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Modulation of the Anterior Insula Using Real-time fMRI Neural Feedback
Authors:
Lawrence, E.J., SU, L., Giampietro, V., Barker, G, Medford, N., Dalton, J, Birbaumer, N., Veit, R., Sitaram, R. and David, A.S.
Reference:
16th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping
Year of publication:
2010
CBU number:
7161
Abstract:
Recent developments in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational methods allow very rapid data transfer and analysis within a few seconds of data collection. Such “real time” fMRI (rt-fMRI) provides a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) which can be used for neurofeedback, and has already been shown to have clinical promise[1]. Studies from healthy controls suggest the right anterior insula (RAI) is amenable to regulation,[2] a region implicated in affective processing, and hypo-active in psychiatric conditions involving attenuated affect i.e. depersonalisation disorder (DPD).[3] We predicted that using RAI activation levels as neural feedback, participants would learn to control this region, in contrast to participants in a ‘sham’ condition shown feedback from the parahippocampal place area (PPA). This study is a first step towards using rt-fMRI neurofeedback as a psychiatric intervention for attenuated affect.