fMRI-based neurofeedback strategies and the way forward to treating phasic psychiatric symptoms

Candela Donantueno; Pierre Yger; François Cabestaing; Renaud Jardri

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1275229

fMRI-based neurofeedback strategies and the way forward to treating phasic psychiatric symptoms

Front Neurosci. 2023 Dec 6:17:1275229. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1275229. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Candela Donantueno¹, Pierre Yger¹, François Cabestaing², Renaud Jardri¹

Affiliations

¹ University of Lille, INSERM U-1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience & Cognition Center, Plasticity & SubjectivitY Team, Fontan Hospital, Lille, France.
² University of Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, UMR 9189 CRIStAL, Lille, France.

Abstract

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are the perfect illustration of phasic symptoms in psychiatric disorders. For some patients and in some situations, AVH cannot be relieved by standard therapeutic approaches. More advanced treatments are needed, among which neurofeedback, and more specifically fMRI-based neurofeedback, has been considered. This paper discusses the different possibilities to approach neurofeedback in the specific context of phasic symptoms, by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the available neurofeedback options. It concludes with the added value of the recently introduced information-based neurofeedback. Although requiring an online fMRI signal classifier, which can be quite complex to implement, this neurofeedback strategy opens a door toward an alternative treatment option for complex phasic symptomatology.

Keywords: coping; fMRI; hallucinations; multi-voxel pattern analysis; neurofeedback; neuromodulation.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. CD was supported by a PEARL PhD fellowship (H2020 program for early-stage researchers in Lille). Classification methods to automatically detect hallucination occurrences during fMRI were developed thanks to an ANR-JC grant (# 16-CE37-0015 – INTRUDE project, coordinated by RJ).