What would you have to do?
Upon completing an initial electronic / telephone consultation, you will be invited to the University of Sussex for three separate visits, each roughly two weeks apart. During visit 1, you will undergo further screening assessments to confirm eligibility. Following this, we will collect information about your clinical and psychological symptoms through questionnaires and interviews. Before visit 2, you will have been allocated into an Intervention A or Intervention B group (without your knowing). At visit 2, you will undergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan with neurofeedback. We do not know which neurofeedback intervention (A or B) will be most beneficial for depression.
For both groups, as you lie in the scanner, you will be asked to raise the level of a thermometer-like graphic that will be presented to you on a screen, which represents your brain activity detected by the scanner in real-time (this is what we mean by neurofeedback). By trial-and-error, you will hopefully learn ways of thinking that help to increase the level of the thermometer, which will likely be achieved by reducing feelings of guilt.
During visit 3, we will conduct another set of clinical and psychological questionnaires and assessments to identify any changes in symptoms. We will also send a couple of very short online questionnaires to complete on week 2 and week 4 following visit 3. Overall, it is our hope that some participants will show healthier brain activity patterns and increased self-esteem following neurofeedback.