Improving Visual Perception through Neurofeedback.

Perception depends on the interplay of ongoing spontaneous activity and stimulus-evoked activity in sensory cortices. This raises the possibility that training ongoing spontaneous activity alone might be sufficient for enhancing perceptual sensitivity. To test this, we trained human participants to control ongoing spontaneous activity in circumscribed regions of retinotopic visual cortex using real-time functional MRI-based neurofeedback. After training, we tested participants using a new and previously untrained visual detection task that was presented at the visual field location corresponding to the trained region of visual cortex. Perceptual sensitivity was significantly enhanced only when participants who had previously learned control over ongoing activity were now exercising control and only for that region of visual cortex. Our new approach allows us to non-invasively and non-pharmacologically manipulate regionally specific brain activity and thus provide "brain training" to deliver particular perceptual enhancements.

J Neurosci. 2012 Dec 5;32(49):17830-41. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6334-11.2012. Scharnowski F, Hutton C, Josephs O, Weiskopf N, Rees G. Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL Institute of Neurology, and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom, Institute of Bioengineering, Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, and Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland.