Lu 呂宏耘 Hung-Yun, Zhao 趙懿 Yi, Stealey Hannah M, Barnett Cole R, Tobler Philippe N, Santacruz Samantha R
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712.
Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich CH-8006, Switzerland.
J Neurosci. 2025 Mar 26;45(13):e1808242025. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1808-24.2025.
Dopaminergic brain areas are crucial for cognition and their dysregulation is linked to neuropsychiatric disorders typically treated with pharmacological interventions. These treatments often have side effects and variable effectiveness, underscoring the need for alternatives. We introduce the first demonstration of neurofeedback using local field potentials (LFP) from the ventral tegmental area (VTA). This approach leverages the real-time temporal resolution of LFP and ability to target deep brain. In our study, two male rhesus macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) learned to regulate VTA beta power using a customized normalized metric to stably quantify VTA LFP signal modulation. The subjects demonstrated flexible and specific control with different strategies for specific frequency bands, revealing new insights into the plasticity of VTA neurons contributing to oscillatory activity that is functionally relevant to many aspects of cognition. Excitingly, the subjects showed transferable patterns, a key criterion for clinical applications beyond training settings. This work provides a foundation for neurofeedback-based treatments, which may be a promising alternative to conventional approaches and open new avenues for understanding and managing neuropsychiatric disorders.
多巴胺能脑区对认知至关重要，其功能失调与通常采用药物干预治疗的神经精神疾病有关。这些治疗方法往往有副作用且效果不一，这凸显了寻找替代方法的必要性。我们首次展示了利用来自腹侧被盖区（VTA）的局部场电位（LFP）进行神经反馈。这种方法利用了LFP的实时时间分辨率以及靶向深部脑区的能力。在我们的研究中，两只雄性恒河猴（猕猴）学会了使用定制的归一化指标来调节VTA的β功率，以稳定量化VTA的LFP信号调制。实验对象展示了对不同频段采用不同策略的灵活且特定的控制，揭示了VTA神经元可塑性的新见解，这些可塑性有助于产生与认知诸多方面功能相关的振荡活动。令人兴奋的是，实验对象表现出了可转移模式，这是超越训练环境的临床应用的关键标准。这项工作为基于神经反馈的治疗奠定了基础，这可能是传统方法的一种有前景的替代方案，并为理解和管理神经精神疾病开辟了新途径。
