Shutting down sensorimotor interferences after stroke: A proof-of-principle SMR neurofeedback study

Introduction: neurofeedback training aims at learning self-regulation of brain activity underlying cognitive,emotional or physiological functions. despite of promising investigations on neurofeedback as a tool for cognitive rehabilitation in neurological diseases,such as after stroke,there is still a lack of research on feasibility and efficiency of neurofeedback in this field. methods: the present study aimed at investigating behavioral and electrophysiological effects of 10 sessions of sensorimotor rhythm (smr) neurofeedback in a 74-years-old stroke patient (ug20). based on previous results in healthy young participants,we hypothesized that smr neurofeedback leads to a decrease in sensorimotor interferences and improved stimulus processing,reflected by changes in event-related potentials (erps) and electrophysiological coherence. to assess whether ug20 benefited from the training as much as healthy persons of a similar age,a healthy control group of n = 10 elderly persons was trained as well. before and after neurofeedback training,participants took part in a multichannel electroencephalography measurement conducted during a non-verbal and a verbal learning task. results: both ug20 and the healthy controls were able to regulate their smr activity during neurofeedback training. moreover,in a non-verbal learning task,changes in erps and coherence were observed after training: ug20 showed a better performance in the non-verbal learning task and a higher p3 amplitude after training than before,and coherence between central and parietal electrodes decreased after training. the control group also showed a behavioral improvement in the non-verbal learning task and tendencies for higher p3 amplitudes and decreased central-parietal coherence after training. single-case analyses indicated that the changes observed in ug20 were not smaller than the changes in healthy controls. conclusion: neurofeedback can be successfully applied in a stroke patient and in healthy elderly persons. we suggest that smr neurofeedback leads to a shutting-down of sensorimotor interferences which benefits semantic encoding and retrieval. © 2016 reichert,kober,schweiger,grieshofer,neuper and wood.