An effective Neurofeedback training, with cortisol correlates, in a clinical case of anxiety

Neurofeedback treatments have shown successful results in anxiety disorders. The effectiveness of a beta1 Neurofeedback protocol was tested in a longitudinal clinical case study. A participant suffering from an anxiety syndrome underwent 10 sessions of Neurofeedback, in a protocol consisting of uptraining the beta1 rhythm (16-21 Hz) while downtraining the theta (4-8 Hz) band. State anxiety and salivary cortisol levels were measured during each of the 10 sessions following a pre/post design. Initial and final examinations of anxiety symptoms and sustained attention performance were also implemented. The final evaluation revealed that levels of anxiety fell within a normative range and that sustained attention had improved. A t-test for related samples disclosed a significant improvement of beta1 amplitude across the sessions, without modifications in untrained bands. A significant inverse correlation between beta1 amplitude and salivary cortisol was detected, suggesting that brain activity could be considered a marker of anxiety. The validation of the beta1 Neurofeedback protocol was assessed according to independence, trainability and interpretability criteria. We demonstrate the effectiveness of a neurofeedback protocol on anxiety and sustained attention, the success of which may lie in the reestablishment of an optimal cortical arousal capable of inhibiting elevated amygdalar activity

• Autores: Aliño Costa, Marta; Gadea, Marien; Hidalgo, Vanesa; Pérez, Víctor; Sanjuán, Julio
• Tipo de recurso: Article of journal
• Fecha de publicación: 2017
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
• Repositorio: Repositorio Universidad Javeriana
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.javeriana.edu.co:10554/33388
• Acceso en línea: http://revistas.javeriana.edu.co/index.php/revPsycho/article/view/16546; http://hdl.handle.net/10554/33388
• Rights: openAccess
• License: Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional