Successful modulation of temporoparietal junction activity and stimulus-driven attention by fNIRS-based neurofeedback—A randomized controlled proof-of-concept study

Abstract

Abstract The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is a core hub in neural networks associated with reorienting of attention and social cognition. However, it remains unknown whether participants can learn to actively modulate their rTPJ activity via neurofeedback. Here, we explored the feasibility of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based neurofeedback in modulating rTPJ activity and its effect on rTPJ functions such as reorienting of attention and visual perspective taking. In a bidirectional regulation control group design, 50 healthy participants were reinforced to either up- or downregulate rTPJ activation over 4 days of training. Both groups showed an increase in rTPJ activity right from the beginning of the training but only the upregulation group maintained this effect, while the downregulation group showed a decline from the initial rTPJ activation. This suggests a learning effect in the downregulation exclusively, making it challenging to draw definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of rTPJ upregulation training. However, we observed group-specific effects on the behavioral level. We found a significant group x time interaction effect in the performance of the reorienting of attention task and group-specific changes, with decreased reaction times (RTs) in the upregulation group and increased RTs in the downregulation group across all conditions after the neurofeedback training. Those with low baseline performance showed greater improvements. In the perspective-taking task, however, only time effects were observed that were non-group-specific. These findings demonstrate that fNIRS-based neurofeedback is a feasible method to modulate rTPJ functions with preliminary evidence of neurophysiologically specific effects, thus paving the way for future applications of non-invasive rTPJ modulation in neuropsychiatric disorders.