Online PhD conferral mr. Leon Skottnik, MSc.

Key words: neurofeedback, self-regulation, reward learning, brain-computer interfaces

“Understanding and improving neurofeedbackguided self-regulation: On the neuropsychological mechanisms of neurofeedback across mental tasks and time”

During neurofeedback interventions, patients train to control their own brain activation. Over the last decades, neurofeedback has been applied in a variety of research and clinical settings, for example in ADHD or depression. Despite this extensive use, its neural mechanisms are still under debate. Several scientific advances have suggested that different brain regions become jointly active during neurofeedback, particularly regions involved in self-regulation and feedback learning. The work presented in this thesis contributes to our understanding of what happens in the brain during neurofeedback trainings and how the underlying learning process can be supported. In line with the current state of research, it shows that defined neuropsychological mechanisms are shared across different neurofeedback tasks and training stages.