Study is preliminary, but suggests an acoustic ‘feedback’ technology might help some patients
WEDNESDAY, April 19, 2017 (HealthDay News) — Technology using a patient’s own brainwaves might offer hope against tough-to-treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a study published online April 19 in BMC Psychiatry.
The new study was led by researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. It involved 18 patients who completed an average of 16 successive, daily sessions of noninvasive closed-loop acoustic stimulation brainwave technology. During the sessions, the patients’ brain activity was monitored and certain brain frequencies were translated into acoustic tones that were then relayed back to the patients via earbuds.
“It’s as if the brain can look at itself in an acoustic mirror, recalibrate its patterns towards improved balance and reduced hyperarousal, and can relax,” lead author Charles Tegeler, M.D., professor of neurology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, said in a school news release.
The researchers found that after the sessions, 89 percent of the patients reported clinically meaningful decreases in PTSD symptoms. There were no adverse events reported.
Two authors are employees and shareholders at Brain State Technologies, developers of the allostatic neurotechnology evaluated in the study.
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