Brain Waves and Biofeedback Therapy Analysis in Generalized Anxiety Disorder—A Case Study

Abstract

Electroencephalography (EEG) is electrophysiological monitoring method to record electrical activity of the brain. EEG signals are the results of dissimilar state of mind. Hence, the EEG signals contain plentiful physical, psychological and pathological information. Brain waves comprises five different types of frequency band which is delta (0.5–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), beta (12–30 Hz) and gamma (>30 Hz). In this study we apply analysis of the EEG focused on alpha brain wave on stability of normal status in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The study is summarized in three phases; primary, therapy and follow-up between two groups. In therapy phase, three weeks biofeedback therapy is performed to decrease the frequency range from beta to alpha for GAD patients concentrating on sequential conditional limitation of frequency targeting to alpha band. In this regard, participants are trained by 8–25 Hz, 8–20 Hz and 8–12 Hz (alpha band) in first, second and third weeks, respectively. Three months follow-up presents 60% of positive efficiency in stability of normal status in GAD participants by the proposed biofeedback therapy as maintenance treatment while the pharmacotherapy resulted 93.3%. GAD symptoms returned to mild status for 40% and 6.7% of participants in biofeedback therapy group and pharmacotherapy group, respectively. Furthermore, the average time to achieve the consistency in each frequency limitation resulted 17.5, 11.5 and 5 min during biofeedback training. Comparison between rates of complexity in frequency condition during biofeedback training in three weeks with the average time of reaching to the target in each week presents the positive efficiency of this method of biofeedback training in GAD treatment. Although the biofeedback therapy in comparison to pharmacotherapy was successful to decrease the symptoms of GAD during training, the method was not as effective as pharmacotherapy as maintenance treatment after follow-up.