Cited by 133Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesDigital Mental Health Interventions

fMRI neurofeedback facilitates anxiety regulation in females with spider phobia

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Zilverstand, Anna, Sorger, Bettina, Sarkheil, Pegah, Goebel, Rainer·2015·Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Spider phobics show an exaggerated fear response when encountering spiders. This fear response is aggravated by negative and irrational beliefs about the feared object. Cognitive reappraisal can target these beliefs, and therefore has a fear regulating effect. The presented study investigated if neurofeedback derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) would facilitate anxiety regulation by cognitive reappraisal, using spider phobia as a model of anxiety disorders. Feedback was provided based on activation in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right insula, as indicators of engagement and regulation success, respectively. METHODS: Eighteen female spider phobics participated in a randomized, controlled, single-blinded study. All participants completed a training session in the MRI scanner. Participants assigned to the neurofeedback condition were instructed to shape their regulatory strategy based on the provided feedback. Participants assigned to the control condition were asked to adapt their strategy intuitively. RESULTS: Neurofeedback participants exhibited lower anxiety levels than the control group at the end of the training. In addition, only neurofeedback participants achieved down-regulation of insula activation levels by cognitive reappraisal. Group differences became more pronounced over time, supporting learning as a mechanism behind this effect. Importantly, within the neurofeedback group, achieved changes in insula activation levels during training predicted long-term anxiety reduction. CONCLUSIONS: The conducted study provides first evidence that fMRI neurofeedback has a facilitating effect on anxiety regulation in spider phobia.

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Crossref · 10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00148

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  • In other psychiatric and neurological disorders, rtfMRI-NF has shown some clinical potential, showing generalization to NF-free transfer runs and longer-term beneficial effects on cognitive and behavior symptoms of up to several months.

    “In other psychiatric and neurological disorders rtfMRI-NF has shown some clinical potential (Thibault et al., 2015, 2016), showing generalization to NF-free transfer runs and longer-term beneficial effects on cognitive and behavior symptoms of up to several months (Zilverstand et al., 2015).”

    From Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Its Clinical Translation (2018) · cites this paper as Zilverstand et al., 2015

    The Results (Follow-up assessment of fear; no page given) report reduced spider fear at three months and a correlation between improvement and insula regulation in neurofeedback participants. However, both groups improved and the group difference had disappeared by follow-up. The Procedure describes feedback during the experimental runs, but the paper does not report generalization to a neurofeedback-free transfer run. (LLM, conf=0.87)

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Authors
Zilverstand, A., Sorger, B., Sarkheil, P., & Goebel, R.
Affiliations
  • Maastricht University (NL)
  • Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NL)
Corresponding author
Zilverstand, Anna
Venue
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
Published
2015-06-08
Volume
9
Pages
148-148
ISSN
1662-5153 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1512745453
Cited by
133
References
66
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 1
FWCI
18.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • KNAW Research Portal (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen)
Funders
Ministerie van Economische Zaken
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
Keywords
fMRI neurofeedback, spider phobia, anxiety regulation, cognitive reappraisal, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, fear response, irrational beliefs, anxiety disorders, female patients

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