Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Neurofeedback and Motor training for Parkinson’s Disease: Randomised Trial

May 24, 206

Objective: Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) neurofeedback (NF) uses feedback of the patient’s own brain activity to self-regulate brain networks which in turn could lead to a change in behaviour and clinical symptoms. The objective was to determine the effect of neurofeedback and motor training and motor training (MOT) alone on motor and non-motor functions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) in a 10-week small Phase I randomised controlled trial.

Methods: 30 patients with PD (Hoehn & Yahr I-III) and no significant comorbidity took part in the trial with random allocation to two groups. Group 1 (NF: 15 patients) received rt-fMRI-NF with motor training. Group 2 (MOT: 15 patients) received motor training alone. The primary outcome measure was the Movement Disorder Society – Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale-Motor scale (MDS-UPDRS-MS), administered pre- and post-intervention ‘off-medication’. The secondary outcome measures were the ‘on-medication’ MDS-UPDRS, the Parkinson’s disease Questionnaire-39, and quantitative motor assessments after 4 and 10 weeks.

Results: Patients in the NF group were able to upregulate activity in the supplementary motor area by using motor imagery. They improved by an average of 4.5 points on the MDS-UPDRS-MS in the ‘off-medication’ state (95% confidence interval: -2.5 to -6.6), whereas the MOT group improved only by 1.9 points (95% confidence interval +3.2 to -6.8). However, the improvement did not differ significantly between the groups. No adverse events were reported in either group.

Interpretation: This Phase I study suggests that NF combined with motor training is safe and improves motor symptoms immediately after treatment, but larger trials are needed to explore its superiority over active control conditions.

 Clinical Trial website : Unique Identifier: NCT01867827

URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01867827?term=NCT01867827&rank=1

Edited by:

Thomas Koenig, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Switzerland

Reviewed by:

John H. Gruzelier,

Tomas Ros, University of Geneva, Switzerland  

Copyright: © 2016 Subramanian, Busse-Morris, Brosnan, Turner, Morris and Linden. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Correspondence: Prof. David E. Linden, Cardiff University, MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics & Genomics, School of Medicine, Cardiff, United Kingdom, lindend@cardiff.ac.uk

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00111/abstract