School of Biomedical Engineering, Health Science Center, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Measurements and Ultrasound Imaging, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
Department of Neurology, Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, Shenzhen University 1st Affiliated Hospital, Shenzhen, 518029, China.
Neuroimage. 2019 Apr 1;189:688-699. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.01.072. Epub 2019 Feb 1.
The efficacy of neurofeedback is a point of great controversy, because a certain proportion of users cannot properly regulate their brain activities and thereby fail to benefit from neurofeedback. To address the neurofeedback inefficacy problem, the present study is aimed to design and implement a new neurofeedback system that can more effectively and consistently regulate users' brain activities than the conventional way of training users to voluntarily regulate brain activities. The new neurofeedback system delivers external visual stimuli continuously at a specific alpha phase, which is real-time decoded from ongoing alpha wave, to regulate the alpha wave. Experimental results show that the proposed training-free externally-regulated neurofeedback (ER-NF) system can achieve consistent (effective in almost all sessions for almost all users), flexible (either increasing or decreasing peak alpha frequency and alpha power), and immediate (taking or losing effect immediately after stimulation is on or off) modulation effects on alpha wave. Therefore, the ER-NF system holds great potential to be able to more reliably and flexibly modulate cognition and behavior.
神经反馈的疗效存在很大争议，因为一定比例的使用者无法正确调节大脑活动，从而无法从神经反馈中受益。为了解决神经反馈无效的问题，本研究旨在设计和实现一种新的神经反馈系统，该系统能够比传统的训练使用者自主调节大脑活动的方式更有效地、更一致地调节使用者的大脑活动。新的神经反馈系统以特定的α 相位连续提供外部视觉刺激，该刺激实时从正在进行的α 波中解码，以调节α 波。实验结果表明，所提出的无训练外部调节神经反馈（ER-NF）系统可以实现一致（对几乎所有用户在几乎所有会话中都有效）、灵活（增加或减少峰值α 频率和α 功率）和即时（刺激开启或关闭后立即产生或失去效果）的α 波调节效果。因此，ER-NF 系统具有更可靠、更灵活地调节认知和行为的巨大潜力。
