World Brain Congress

Negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients include anhedonia, affective impoverishment, speech impoverishment, affective flattening, indifference, reduced drive, reduced psychomotor activities, such as mimic and gestures, limited voice modulation, impoverishment of speech and impulse dysregulation. In addition, there are usually cognitive impairments in the form of attention and concentration disorders. Neuro feedback is an operant method based on spontaneous EEG derivations. We applied a neurofeedback protocol consisting of two main phases to reduce the negative symptoms and to enhance the quality of speech. Each week, over the period of one month, there were five treatment sessions (Monday to Friday, one session per day). The training session took 45 minutes each. We performed pre-treatment and post-treatment assessments and they both included the following tests: GAF, PANSS, CompACT (different go/no-go tasks with measurement of the reaction time and reaction exactitude), QEEG data and speech analyses of speech protocols. The results were significant, as the posttreatment assessment confirmed that the participants no longer met the initial criteria set as preconditions to be met by participants in this study.