Effect of Infra-Low Frequency Neurofeedback on Infra-Slow EEG Fluctuations

Abstract

Infra-low frequency neurofeedback (ILF NF) has been proposed as an alternative or complementary treatment method. Previous studies have reported a good effect of ILF training on the subjective perception of positive psychological changes after training. Here we study whether the objective physiological parameters reflecting the brain function also change under the influence of ILF NF. Eight participants 21-50 years of age with no history of neurological or psychiatric diseases, but reporting about some physiological or psychological complaints, performed 20 sessions of infra-low frequency neurofeedback training. EEG in visual Go/NoGo test was recorded before the course of Neurofeedback and after its completion. The spectral power of slow EEG oscillations in the post-training recording was compared with the pretraining baseline. Along with remission of the clinical complaints, significant increase of spectral power in 0-0.5 Hz frequency band was observed in all eight participants in the post-training EEG patterns compared to the pretraining EEG, which may be linked to the improvement in the metabolic balance in the brain tissue and increasing efficiency of compensatory mechanisms in the stress regulation systems.

Modulation of Intrinsic Brain Connectivity by Implicit Electroencephalographic Neurofeedback

“…The speed of the rocket was governed in real-time by the infra-low frequency band-limited waveform of the EEG signal (see Figure 1). The infra-low frequency domain (f < 0.1 Hz) is thought to reflect the slow dynamics of cortical activation, is a real-time representation of slow cortical potentials (Grin-Yatsenko et al, 2018). Infra-slow fluctuations have been shown to correlate with resting-state network dynamics in fMRI (Hiltunen et al, 2014;Haufe et al, 2018).…”

“…The mechanisms of implicit neurofeedback may be explained in light of the natural role of feedback in neurodevelopment (Ioannides, 2018) and also in light of the predictive models of nervous activity since feedback is supposed to serve for augmentation of internal neural models (Wolpert et al, 1995;Kleckner et al, 2017). Despite the passive nature of the ''training'' paradigm, pronounced neurophysiological and clinical effects of implicit neurofeedback sessions have been described (Alvarez et al, 2013;Ramot et al, 2016;Zhigalov et al, 2016;Grin-Yatsenko et al, 2018).…”

A Two-Person Neuroscience Approach for Social Anxiety: A Paradigm With Interbrain Synchrony and Neurofeedback

“…Infra-low frequency (ILF) neurofeedback targets the modulation of brain activity that lies below 0.5 Hz (Legarda et al, 2011), also known as infra-slow oscillations (ISOs). It has been suggested that the fluctuation of ISOs represent a fundamental component of regulation of brain functioning such as the modulation of cortical excitability (Lőrincz et al, 2009;Palva and Palva, 2012;Hiltunen et al, 2014;Grin-Yatsenko et al, 2018b). Additionally, ISOs have been proposed to derive from non-neuronal origins (Legarda et al, 2011) with relationships to ATP-derived adenosine (Lőrincz et al, 2009) and astrocytic oscillations .…”

Therapeutic Effect of Infra-Low-Frequency Neurofeedback Training on Children and Adolescents with ADHD

“…Other characteristics of the ILF neurofeedback protocol include a bipolar montage of the electrodes, placement of the electrodes on the skull according to individual criteria of the patient's arousal level and mental strength, and continuous feedback of the parameters extracted from the full-band EEG in audio-visual computer animations that have a game-like character. Recent reports demonstrate that ILF neurofeedback not only utilizes slow brain activity in the EEG but also can directly lead to a significant increase in spectral power in the sub 0.5 Hz frequency band [51,52]. Clinically, it has been shown that children with attention deficits show smaller negative SCPs during the anticipation phase of a task in comparison to children without attention problems [16] or other EEG abnormalities in the frequency range of SCPs [46,47].…”

“…In addition to these partly subjective effects of the training, there were recently also reports published that demonstrate defined neurophysiological changes in the brain which can be attributed to the use of ILF neurofeedback. A quantitative analysis of 19-channel EEG recordings before and after 20 sessions of ILF neurofeedback training shows a significant increase in spectral power in the 0.5 Hz frequency band [51,52]. The general increase in spectral power of the ILF component of the EEG indicates that ILF neurofeedback training induces a modified baseline brain state.…”