Effects of Motor Imagery and Visual Neurofeedback on Activation in the Swallowing Network: A Real-Time fMRI Study.
Silvia Erika Kober, Doris Grössinger, Guilherme Wood
PMID 30771088WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults increased swallowing-related brain activity using real-time fMRI feedback while imagining swallowing.
The feedback group showed higher activation than the offline imagery group. This confirms the mechanism works in healthy brains, but the study tested no patients and measured no swallowing function.
Key findings
01Imagining swallowing activated a similar network of brain areas to actually swallowing, including deep structures like the insula and basal ganglia.
02Participants successfully increased activity in the target brain region (left lateral precentral gyrus) significantly more when receiving real-time visual feedback than when imagining swallowing without feedback.
03Baseline activation during the offline imagery task positively correlated with the ability to upregulate activity during the first feedback run.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 11 healthy young adults, not patients with dysphagia. The outcome was brain activation (fMRI signal), not swallowing function or clinical improvement. The number of swallows performed or imagined was not recorded during the scan. Participants could not be controlled for accidental active swallowing during the imagery tasks. The study did not test whether repeated training leads to lasting functional or structural changes.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the increased brain activity as evidence that neurofeedback improves swallowing function in patients. This study measured brain signals in healthy people and did not assess any clinical outcome or treat dysphagia.