A randomized, controlled trial of alpha-rhythm EEG neurofeedback in posttraumatic stress disorder: A preliminary investigation showing evidence of decreased PTSD symptoms and restored default mode and salience network connectivity using fMRI
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The default-mode network (DMN) and salience network (SN) have been shown to display altered connectivity in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Restoring aberrant connectivity within these networks with electroencephalogram neurofeedback (EEG-NFB) has been shown previously to be associated with acute decreases in symptoms. Here, we conducted a double-blind, sham-controlled randomized trial of alpha-rhythm EEG-NFB in participants with PTSD (n = 36) over 20-weeks. Our aim was to provide mechanistic evidence underlying clinical improvements by examining changes in network connectivity via fMRI. METHODS: We randomly assigned participants with a primary diagnosis of PTSD to either the experimental group (n = 18) or sham-control group (n = 18). We collected resting-state fMRI scans pre- and post-NFB intervention, for both the experimental and sham-control PTSD groups. We further compared baseline brain connectivity measures pre-NFB to age-matched healthy controls (n = 36). RESULTS: With regard to the primary outcome measure of PTSD severity, we found a significant main effect of time in the absence of a group × time interaction. Nevertheless, we found significantly decreased PTSD severity scores in the experimental NFB group only, when comparing post-NFB (dz = 0.71) and 3-month follow-up scores (dz = 0.77) to baseline measures. Interestingly, we found evidence to suggest a shift towards normalization of DMN and SN connectivity post-NFB in the experimental group only. Both decreases in PTSD severity and NFB performance were correlated to DMN and SN connectivity post-NFB in the experimental group. Critically, remission rates of PTSD were significant higher in the experimental group (61.1%) as compared to the sham-control group (33.3%). CONCLUSION: The current study shows mechanistic evidence for therapeutic changes in DMN and SN connectivity that are known to be associated with PTSD psychopathology with no patient dropouts. This preliminary investigation merits further research to demonstrate fully the clinical efficacy of EEG-NFB as an adjunctive therapy for PTSD.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".