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Development and gamification of a neurofeedback application to support anxiety treatment
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental illness, affecting 264 million
people worldwide.
Current treatments are limited because they cause side effects and/or require long
therapeutic periods. Neurofeedback (NFB) has been associated with the reduction of
anxious symptomatology but typically uses unappealing therapeutic interventions.
In this work a game was developed, Anxiety Destroyer, using procedures of gamification
adapted to the NFB, with the goal of providing a guided, immerse and efficient
treatment, to be used at home. The lean method was applied to the development process
by construction-measurement-learning of value propositions.
Thirty people were studied, which performed up to 8 NFB sessions for 35 minutes,
totalling 185 sessions, 108 hours. Three groups of 10 individuals were created, one group
with frontal alpha asymmetry (Alpha Asymmetry (ALAY)) protocol (F4-F3), another with
asymmetry between AF4 and AF3 channels (AF) for hairless skin usage and another
control group, with increased alpha in F4 and F3 (F+). The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)
was applied to assess anxiety. The Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) was used to
evaluate game experience in different versions, which were adapted to the needs of the
user.
The ALAY group significantly increased the asymmetry (p <0.05) (reduction of the
anxiety biomarker), with a corresponding significant reduction (p <0.01) in the anxiety
reported by BAI after NFB training. The AF group showed a decrease in the frontal
alpha asymmetry, and the F+ a slight increase, respectively confirmed by the increase
and decrease of the BAI. The GEQ did not show better gaming experience throughout
sessions.
An increase of the sample size is required to confirm these results, inclusively since
some individuals in the AF and F+ groups abandoned treatment because of no perceived
effects. However, this study suggests the effectiveness of the gamified application in the
treatment of anxiety.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Neurofeedback Anxiety Gamification Electroencephalography Lean