Self-Regulation of Visual Word Form Area activation with real-time fMRI neurofeedback

The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is a key region of the brains reading network and its activation has been shown to be strongly associated with reading skills. Here, for the first time, we investigated whether voluntary regulation of VWFA activity is feasible using real-time fMRI neurofeedback. 40 adults with typical reading skills were instructed to either upregulate (UP group) or downregulate (DOWN group) their own VWFA activity during six neurofeedback training runs. The VWFA target region was individually defined based on a functional localizer task. Before and after training, also regulation runs without feedback ("no-feedback runs") were performed. When comparing the two groups, we found stronger activity across the whole reading network, including the VWFA, for the UP than the DOWN group. Crucially, we observed a significant interaction of group and time (pre, post) for the no-feedback runs: The two groups did not differ in their VWFA activity before neurofeedback training, but the UP group showed significantly stronger activity than the DOWN group after neurofeedback training. Our results indicate that self-regulation of the VWFA activity is feasible and that, once learned, successful self-regulation can even be performed in the absence of feedback. These results are a crucial step toward to development of a potential clinical intervention to improve reading skills in individuals with reading impairments.