Scientific article
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English

Real-time fMRI neurofeedback modulates induced hallucinations and underlying brain mechanisms

Published inCommunications biology, vol. 7, no. 1, 1120
Publication date2024-09-11
First online date2024-09-11
Abstract

Hallucinations can occur in the healthy population, are clinically relevant and frequent symptoms in many neuropsychiatric conditions, and have been shown to mark disease progression in patients with neurodegenerative disorders where antipsychotic treatment remains challenging. Here, we combine MR-robotics capable of inducing a clinically-relevant hallucination, with real-time fMRI neurofeedback (fMRI-NF) to train healthy individuals to up-regulate a fronto-parietal brain network associated with the robotically-induced hallucination. Over three days, participants learned to modulate occurrences of and transition probabilities to this network, leading to heightened sensitivity to induced hallucinations after training. Moreover, participants who became sensitive and succeeded in fMRI-NF training, showed sustained and specific neural changes after training, characterized by increased hallucination network occurrences during induction and decreased hallucination network occurrences during a matched control condition. These data demonstrate that fMRI-NF modulates specific hallucination network dynamics and highlights the potential of fMRI-NF as a novel antipsychotic treatment in neurodegenerative disorders and schizophrenia.

Keywords
  • Adult
  • Brain Mapping / methods
  • Brain / diagnostic imaging
  • Brain / physiopathology
  • Female
  • Hallucinations / diagnostic imaging
  • Hallucinations / physiopathology
  • Hallucinations / therapy
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
  • Male
  • Neurofeedback / methods
  • Schizophrenia / diagnostic imaging
  • Schizophrenia / physiopathology
  • Young Adult
Funding
Citation (ISO format)
DHANIS, Herberto et al. Real-time fMRI neurofeedback modulates induced hallucinations and underlying brain mechanisms. In: Communications biology, 2024, vol. 7, n° 1, p. 1120. doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06842-x
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Identifiers
Additional URL for this publicationhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06842-x
Journal ISSN2399-3642
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Creation02/12/2024 20:16:28
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