BrainMap: Margaret Niznikiewicz, PhD; RT-fMRI feedback as a tool to mitigate medication resistant auditory hallucinations

Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - 12:00 to 13:00
149 13th Street (Building 149), main second floor seminar room (2204)

Margaret A. Niznikiewicz, PhD; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Talk title: RT-fMRI feedback as a tool to mitigate medication resistant auditory hallucinations.

Abstract: Auditory verbal hallucinations have long been a hallmark of schizophrenia  symptomatology and one of its major diagnostic features (Andreasen and Flaum, 1991; DSM-IV).  It has been demonstrated that the brain regions implicated in auditory hallucinations belong to a language network and are involved in different aspects of language processing.  The brain network involved in the experience of auditory hallucinations includes the temporal cortex and especially the superior temporal gyrus (STG), anterior cingulate and inferior frontal gyrus.  In a somewhat competing proposal, it is also suggested that a network involved in self-agency and self-other distinctions contributes to the AH experience. Until recently, antipsychotic medications were used to control auditory hallucinations and they were often ineffective.  We have developed real-time fMRI feedback protocols which target brain regions believed to be involved in AH.   Preliminary data from both functional localizer tasks and rt-fMRI sessions will be presented that suggest that rt-FMRI modulation of AH-relevant brain regions is possible in chronic schizophrenia patients and that the observed functional changes are related to diminished severity of auditory hallucinations.