Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study

This pilot study aimed to explore whether criminal psychopaths can learn volitional regulation of the left anterior insula with real-time fMRI neurofeedback. Our previous studies with healthy volunteers showed that learned control of the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal was specific t...

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Main Authors:	Sitaram, Ranganatha, Caria, Andrea, Veit, Ralf, Gaber, Tilman, Ruiz, Sergio, Birbaumer, Niels
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4196629/

id	pubmed-4196629
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-41966292014-10-28 Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study Sitaram, Ranganatha Caria, Andrea Veit, Ralf Gaber, Tilman Ruiz, Sergio Birbaumer, Niels Neuroscience This pilot study aimed to explore whether criminal psychopaths can learn volitional regulation of the left anterior insula with real-time fMRI neurofeedback. Our previous studies with healthy volunteers showed that learned control of the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal was specific to the target region, and not a result of general arousal and global unspecific brain activation, and also that successful regulation modulates emotional responses, specifically to aversive picture stimuli but not neutral stimuli. In this pilot study, four criminal psychopaths were trained to regulate the anterior insula by employing negative emotional imageries taken from previous episodes in their lives, in conjunction with contingent feedback. Only one out of the four participants learned to increase the percent differential BOLD in the up-regulation condition across training runs. Subjects with higher Psychopathic Checklist-Revised (PCL:SV) scores were less able to increase the BOLD signal in the anterior insula than their lower PCL:SV counterparts. We investigated functional connectivity changes in the emotional network due to learned regulation of the successful participant, by employing multivariate Granger Causality Modeling (GCM). Learning to up-regulate the left anterior insula not only increased the number of connections (causal density) in the emotional network in the single successful participant but also increased the difference between the number of outgoing and incoming connections (causal flow) of the left insula. This pilot study shows modest potential for training psychopathic individuals to learn to control brain activity in the anterior insula. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4196629/ /pubmed/25352793 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00344 Text en Copyright © 2014 Sitaram, Caria, Veit, Gaber, Ruiz and Birbaumer. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Sitaram, Ranganatha Caria, Andrea Veit, Ralf Gaber, Tilman Ruiz, Sergio Birbaumer, Niels
spellingShingle	Sitaram, Ranganatha Caria, Andrea Veit, Ralf Gaber, Tilman Ruiz, Sergio Birbaumer, Niels Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
author_facet	Sitaram, Ranganatha Caria, Andrea Veit, Ralf Gaber, Tilman Ruiz, Sergio Birbaumer, Niels
author_sort	Sitaram, Ranganatha
title	Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
title_short	Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
title_full	Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
title_fullStr	Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
title_full_unstemmed	Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study
title_sort	volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fmri neurofeedback: a pilot study
description	This pilot study aimed to explore whether criminal psychopaths can learn volitional regulation of the left anterior insula with real-time fMRI neurofeedback. Our previous studies with healthy volunteers showed that learned control of the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal was specific to the target region, and not a result of general arousal and global unspecific brain activation, and also that successful regulation modulates emotional responses, specifically to aversive picture stimuli but not neutral stimuli. In this pilot study, four criminal psychopaths were trained to regulate the anterior insula by employing negative emotional imageries taken from previous episodes in their lives, in conjunction with contingent feedback. Only one out of the four participants learned to increase the percent differential BOLD in the up-regulation condition across training runs. Subjects with higher Psychopathic Checklist-Revised (PCL:SV) scores were less able to increase the BOLD signal in the anterior insula than their lower PCL:SV counterparts. We investigated functional connectivity changes in the emotional network due to learned regulation of the successful participant, by employing multivariate Granger Causality Modeling (GCM). Learning to up-regulate the left anterior insula not only increased the number of connections (causal density) in the emotional network in the single successful participant but also increased the difference between the number of outgoing and incoming connections (causal flow) of the left insula. This pilot study shows modest potential for training psychopathic individuals to learn to control brain activity in the anterior insula.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4196629/
_version_	1613144643162079232

Volitional control of the anterior insula in criminal psychopaths using real-time fMRI neurofeedback: a pilot study

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