Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors

Date Submitted: Apr 19, 2024
Date Accepted: Mar 4, 2025

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Feasibility of a 12-Week, Therapist-Independent, Smartphone-Based Biofeedback Treatment for Episodic Migraine in Adults: Single-Center, Open-Label, 1-Armed Trial

Poole AC, Winnberg I, Simpson MR, Stubberud A, Vetvik KG, Bjørk MH, Øie LR, Holmboe P, Olsen A, Tronvik E, Meisingset TW

Feasibility of a 12-Week, Therapist-Independent, Smartphone-Based Biofeedback Treatment for Episodic Migraine in Adults: Single-Center, Open-Label, 1-Armed Trial

JMIR Hum Factors 2025;12:e59622

DOI: 10.2196/59622

PMID: 40489633

PMCID: 12169497

A Smartphone-Based Biofeedback Treatment for Episodic Migraine in Adults: A Feasibility Study of a 12-week Therapist-Independent Treatment

  • Amalie Christine Poole; 
  • Ingunn Winnberg; 
  • Melanie Rae Simpson; 
  • Anker Stubberud; 
  • Kjersti Grøtta Vetvik; 
  • Marte-Helene Bjørk; 
  • Lise Rystad Øie; 
  • Petter Holmboe; 
  • Alexander Olsen; 
  • Erling Tronvik; 
  • Tore Wergeland Meisingset

ABSTRACT

Background:

Bioiofeedback is an established treatment principle for migraine, but home-based therapy with proven efficacy is not available.

Objective:

To evaluate the feasibility, usability, and safety of the Cerebri system, a novel medical device for therapist-independent multimodal biofeedback treatment.

Methods:

In this open-label, one-armed trial, 20 adult participants with episodic migraine used the Cerebri smartphone application (app) and sensors for 12 weeks. The primary outcome was the feasibility of the Cerebri system, measured by the level of adherence to daily biofeedback and electronic headache diary (eDiary) entries. Secondary outcomes were safety, usability and efficacy.

Results:

Initial adherence to biofeedback was high (80% in weeks 1-4), declining to 20% by weeks 9-12. eDiary adherence remained high (75% in weeks 9-12). Reduction in migraine days was not significant (-0.6 days; 95% CI -2.4 to 1.1; p=0.467). App usability was impacted by software issues. No safety concerns were reported.

Conclusions:

Cerebri demonstrates potential in self-managed migraine treatment, with strong initial engagement and high safety. Usability issues including technical bugs were identified as the most important modifiable cause for the decline in adherence. This highlights the need for further app refinement to sustain user engagement. Clinical Trial: NCT05454319


 Citation

Please cite as:

Poole AC, Winnberg I, Simpson MR, Stubberud A, Vetvik KG, Bjørk MH, Øie LR, Holmboe P, Olsen A, Tronvik E, Meisingset TW

Feasibility of a 12-Week, Therapist-Independent, Smartphone-Based Biofeedback Treatment for Episodic Migraine in Adults: Single-Center, Open-Label, 1-Armed Trial

JMIR Hum Factors 2025;12:e59622

DOI: 10.2196/59622

PMID: 40489633

PMCID: 12169497

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.