International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology
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Int J Psychophysiol · Oct 2017
Specific or nonspecific? Evaluation of band, baseline, and cognitive specificity of sensorimotor rhythm- and gamma-based neurofeedback.
Neurofeedback (NF) is often criticized because of the lack of empirical evidence of its specificity. Our present study thus focused on the specificity of NF on three levels: band specificity, cognitive specificity, and baseline specificity. Ten healthy middle-aged individuals performed ten sessions of SMR (sensorimotor rhythm, 12-15Hz) NF training. ⋯ The gamma group did not show any pre-post changes in their EEG resting activity. In conclusion, SMR NF specifically affects cognitive functions (cognitive specificity) and tonic EEG (baseline specificity), while increasing SMR during NF training nonspecifically affects slower EEG frequencies as well (band non-specificity). Gamma NF was associated with nonspecific effects on the EEG power spectrum during training, which did not lead to considerable changes in cognitive functions or baseline EEG activity.
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Int J Psychophysiol · Oct 2017
Aging, rule-violation checking strategies, and strategy combination: An EEG study in arithmetic.
In arithmetic, rule-violation checking strategies are used while participants solve problems that violate arithmetic rules, like the five rule (i.e., products of problems including five as an operand end with either five or zero; e.g., 5×14=70) or the parity rule (i.e., when at least one of the two operands is even, the product is also even; otherwise the product is odd; e.g., 4×13=52). When problems violate both rules, participants use strategy combination and have better performance on both-rule than on one-rule violation problems (i.e., five or parity rule). Aging studies found that older adults efficiently use one-rule violation checking strategies but have difficulties to combine two strategies. ⋯ Age-related changes in ERPs and frequency were associated with less efficient strategy combination. Moreover, efficient use of one-rule violation checking strategies in older adults was associated with changes in ERPs and frequency. These findings contribute to further our understanding of age-related changes and invariance in arithmetic strategies, and in combination of arithmetic strategies.