Closed-Loop Neurofeedback of α Synchrony during Goal-Directed Attention

Abstract

a Oscillations in sensory cortex, under frontal control, desynchronize during attentive preparation. Here, in a selective attention study with simultaneous EEG in humans of either sex, we first demonstrate that diminished anticipatory a synchrony between the midfrontal region of the dorsal attention network and ventral visual sensory cortex [frontal-sensory synchrony (FSS)] significantly correlates with greater task performance. Then, in a double-blind, randomized controlled study in healthy adults, we implement closedloop neurofeedback (NF) of the anticipatory a FSS signal over 10 d of training. We refer to this closed-loop experimental approach of rapid NF integrated within a cognitive task as cognitive NF (cNF). We show that cNF results in significant trial-by-trial modulation of the anticipatory a FSS measure during training, concomitant plasticity of stimulus-evoked a/h responses, as well as transfer of benefits to response time (RT) improvements on a standard test of sustained attention. In a third study, we implement cNF training in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), replicating trial-by-trial modulation of the anticipatory a FSS signal as well as significant improvement of sustained attention RTs. These first findings demonstrate the basic mechanisms and translational utility of rapid cognitive-task-integrated NF.

Exploring Trait Differences in Neurofeedback Learners: A Single-session Sham-Controlled Pilot Study

“…Even though the participants in the yoked sham group did not receive real-time theta feedback during the NF session, there was evidence of individuals within this group significantly increasing theta activity over the course of the session. This result is consistent with other NF protocols reporting learning trends within sham yoked NF groups (Mishra et al, 2021). Overall trends of sham learning performance indicate NF learning occurred within the MTL-theta training source as opposed to the FM-theta source.…”

The Role of Alpha Oscillations among the Main Neuropsychiatric Disorders in the Adult and Developing Human Brain: Evidence from the Last 10 Years of Research

“…This resulted in a subsequent power normalization, and in improvements in terms of motor inhibition. Furthermore, results highlighting the relevance of alpha desynchronization in attentive visual paradigms [ 49 ] have been adopted to reduce the power in this frequency range via neurofeedback protocols in ADHD individuals, prompting significant improvements to sustained attention [ 255 ].…”

Default mode and frontal executive network interactions enable interoceptive attention & mindfulness

“…Correlation coe cients across participants were Fischer-z transformed to obtain normal distributions. Notably, source reconstruction prior to functional connectivity correlations, as we implement here, is one of the recommended strategies to alleviate the adverse effects of electric eld spread/volume conductance across scalp EEG channels [75][76][77] . Source reconstruction unmixes the measured scalp signals to derive an estimate of the underlying sources and hence, minimizes the effect of volume conduction.…”