Proceedings of the 2024 ISNR Annual Conference: Poster Presentations

Individuals with traumatic experiences may develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) along with comorbid conditions like anxiety and major depressive disorders (Brunello et al., 2001; Kessler et al., 2017).Past studies utilizing amplitude training and alpha-theta training have demonstrated the efficacy of neurofeedback (NF) in alleviating trauma-related symptoms (Peniston & Kulkosky, 1991;van der Kolk et al., 2016).Despite symptom reductions, these studies often lacked an explanation of how targeted electrode sites were functionally related to PTSD symptoms.A potential solution to this issue is live z-score NF training (LZT), a state-of-the-art NF method that normalizes brain activity through real-time comparison to an age-and sex-matched normative database (Thatcher, 2013).Therefore, we conducted the first study to assess the acceptability and potential efficacy of LZT for treating PTSD.After a diagnostic interview using the MINI neuropsychiatric interview (Sheehan et al., 1998), 14 PTSD patients (8 females; mean age = 21.06,SD = 2.18) underwent 10 quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG)guided LZT sessions and three assessment sessions at pre-, mid-, and posttreatment.Each assessment session included self-report measures of trauma-related symptoms, acceptability, and safety concerns, as well as a 10-min eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG recording.Training sessions, lasting 20 min each, involved participants watching a video of their choice.Repeated measures ANOVAs indicated significant improvements in the symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, and emotion dysregulation.Additionally, a significant correlation was found between beta (13-30 Hz) power in the parietal region (P3 and P4) and self-reported PCL-5 scores.Although these results are promising, we found that the treatment effects, including changes in the pattern of the qEEG map, were not uniform across the participants, which needs further investigation.While these results require replication in larger samples with active control groups, the study provides evidence that LZT holds potential as an effective treatment for PTSD.