Donders Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Epilepsy Res. 2010 Jun;90(1-2):75-82. doi: 10.1016/j.eplepsyres.2010.03.010. Epub 2010 Apr 11.
One of the ways in which brain computer interfaces can be used is neurofeedback (NF). Subjects use their brain activation to control an external device, and with this technique it is also possible to learn to control aspects of the brain activity by operant conditioning. Beneficial effects of NF training on seizure occurrence have been described in epileptic patients. Little research has been done about differentiating NF effectiveness by type of epilepsy, particularly, whether idiopathic generalized seizures are susceptible to NF. In this experiment, seizures that manifest themselves as spike-wave discharges (SWDs) in the EEG were reinforced during 10 sessions in 6 rats of the WAG/Rij strain, an animal model for absence epilepsy. EEG's were recorded before and after the training sessions. Reinforcing SWDs let to decreased SWD occurrences during training; however, the changes during training were not persistent in the post-training sessions. Because behavioural states are known to have an influence on the occurrence of SWDs, it is proposed that the reinforcement situation increased arousal which resulted in fewer SWDs. Additional tests supported this hypothesis. The outcomes have implications for the possibility to train SWDs with operant learning techniques.
脑机接口的用途之一是神经反馈 (NF)。受试者使用大脑激活来控制外部设备，并且通过这种技术也可以通过操作性条件作用来学习控制大脑活动的某些方面。NF 训练对癫痫患者的发作发生有有益的影响。关于通过癫痫类型来区分 NF 的有效性的研究很少，特别是特发性全面性发作是否易受 NF 影响。在这项实验中，在 EEG 中表现为尖波-慢波放电 (SWD) 的癫痫发作在 WAG/Rij 大鼠的 6 只动物模型中接受了 10 次强化治疗，该模型用于治疗失神性癫痫。在训练前后记录 EEG。强化 SWD 导致训练过程中 SWD 的发生减少；然而，训练过程中的变化在训练后并没有持续。由于已知行为状态对 SWD 的发生有影响，因此提出强化情况增加了觉醒，从而导致 SWD 减少。其他测试支持了这一假设。这些结果对使用操作性学习技术训练 SWD 的可能性具有重要意义。
