psychological, neurophysiological, and mental factors associated with gamma-enhancing neurofeedback success

Introduction: regarding the neurofeedback training process, previous studies indicate that 10%-50% of subjects cannot gain control over their brain activity even after repeated training sessions. this study is conducted to overcome this problem by investigating inter-individual differences in neurofeedback learning to propose some predictors for the trainability of subjects. methods: eight healthy female students took part in 8 (electroencephalography) eeg neurofeedback training sessions for enhancing eeg gamma power at the oz channel. we studied participants’ preexisting fluid intelligence and eeg frequency sub-bands’ power during 2-min eyes-closed rest and a cognitive task as psychological and neurophysiological factors, concerning neurofeedback learning performance. we also assessed the self-reports of participants about mental strategies used by them during neurofeedback to identify the most effective successful strategies. results: the results revealed that a significant percentage of individuals (25% in this study) cannot learn how to control their brain gamma activity using neurofeedback. our findings suggest that fluid intelligence, gamma power during a cognitive task, and alpha power at rest can predict gamma-enhancing neurofeedback performance of individuals. based on our study, neurofeedback learning is a form of implicit learning. we also found that learning without a user’s mental efforts to find out successful mental strategies, in other words, unconscious learning, lead to more success in gamma-enhancing neurofeedback. conclusion: our results may improve gamma neurofeedback efficacy for further clinical usage and studies by giving insight about both non-trainable individuals and effective mental strategies.