Altered perceptual bistability in binocular rivalry through neurofeedback training of high order visual areas

 Jinendra Ekanayake¹, Ged Ridgway¹, Frank Scharnowski^2,3, Joel Winston¹, Koush Yury², Nikolaus Weiskopf¹, Geraint Rees¹

¹Wellcome Trust Center For Neuroimaging, University College London
²Institute of Bioengineering, Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL)
³Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics – CIBM, University of Geneva

Neurofeedback using real-time fMRI (rtfMRI) enables voluntary control of activity within a target brain region. By subsequently testing how such voluntary control of brain activity affects perception or behaviour, it is possible to establish a causal link between brain activity and behaviour We hypothesized that neurofeedback training of higher order visual areas would lead to a change in conscious perception that can be measured using a binocular rivalry (BR) paradigm. To test this hypothesis, brain signals and perception were measured during binocular rivalry between face and house stimuli in ten participants. Participants were then separated into two groups and learned up-regulation of either the fusiform face area (FFA) or the parahippocampal place area (PPA) using rtfMRI neurofeedback.Following training, participants reported BR again, this time either with or without simultaneous up-regulation of one of the target brain regions. During post-training BR without up-regulation, a significant decrease in duration and switch rate of the ‘untrained’ percept (i.e. a house when they learned to increase activity in the FFA, or a face when they learned to increase activity in the PPA) was observed, with no significant change in the perception of the stimulus linked to the trained region. During BR with up-regulation, there was a further decrease in the duration and switch rate of the ‘unmodulated’ percept which was significant (i.e. a house while concurrently up-regulating activity in FFA following training on FFA up-regulation, or a face while concurrently up-regulating activity in PPA following training on PPA up-regulation). We conclude that voluntary modulation of high order visual areas using rtfMRI neurofeedback causes lasting changes of BR dynamics and behaviour.

Neuroscientists are invited to get involved in the Wellcome Trust’s ‘Wonder: Art and
science on the brain’ at the Barbican 7-9th April – details are at
www.barbican.org.uk/brain. (courtesy Zula)

Louise Lim and Johanna Rae from the Language Group have been invited to present at
the East of England Stroke Forum Conference for Health Professionals on 14th March
and will be presenting ‘Using Neuroscience to Understand Recovery of Aphasia’.

Language:

Kawabata Duncan, Keith J.; Twomey, Tae; Parker Jones, ‘Ōiwi; Seghier,
Mohamed L.; Haji, Tomoki; Sakai, Katsuyuki; Price, Cathy J.; Devlin,
Joseph T. 2013. Inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity differences
when reading Japanese Kanji and Hiragana. Cerebral Cortex; doi:
10.1093/cercor/bht015

Parker Jones, ‘Ōiwi; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Kawabata Duncan, Keith J.;
Leff, Alex P.; Green, David W.; Price, Cathy J. 2013. Auditory–motor
interactions for the production of native and non-native speech. The
Journal of Neuroscience 33(6): 2376–2387.

Computational Anatomy:

Ashburner J, Ridgway GR. 2013. Symmetric diffeomorphic modeling of longitudinal
structural MRI. Frontiers in Brain Imaging Methods. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00197

The Big Picture team meets Sarah Scott, a charming young woman who experienced a stroke at the age of 18 while still at school. Now 22, Sarah is slowly recovering but continues to experience problems with both written and spoken language.

Rebuilding language after stroke.

The brain’s crystal ball may arise from a blend of cunning statistics and a technique that minimises surprises linked to the laws of thermodynamics.