A brief real-time fNIRS-informed neurofeedback training of the prefrontal cortex changes brain activity and connectivity during subsequent working memory challenge.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
; 132: 110968, 2024 Jun 08.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38354898
ABSTRACT
Working memory (WM) represents a building-block of higher cognitive functions and a wide range of mental disorders are associated with WM impairments. Initial studies have shown that several sessions of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) informed real-time neurofeedback (NF) allow healthy individuals to volitionally increase activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a region critically involved in WM. For the translation to therapeutic or neuroenhancement applications, however, it is critical to assess whether fNIRS-NF success transfers into neural and behavioral WM enhancement in the absence of feedback. We therefore combined single-session fNIRS-NF of the left DLPFC with a randomized sham-controlled design (N = 62 participants) and a subsequent WM challenge with concomitant functional MRI. Over four runs of fNIRS-NF, the left DLPFC NF training group demonstrated enhanced neural activity in this region, reflecting successful acquisition of neural self-regulation. During the subsequent WM challenge, we observed no evidence for performance differences between the training and the sham group. Importantly, however, examination of the fMRI data revealed that - compared to the sham group - the training group exhibited significantly increased regional activity in the bilateral DLPFC and decreased left DLPFC - left anterior insula functional connectivity during the WM challenge. Exploratory analyses revealed a negative association between DLPFC activity and WM reaction times in the NF group. Together, these findings indicate that healthy individuals can learn to volitionally increase left DLPFC activity in a single training session and that the training success translates into WM-related neural activation and connectivity changes in the absence of feedback. This renders fNIRS-NF as a promising and scalable WM intervention approach that could be applied to various mental disorders.
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Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Neurorretroalimentação
/
Memória de Curto Prazo
Tipo de estudo:
Clinical_trials
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de publicação:
Reino Unido