S9-3. Associative learning between orientation and color created by decoded fMRI neurofeedback

• Published in: Clinical neurophysiology Vol. 129; no. 5; p. e26
• Main Author: Amano, Kaoru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.05.2018
• ISSN: 1388-2457; 1872-8952
• DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2018.02.046

One of the promising techniques to unravel the neural causes of human visual perception and behavior is an fMRI decoded neurofeedback (DecNef) (Shibata et al., Science, 2011), which can non-invasively induce neural activities corresponding to specific information (e.g. color and motion). In the first study (Amano et al., Current Biology, 2016), subjects implicitly learned to induce the neural activity pattern in V1/V2 corresponding to red color during the presentation of an achromatic vertical grating via DecNef training. After the training, an achromatic vertical grating was perceived to be reddish, indicating the creation of orientation-specific color perception by manipulating V1/V2 activities. In the second study (Koizumi et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 2016), we could reduce fear towards a fearconditioned stimulus by pairing rewards with the activation patterns in V1/V2 representing the fear-conditioned stimulus, while participants remain unaware of the content and purpose of the procedure. This procedure may be an initial step towards novel treatments for fear-related disorders such as phobia and PTSD, via unconscious processing.