Real-time Biofeedback With 7-Tesla MRI for Treatment of Depression

"The active biofeedback session will be done within the 7T MRI. It will include a pre-training run, 3 training runs, and a post-training run. Each run will be comprised of MOTIVATE and REST trials. During each MOTIVATE trial, subjects will be instructed to generate a heightened state of motivation. Participants will be encouraged to identify strategies that are personally relevant or useful and to monitor the efficacy of the strategies. Subjects will simultaneously view a progress bar on the screen during MOTIVATE trials that represents their VTA activity and they will be trained to try to increase the level of the bar by motivating themselves. For the active VTA biofeedback group, the progress bar will be updated every second to accurately convey level of VTA signal activation. During REST trials, all subjects will be instructed to count backwards. During the post-training 'test' run, subjects will be instructed to use the strategies they found to be most effective."

The sham biofeedback session resembles the active condition, however, the thermometer seen during the MOTIVATE trials will represent yoked sham values.