interpersonal violence
Research Papers
A Pilot Adaptive Neurofeedback Investigation of the Neural Mechanisms of Implicit Emotion Regulation Among Women With PTSD
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is widely associated with deficits in implicit emotion regulation. Recently, adaptive fMRI neurofeedback (A-NF) has been developed as a methodology that offers a unique probe of brain networks that mediate implicit emotion regulation and their impairment in PTSD. We designed an A-NF paradigm in which difficulty of an emotional conflict task (i.e., embedding trauma distractors onto a neutral target stimulus) was controlled by a whole-brain classifier trained to differentiate attention to the trauma distractor vs. target. We exploited this methodology to test whether PTSD was associated with: (1) an altered brain state that differentiates attention towards vs. away from trauma cues; and (2) an altered ability to use concurrent feedback about brain states during an implicit emotion regulation task. Adult women with a current diagnosis of PTSD (n = 10) and healthy control (n = 9) women participated in this task during 3T fMRI. During two initial non-feedback runs used to train a whole-brain classifier, we observed: (1) poorer attention performance in PTSD; and (2) a linear relationship between brain state discrimination and attention performance, which was significantly attenuated among the PTSD group when the task contained trauma cues. During the A-NF phase, the PTSD group demonstrated poorer ability to regulate brain states as per attention instructions, and this poorer ability was related to PTSD symptom severity. Further, PTSD was associated with the heightened encoding of feedback in the insula and hippocampus. These results suggest a novel understanding of whole-brain states and their regulation that underlie emotion regulation deficits in PTSD.
View Full Paper →Exploring the Use of Neurofeedback Therapy in Mitigating Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an injury to the brain caused by an acute injury to the head, neck, or face, such as a blunt force trauma. Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) are at high risk for TBI, given how frequently they are repeatedly struck in the head. An abundance of evidence indicates that even “mild” TBI can have lifelong impacts, including personality and behavioral changes. TBI often goes undiagnosed in survivors as most do not seek medical treatment for their injuries. Given the lack of diagnoses, these symptoms may often be overlooked or misunderstood. One emerging method for treating the symptoms of TBI is neurofeedback (NF). NF is a type of biofeedback that uses operant conditioning to regulate activity in various regions of the brain. NF can lead to better cognitive performance and emotional self-regulation. Given the potentially high rate of TBI in IPV, it is worth exploring if NF can reduce the symptoms that negatively impact survivors. The current study explores the use of NF to treat IPV survivors who experienced head injury and, as such, probable TBI (N = 32). Survivors participated in a quantitative EEG (qEEG) to locate problem areas of the brain and participated in assessments, before and after treatment, to examine constructs such as depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Results show significant differences in both the qEEG data and written assessments following the completion of NF. These results suggest NF could mitigate symptoms of probable TBI in IPV survivors.
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