91] has anecdotal support from a single case. Twenty sessions of neurofeedback aimed at increasing beta-1 power at C4 with eyes open and alpha/beta 3 ratio at P4 led to increase in alpha and beta-1 powers with simultaneous decrease in beta-2 power and improvement on depression, anxiety, and quality of sleep [98]. Below we discuss existing studies of frontal alpha asymmetry neurofeedback and few trials of other protocols based on emotional frontal EEG asymmetry concept.…”