Can neurofeedback training increase self-esteem in depression?
There is evidence that people with a history of major depression have lower connectivity between two particular brain areas when recalling feelings of guilt. Now, new research suggests that it is possible to strengthen this brain connectivity and increase self-esteem with a new type of neurofeedback training.
A team of researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom demonstrated that just one session of neurofeedback training using functional MRI (fMRI) can produce such a result.
They report the findings of the proof-of-concept study in a recent NeuroImage: Clinical paper.
Neurofeedback is a technique that allows people to learn how to influence their own brain activity by observing a representation of that activity in real time.
Electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback has been around since the 1970s. Neurofeedback using fMRI, which uses imaging to look at brain activity, is a more recent development.
Like EEG neurofeedback, fMRI neurofeedback is noninvasive, but it differs from the EEG approach in that it offers greater resolution of the brain region under observation.
Previous study examined connectivity
In an earlier study, the same team had already used fMRI to show that when people with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) experience feelings of guilt, or "excessive self-blame," they have lower connectivity between the right anterior superior temporal (ATL) and the anterior subgenual cingulate (SCC) regions of the brain.
Connectivity between brain regions has to do with the amount of connectedness that they have in order to exchange information. In the case of the ATL and SCC, their connectivity relates to the interpretation of social behavior.
The researchers refer to the patterns of lower connectivity between the ATL and SCC that they saw as "brain signatures."
"The brain signature of excessive self-blame was discovered in patients with [MDD] whose symptoms had remitted, suggesting it could precede the symptoms of depression, making people more vulnerable to the disorder," says lead study author Dr. Roland Zahn.
Dr. Zahn is a reader in neurocognitive bases of mood disorders at King's College London in the U.K.
He and his colleagues wished to take the previous findings a step further and address the question of whether people could use fMRI neurofeedback to alter their brain signature.
