rtfMRI Neurofeedback - Smoking Cessation

Real time fMRI (rtfMRI) neurofeedback is a tool that has been developed to help individuals learn to control their own brain activity patterns to determine whether improved brain control leads to improved clinical outcomes in disorders such as addiction, obesity, depression, ADHD, OCD, and traumatic brain injury. The following video is an rtfMRI neurofeedback demonstration of an experiment that was developed to teach nicotine-dependent smokers to control an area of the brain involved in resisting the urge to smoke. Each participant is informed that they will be playing the ‘Control Your Brain’ game. The goal of the game is for each participant to identify thinking strategies that are effective at changing their brain activity, which they will be observing while in the MRI machine.
Video courtesy Luke Stoeckel, Ph.D., Director, Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience of Obesity & Diabetes Program, National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases; Research Consultant, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital;
Lecturer on Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
This research was conducted by investigators from the Evins (Department of Psychiatry, Center for Addiction Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital) and Gabrieli (Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) labs. This research was carried out at the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support was provided by the National Institutes of Health: K23DA032612, K24DA030443, R21DA030523; the Norman E. Zinberg Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; the Charles A. King Trust; the McGovern Institute Neurotechnology Program; and philanthropic donations to the Poitras Center for Affective Disorders Research and the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry.