Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London and the University of Roehampton have just completed a “pilot” study that may lead to teaching schizophrenic patients how to control their verbal hallucinations.
The study, published in Translational Psychiatry and titled "Real-time fMRI neurofeedback to down-regulate superior temporal gyrus activity in patients with schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations: a proof-of-concept study," involved 12 patients being placed in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and shown a computerized rocket ship that reacted to the part of the brain that registers speech. They were instructed to land the in-game rocket ship safely but were not told how. They were only advised to “develop their own mental strategies to move it.”
