rtfMRI-NF

rtfMRI-NF enables real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback to allow subjects to modulate localized and distributed brain activity for research and potential therapeutic interventions in neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive disorders.

Key Features:

• Real-Time Neurofeedback: Provides immediate feedback from fMRI data to support voluntary modulation of neural activity during ongoing scanning.
• Denoising and Quality Control: Emphasizes implementation of standard real-time fMRI denoising methods to enhance neurofeedback signal quality, noting that fewer than a third of recent studies report these steps.
• Methodological Transparency: Recommends COBIDAS-style checklists and improved reporting standards to ensure consistent implementation of denoising and analysis procedures.
• Quality Metrics and Control Checks: Advocates calculating and reporting community-informed quality metrics and applying offline control checks to validate neurofeedback signal integrity.
• Open-Source and Reproducibility: Supports open-source software development and the sharing of code and data to improve reproducibility of real-time fMRI neurofeedback studies.

Scientific Applications:

• Neurofeedback training for clinical disorders: Applied in interventions aiming to improve cognitive function or alleviate symptoms in neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive disorders.
• Mechanistic research: Used to investigate and disentangle the neural mechanisms that underlie neurofeedback effects under controlled, quality-assured conditions.

Methodology:

Real-time fMRI data acquisition during neurofeedback sessions, signal processing with standard denoising techniques to remove noise and artifacts, and calculation/reporting of quality-control metrics with offline control checks.