Post by Stephanie Williams

What's the science?

Adaptive coping strategies in stressful situations have been linked to the downregulation of activity in the amygdala. Several studies have confirmed that amygdala-targeted neurofeedback can improve emotion regulation and decrease depressive symptoms. Neurofeedback is when information about an individual’s brain activity is reported to that individual in near real time, with the goal of having the person learn to alter or control their own brain activity. Despite evidence in favor of targeted neurofeedback as a method for improving strategies to cope with stress, neurofeedback using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is not widespread due to high cost and lack of accessibility of the MRI scanner. This week in Nature Human Behavior, Jakob Keynan from Talma Hendler's lab at Tel Aviv University and Medical Center and colleagues administered and demonstrated the efficacy of a highly scalable fMRI-informed electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback short training protocol (coined ‘Amygdala-Electrical FingerPrint-NF’ or ‘amyg-EFP-NF’) for individuals undergoing stressful military training.

How did they do it?

The authors administered a neurofeedback training program to a large group of young men who were beginning combat training. Participants were randomly assigned (administration was double-blinded) to one of three groups: 1) neurofeedback based on an amygdala specific signal (amyg-EFP-NF), 2) control neurofeedback based on the alpha/theta ratio signal (control-NF), or 3) no neurofeedback. The authors assessed several emotion-related traits in participants (e.g. state anxiety levels, cognitive processing and emotional expression (alexithymia), which is heightened following traumatic stressors). The authors used an emotional Stroop task (eStroop) to assess emotion regulation. Participants saw a series of faces express either a fearful or happy emotion paired with a word (eg.’happy‘ or ‘fearful’). The participant’s goal was to ignore the words and correctly report the emotion they observed on the face.



Participants in the two neurofeedback groups completed six neurofeedback training sessions over four weeks while undergoing demanding military combative training on their base. Sessions involved a feedback interface: a 3D animated scenario in which avatar figures in a hospital waiting room were either agitated, speaking in raised voices, or were resting in a chair quietly. Participants first passively watched a noisy scenario with agitated avatars (the “attend” section), and then actively tried to relax the scene (the “regulate” section). Participants were instructed to find a mental way to make the figures in the animation sit down and lower their voice.



The authors used an Amyg-EFP model that had been previously developed using simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings to predict activity in the amygdala from EEG signals. During neurofeedback trials, the authors calculated either the participant’s alpha/theta power (control-NF group) or the participant’s Amyg-EFP online during the task (amyg-EFP-NF group), and used the results of the calculation to modify the audio-visual scenario in near real time. Participants in the control-NF group learned to down-regulate their alpha/theta ratio. Participants in the Amyg-EFP group learned to down-regulate activity that was localized to the amygdala.