Closed-Loop Neurofeedback of α Synchrony during Goal-Directed Attention
Jyoti Mishra, Mira Lowenstein, Richard Campusano, Yihan Hu, Juan Diaz-Delgado, Jacqueline Ayyoub, Rajat Jain, Adam Gazzaley
Abstract
a Oscillations in sensory cortex, under frontal control, desynchronize during attentive preparation. Here, in a selective attention study with simultaneous EEG in humans of either sex, we first demonstrate that diminished anticipatory a synchrony between the midfrontal region of the dorsal attention network and ventral visual sensory cortex [frontal-sensory synchrony (FSS)] significantly correlates with greater task performance. Then, in a double-blind, randomized controlled study in healthy adults, we implement closedloop neurofeedback (NF) of the anticipatory a FSS signal over 10 d of training. We refer to this closed-loop experimental approach of rapid NF integrated within a cognitive task as cognitive NF (cNF). We show that cNF results in significant trial-by-trial modulation of the anticipatory a FSS measure during training, concomitant plasticity of stimulus-evoked a/h responses, as well as transfer of benefits to response time (RT) improvements on a standard test of sustained attention. In a third study, we implement cNF training in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), replicating trial-by-trial modulation of the anticipatory a FSS signal as well as significant improvement of sustained attention RTs. These first findings demonstrate the basic mechanisms and translational utility of rapid cognitive-task-integrated NF.