A single session of brain training temporarily improved the mood of people with depression in a small trial. This type of neurofeedback, which non-invasively measures brain activity to help us learn how to regulate it, encouraged the individuals to alter activity in a region involved in motivation and reward. While their brain activity didn’t meaningfully change, they did report immediate improvements to their mood that persisted into the following day.

A range of wearable devices, such as headbands, aim to monitor our nervous systems and intervene to improve our wellbeing. But trials into their effectiveness aren’t always carried out independently and they tend to lack a well-matched control group. These devices also often focus on improving stress, anxiety and sleep.

Now, Laurel Morris at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and her colleagues have carried out a randomised-controlled trial into the potential of a non-wearable form of neurofeedback for depression.

The team recruited 32 people who had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and 30 others with no history of mental health problems. All the participants had been free of medications that affect the brain, including antidepressants, for at least a week.

The participants were asked to think about things that motivated them – such as being encouraged by loved ones, achieving their goals and singing – while they lay in a scanner that measured activity in their ventral tegmental area (VTA). This is implicated in reward-driven motivated behaviours and depression.

The aim of the intervention, which lasted about 30 minutes, was to increase activity in their VTA, which was displayed to them via a thermometer-like image. But while about half of the participants saw live feedback of their brain activity, the others unknowingly saw prerecorded signals from someone else, acting as the sham group.

The researchers found that the people with depression who received genuine feedback on their brain activity scored higher on two mood questionnaires, compared with those given sham feedback. These questionnaires were carried out immediately after leaving the scanner and the next day.

The neurofeedback seemed to reduce their negative emotions, such as sadness, rather than raising their positive ones, says Morris. Among those without depression, there was little difference in mood scores between the genuine and sham groups.

But the extent of the reduction in negative emotions may not translate into improvements that people with depression would notice. “We would not call these changes clinically meaningful yet,” says Morris. The improvements were also short-lived, having disappeared at a one-week follow-up.

What’s more, brain activity didn’t significantly differ between those who received genuine and sham feedback. Thinking about motivating things could be what helps, rather than the neurofeedback itself, says Kymberly Young at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. However, the researchers did find that those who were better at regulating their VTA reported greater mood improvements.

Morris is now leading a follow-up trial at the University of Oxford to test the effects of two neurofeedback sessions instead of one. The study began in September, but its results aren’t expected for several years.