Clinical Trial of Frontal Alpha Asymmetry Neurofeedback for the Improvement Executive Functions and the Reduction of Rumination in Reactive Depression Result of Love Trauma

Depressed people, unlike non-depressed, show the higher the right frontal lobe activity than the left frontal lobe. Because the right hemisphere associated with negative emotional processing, pessimistic and maladaptive thinking styles, and the frontal alpha power is the inverse index of cortical activity, the frontal alpha power asymmetry reflects the balance between the left and right hemisphere in the frontal. The aim of this study was to improve the frontal alpha asymmetry for reducing depression and rumination levels and executive functions of people with reactive depression from love trauma syndrome through the neurofeedback interventional method and compare its efficacy with the sham group. In addition, in this study, was considered the neurological characteristics of the emotionally traumatic experience, through the Clinical Q as the evaluation method. This study's participants include 32 students of Tehran and Amir Kabir universities that they experienced love trauma in the recent 6 months and subsequently, they exposed depression and rumination symptoms and reduction of executive functions. For measuring of Pre-Test phase, after the primary interview and performance of Love Trauma, Beck's Depression and Anxiety Scales was evaluated executive functions (continuous attention, working memory and cognitive inhibition) by computer tasks; CPT, N-Back and Go/NoGo. Finally, was measured EEG 2-channel record through Clinical Q. The participants were placed in the trial group (age: M=24.73, SD=3.71) and sham group (age: M=23.46, SD=2.87), randomly. Then, in the neurofeedback intervention performance, was exerted 15 sessions on 45 min in the both of the trial and the sham groups. At the end of sessions were repeated pre-test phase measurements for post-test phase. Results of this study, emphasize on the effects of alpha asymmetry neurofeedback for reduction of depression symptoms similar to some research and against, deferent of other some studies, such as effective neurofeedback training for the decrease of Beck's depression scores. One of the important results of this research was the improvement of executive functions and rumination, the reason of substantial role of the both on depression duration. Effect of frontal alpha asymmetry neurofeedback on the reduction of love trauma and also, improvement of the neurological index of traumatic event experience was a new finding. Based on this results could be proposed neurofeedback training as a beneficial intervention for reduction of love trauma syndrome.