The impact ofupper-alpha neurofeedbacktraining on executive functioning ofKurdistan University female studentswith academic burn-outsyndromeanddepression symptoms

Research has shown evidence of cognitive dysfunction especially executive function in persons with academic burn-out syndrome and depressive symptoms. One of the important treatments in this field is neurofeedbacktraining. This study was conducted to examine the impact of upper-alpha neurofeedback training on executive functioning of Kurdistan university female students with academic burn-out syndrome and depression symptoms.
A semi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and control and experimental groups wereused. Subjects of study were selected from the Kurdistan university female students in academic year 2015-2016 on a voluntary basis. The 19 to 25 years old students were asked to fillBeck Depression and Maslach Academic Burn-out questionnaires and based on their scores students with average scores in both questionnaires were selected. Among these 34 individuals voluntarily participated in the study and subjects were divided randomly in experimental (n = 17) and control (n = 17) groups before responding to Stroop Color-word, Wisconsin Card-sorting Computer Trials and Letter-Number Span Test. Neurofeedback sessions was administered for the experimental group afterwards in psychology laboratory of Kurdistan University over a period of 10 sessions for every person (2 times a week for 45 minutes). Neurofeedback protocols were using upper-alpha waves in the parietal and occipital areas(P3, PZ, P4, O1, 02)of the sculpture. After three sessions, twomembers of the experimental group dropped. After the end of sessions both groups were assessed and data were analyzed using analysis of covariance and SPSS.18 software.
Rresultswere shown a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the posttest updated working memory (P The findings of this study showed that upper-alpha neurofeedback training has significant effect on executive functioning of Kurdistan university girl students with academic burn-out syndrome and depression symptom and through changes that makes in cell's levels of the brain, leads to improve in individuals’ cognitive performance.