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No Effects of Successful Bidirectional SMR Feedback Training on Objective and Subjective Sleep in Healthy Subjects

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Abstract

There is a growing interest in the application of psychophysiological signals in more applied settings. Unidirectional sensory motor rhythm-training (SMR) has demonstrated consistent effects on sleep. In this study the main aim was to analyze to what extent participants could gain voluntary control over sleep-related parameters and secondarily to assess possible influences of this training on sleep metrics. Bidirectional training of SMR as well as heart rate variability (HRV) was used to assess the feasibility of training these parameters as possible brain computer interfaces (BCI) signals, and assess effects normally associated with unidirectional SMR training such as the influence on objective and subjective sleep parameters. Participants (n = 26) received between 11 and 21 training sessions during 7 weeks in which they received feedback on their personalized threshold for either SMR or HRV activity, for both up- and down regulation. During a pre- and post-test a sleep log was kept and participants used a wrist actigraph. Participants were asked to take an afternoon nap on the first day at the testing facility. During napping, sleep spindles were assessed as well as self-reported sleep measures of the nap. Although the training demonstrated successful learning to increase and decrease SMR and HRV activity, no effects were found of bidirectional training on sleep spindles, actigraphy, sleep diaries, and self-reported sleep quality. As such it is concluded that bidirectional SMR and HRV training can be safely used as a BCI and participants were able to improve their control over physiological signals with bidirectional training, whereas the application of bidirectional SMR and HRV training did not lead to significant changes of sleep quality in this healthy population.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed explanation of the bidirectional screens, the exact processing and real-time artefact handling that were applied during the feedback training sessions see Kleinnijenhuis et al. 2008; Spronk et al. 2010.

  2. Figure 2 show all 18 HRV–BFB and Fig. 3 all 21 SMR–NFB training sessions for the sake of completeness. As stated earlier, due to the operational setting of the military population, the number of completed trainings sessions varied between 11 and 21 per participant. Therefore, starting from training session 11 for the SMR-NFB and 13 for the HRV-BFB groups the bars and lines in Figs. 2 and 3 show average data assessed from a decreasing number of participants. Note, the number of completed training sessions were not different between the groups, t(24) = 1.38, p = .181. Next, in both Figs. 2 and 3 the average percentage of successful trials and achieved training level for down-regulation (effort; grey bars and red line, respectively) were converted into negative numbers to show the results for up- (relaxation) and down- (effort) regulation for both groups in only two Figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Kampweg 5, 3769 ZG, Soesterberg, The Netherlands

    Olaf Binsch, Ellen S. Wilschut, Charelle Bottenheft & Pierre J. L. Valk

  2. Research Institute Brainclinics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Martijn Arns

  3. Ministry of Defense, Central Military Hospital, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Eric H. G. J. M. Vermetten

  4. University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Eric H. G. J. M. Vermetten

  5. Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Martijn Arns

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  1. Olaf Binsch
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  2. Ellen S. Wilschut
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Correspondence to Olaf Binsch.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Binsch, O., Wilschut, E.S., Arns, M. et al. No Effects of Successful Bidirectional SMR Feedback Training on Objective and Subjective Sleep in Healthy Subjects. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 43, 37–47 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-017-9384-y

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