Effectiveness of Neurofeedback on the Asymmetry Pattern of the Frontal Alpha Wave Activity, Executive Function and Symptoms Severity in Depression Patients

The aim of this research was to study  the ffectiveness of the neurofeedback therapy for improvement of the frontal alpha asymmetry, executive functioning and symptoms severity in depressed patients. The study conducted with a randomized control trial design with pretest- posttest and follow- up plan. The study population included the referred persons to the psychiatry section of the Tabriz Hygiene Center with depression disorder diagnosis during a 5 months interval. Among these 30 patients were selected and randomly divided to experimental and control groups (n=15). The experimental group received 20 neurofeedback training sessions, whereas the control group received unreal neurofeedback training (placebo). The collected data were analyzed by a MANCOVA analysis. Increased activity of the left hemisphere, decreased activity of the right hemisphere, as well as, increased cognitive flexibility and decreased depression severity in the post-test stage were evident. A significant selective attention change was revealed in the follow-up stage as well. According to the results on this research, neurofeedback could be an effective intervention to modify the asymmeric frontal alpha activity  and improvement of the selective attention and depression symptoms in depressed patients.