A multivariate randomized controlled experiment about the effects of mindfulness priming on EEG neurofeedback self-regulation serious games

Abstract

Neurofeedback training (NFT) is a technique often proposed to train brain activity SR with promising results. However, some criticism has been raised due to the lack of evaluation, reliability, and validation of its learning effects. The current work evaluates the hypothesis that SR learning may be improved by priming the subject before NFT with guided mindfulness meditation (MM). The proposed framework was tested in a two-way parallel-group randomized controlled intervention with a single session alpha NFT, in a simplistic serious game design. Sixty-two healthy naïve subjects, aged between 18 and 43 years, were divided into MM priming and no-priming groups. Although both the EG and CG successfully attained the up-regulation of alpha rhythms (<i>F</i>(1,59) = 20.67, <i>p</i> < 0.001, <i>η_p</i>² = 0.26), the EG showed a significantly enhanced ability (<i>t</i>(29) = 4.38, <i>p</i> < 0.001) to control brain activity, compared to the CG (<i>t</i>(29) = 1.18, <i>p</i> > 0.1). Furthermore, EG superior performance on NFT seems to be explained by the subject’s lack of awareness at pre-intervention, less vigour at post-intervention, increased task engagement, and a relaxed non-judgemental attitude towards the NFT tasks. This study is a preliminary validation of the proposed assisted priming framework, advancing some implicit and explicit metrics about its efficacy on NFT performance, and a promising tool for improving naïve “users” self-regulation ability.