Identifying Potential Mechanisms of Action Underlying Neurofeedback Treatment Response in Depression

Major depressive disorder involves aberrant affective processing, the normalization of which has been associated with treatment in both pharmacological and cognitive behavioral interventions (1,2). In this issue of Biological Psychiatry, Young et al. (3) present data suggesting that the normalization of affective processing via a real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback intervention may be the mechanism underlying treatment response. A randomized trial of neurofeedback training patients with major depressive disorder to upregulate their amygdala activity during positive autobiographical memory recall found clinical improvements in the group receiving amygdala neurofeedback when compared with a control group receiving feedback from a parietal region (4).
Source: Biological Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Commentary Source Type: research