Electroencephalography Based Neurofeedback in Chronic Neuropathic Pain
Unknown statusNot applicableNCT01560039
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This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.
Brief summary (from the registry)
Chronic neuropathic pain is a global health concern, affecting millions of patients worldwide. It is often extremely debilitating and poses a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. The current mainstay of treatment is pharmacotherapy consisting of powerful analgesics combined with different classes of drugs that change nerve cell membrane properties. However, response to pharmacotherapy is often poor and mandates interventional strategies. Among the latest and most promising interventional strategies is the use of neurostimulation to targeted brain areas, specifically the primary motor cortex . Motor cortex stimulation , both invasive and noninvasive (using megnetic or electical stimulation), has emerged as a highly beneficial treatment, and is currently included in different professional guidelines for the treatment of medically refractory neuropathic pain. A possible alternative way to achieve stimulation of the motor cortex is by using EEG based neurofeedback. This design, which is actually a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) enables the patient to voluntarily modulate the activity of a circumscribed brain area after a few training sessions. While EEG based neurofeedfback is decades old, it has never been tested in neuropathic pain patients. This experiment is intended to compare both the clinical effects and the brain correlates of a BCI based self modulation of M1 activity and of exogenous magnetic brain stimulation in a population of patients suffering from chronic neuropathic pain of an upper limb. 15 such patients will receive a course of 10 daily magnetic stimulation sessions with stimulation of M1 as described in the literature. A further 30 patients will be divided into two groups: 15 will perform a course of 10 real BCI neurofeedback sessions modulating motor cortex activity and 15 will perform a course of 10 sham neurofeedback sessions. The participants' baseline chronic pain levels and their response to acute painful stimuli will be clinically evaluated be…
Study details
- Official title
- Voluntary Modulation of M1 Motor Cortex Activity Using EEG Neurofeedback for the Treatment of Resistant Chronic Neuropathic Pain - a Clinical and fMRI Study
- Conditions
- Interventions
- Device: TMS
- Other: Neurofeedback
- Other: Sham neurofeedback
- Sponsor
- Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center
- Start date
- 2012-04
- Primary completion
- 2013-04
- Sex
- All
- Age range
- from 18 Years to 65 Years
- Results posted
- No results posted in this snapshot
- Countries
- Israel
- Total sites listed
- 1
Eligibility criteria
Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * 18-65 years old, treated medically for neuropathic pain of an upper arm with unsatisfactory results (average daily VAS score over 4) Exclusion Criteria: * Cognitive decline, * malignant disease, * focal neurological deficit, * illegal substance abuse * noncompliance with medical therapy or follow up.
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT01560039