Gerin Mattia I, Fichtenholtz Harlan, Roy Alicia, Walsh Christopher J, Krystal John H, Southwick Steven, Hampson Michelle
Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London (UCL), London, UK; Anna Freud Centre, London, UK; Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Veteran Affairs, National Center for PTSD, West Haven, CT, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Bennington College, Bennington, VT, USA.
Front Psychiatry. 2016 Jun 21;7:111. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00111. eCollection 2016.
Many patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially war veterans, do not respond to available treatments. Here, we describe a novel neurofeedback (NF) intervention using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging for treating and studying PTSD. The intervention involves training participants to control amygdala activity after exposure to personalized trauma scripts. Three combat veterans with chronic PTSD participated in this feasibility study. All three participants tolerated well the NF training. Moreover, two participants, despite the chronicity of their symptoms, showed clinically meaningful improvements, while one participant showed a smaller symptom reduction. Examination of changes in resting-state functional connectivity patterns revealed a normalization of brain connectivity consistent with clinical improvement. These preliminary results support feasibility of this novel intervention for PTSD and indicate that larger, well-controlled studies of efficacy are warranted.
许多创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）患者，尤其是退伍军人，对现有的治疗方法没有反应。在此，我们描述一种使用实时功能磁共振成像进行治疗和研究PTSD的新型神经反馈（NF）干预。该干预包括在参与者接触个性化创伤脚本后，训练他们控制杏仁核活动。三名患有慢性PTSD的退伍军人参与了这项可行性研究。所有三名参与者对NF训练的耐受性良好。此外，两名参与者尽管症状持续时间长，但仍表现出具有临床意义的改善，而一名参与者的症状减轻程度较小。对静息态功能连接模式变化的检查显示，大脑连接性正常化与临床改善一致。这些初步结果支持了这种针对PTSD的新型干预的可行性，并表明有必要进行更大规模、严格控制的疗效研究。
