The Effects of Neurofeedback Training on Emotional Arousal in Individuals Varying on Psychopathy

Individuals with high psychopathy show habitual emotional nonresponding tendencies, which are thought to enable the antisocial patterns of behaviour often exhibited by these individuals. The current study aimed to assess the potential of neurofeedback training as an emotion-processing intervention in psychopathy by investigating its effects on emotional arousal in individuals of varying psychopathy levels. The neurofeedback protocol was designed to train a pattern of EEG activity indicative of emotional arousal, based on the Emotional Arousal Pattern (EMAP) dataset. Participants completed two neurofeedback sessions, each consisting of two 10-minute training blocks. Emotional arousal measures included self-reported experience of high-arousal emotions and Emotion-Induced Blindness (EIB) task performance indicative of arousal-induced emotional distraction. Emotional arousal was measured before the first neurofeedback session, following the first neurofeedback session, and following the second neurofeedback session. Psychopathy was measured with the Psychopathic Personality Inventory–Revised–40 (PPI–R–40) self-report questionnaire. No significant increases in self-reported emotional arousal, nor arousal-induced emotional distraction, were observed from pre- to post-neurofeedback training, regardless of psychopathy level. It was concluded that the neurofeedback training protocol used in the current study was insufficient to increase arousal, likely due at least in part to methodological limitations. Discussed issues include the difficulty of achieving neurofeedback task objectives given limited training time, the influence of non-specific intervention factors on experimental task performance, and the insensitivity of the self-report measure to changes in arousal. Based on these issues, several recommendations are made for improving the neurofeedback paradigm in future research, so that its potential for training emotional arousal can be better determined both generally and in the context of psychopathy.