What's New in Neurofeedback

• Experimental Drug Reverses Brain Injury in Rats
• Autism linked to difficult births
• Alcoholism-Linked Brain Damage Hits Women Sooner
• Move towards autism test at birth raises fears
• Brain-Damaged Fireman's Recovery a Mystery
• The Scent of a Man
• Anatomy of Give and Take
• Searching for the Why of Buy
• Revenge of the Right Brain

  All links at: http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=science&cat=brain_research

When one thinks of autism, schizophrenia, perhaps even Down's syndrome and a myriad of other conditions, one might come to the conclusion: "What's done cannot be undone. "

But not so fast... Shakespeare's own queen of obsessive compulsive disorder Lady Macbeth who uttered the famous phrase might have thought otherwise had she attended last week's EEG Spectrum Intl Clinical Interchange Conference. The realities of mental illness and neurological disorders may be undone, more imaginary then real. Imaginary to the extent that they can be eliminated, fixed, the brain returned to evolutionary eloquence.

Let's be Descartes for a moment and think of the brain and mind as separate. The metaphor may be helpful. When the brain is not fully inhabited by the mind, for whatever reason, be it due to early trauma, recent trauma, genetic predisposition, environmental toxins, etc., mental illness must follow, or when the brain runs too fast or too slow for the mind to follow, then chaos emerges. Neurotherapy is a means to ensure that this physical piece of hardware, the brain, is kept in working order.

The conference opened with a panel on Learning Theory. Ed Hamlin spoke about the need for neurotherapists to understand four things (which I hope I get right, as I was on the panel and not taking notes). A therapist needs to understand something about learning theory, something about the EEG technology we are using, something about the brain and how it works, and finally something about being a good clinician. Mike O'Bannon highlighted the importance of intrinsic rewards over extrinsic rewards. When we are motivated by internal forces, instead of beeps and M & M's, our potential is endless. David Kaiser (myself) spoke about the acquisition and consolidation phases of learning, as well as the Skinnerian reinforcement schedules and related issues. Most important, and unknown to most learning theorists, is the role of habituation in learning. Looking at the EEG we can track when an individual learns, when they and the environment are one. The presence of PRS (post-response synchronization) is the true reward, a momentary shutting off of the sampling or perceptual processes, to consolidate the information one has acquired. We shut off when we think our universe is the only universe.

Eran Zaidel described his hemispheric neurofeedback research, which elegantly addresses the three central aspects of attention -- conflict resolution, orienting, and alerting -- by modifying Posner's task into a lateralized version. Jack Johnstone spoke about the robustness of event potential and potential for training them, and how all of us can look forward to slowing mentally 1.5 milliseconds a year in our P300s... unless, I interject, neurotherapy keeps us at our peak.

David Kaiser (myself) opened his second talk by repeating a portion of Lanford Wilson's play "The Fifth of July." In this play, a schoolteacher is transcribing from a tape player a story that a speech-impaired boy has created. It is a science fiction story that goes something like this: When humankind eventually mastered all the forces of nature, they set out to explore the universe in search of life and intelligence, but finding nothing of note in all the galaxies of all the universe, they were obliged to return to Earth where it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find."

This is my definition of adulthood: Becoming what one imagined one would find when we got here (I'm recently turned 40). As a child I imagined adults would soon have a cure for autism, a cure for schizophrenia, a cure for nearly every human ailment, and many are gone, but of course many remain. (I still await my videophone wristwatch and personal jet pack as well.) I also talked about assessing whether a client's brain was organized normally or not in terms of speech, emotional processing, and spatial functions. Some simple tests can help determine whether an electrode on the left hemisphere is over the dominant (speech-centered, expressive) hemisphere or actually above the non-dominant (receptive) hemisphere. I also explained the orthogonality of coherence and comodulation and previewed my "Infinite Content" SKIL games.

The Keynote address was a UCLA school-mate of mine. We took the same Narrative and Psychology course from Jerome Bruner in 1991 or so, I a grad student, he a psychiatric resident. Daniel Siegel, author of The Developing Mind, spoke about the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology. We are a social species, linked together not just by our words and senses, but by biological functions. Attachment theory may be the best known aspect of this paradigm, and EEG itself was the invention of a man who sensed interpersonal neurobiology well before we did. (Hans Berger suffered a near-death accident as a young man, and his sister had a premonition of the accident. Hans spent decades trying to find the signal transponder in our heads that had at that critical moment broadcast out to his sister hundreds of miles away.) Interpersonal reality is already a reality. The day before the conference, I ran a joint EEG biofeedback with two of my students at RIT. Joining one's brain activity with another is an idea with all sorts of applications, some of them therapeutic, others recreational.

The conference also included numerous panels, breakfast discussions, and a great atmosphere overall. Next month I'll provide the Defenses Typology by Gray and MacNaughton that I talked about to some of the attendees.

Here is what I took away from this year's CIC, my abstract for the upcoming Tennet symposium on neurotherapy: Neurotherapy is physical therapy for the brain. Using the tools and techniques of neurotherapy an individual establishes or reestablishes adaptive patterns of neurophysiological function: they learn their way to better mental health. In the upcoming decade we will witness the development of many new and exciting techniques that can revolutionize the way people attain and maintain a sound mind and body. It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future, but here are a few: The number of electrodes or channels used in training will increase, the complexity of analyses will increase, and the training techniques and rewards will become more tailored to client deficits. Coherence and comodulation training are realities, as is LORETA training. Task-based neurofeedback will foster appropriate brain responses to math, reading, and other executive function challenges, and it is already a reality. Desensitization training will become in part neurotherapeutic and allow us to address the most intractable issues of childhood such as nonverbal stage traumatization. Joint training sessions that involve dyadic coupling are now practical and can address affect synchrony and other parent-child and spousal neurobiological issues. Consciousness itself may be trainable using bispectral and bicomodulation techniques. As technology advances and session times cheapen, coregistration training with fMRI should emerge to correct dysrhythmia and discord between any two brain areas. The power for good and the potential for harm will increase exponentially in the next decade. To maximize the first and minimize the latter we must not only refine our assessment and training capabilities and increase our general knowledge of how the brain works, but we'll need to better understand and be able to harness the most powerful force in nature, and that is learning.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Neuronal Substrates of Sleep and Epilepsy
by Mircea Steriade
Examines neuronal mechanisms underlying sleep and paroxysmal activities. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521817072/top100

Thalamocortical Assemblies: How ... Organize Sleep Oscillations
by Alain Destexhe, Terrence J. Sejnowski
Molecular and ionic mechanisms underlying sleep oscillations --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198524250/top100

Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond, 2nd Edition
by Theodore Millon
Description of 15 personality prototypes and 60 subtypes, in a historical framework. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047101186X/top100

Fundamental Neuroscience, 2nd Edition
Edited
Comprehensive textbook that both graduate and undergraduate students. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0126603030/top100

Navigating the Social World: for Asperger's Syndrome...
by Jeannie McAfee, Dr. Tony Attwood
Exercises and guides for the student with AS. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885477821/top100

Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents
by John B. Reid, et al
Approaches to reduce antisocial behavior, from the earliest years in childhood onward. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1557988978/top100

An Adult Child's Guide to What's Normal
by John C. Friel Ph.D., Linda D. Friel M.A.
Guide to begin dealing with pain and trauma of being raised in a dysfunctional family. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558740902/top100

Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation: Children and Adolescents
by Mark Ylvisaker
Various perspectives on recovery, from everyone involved in TBI care including the patient. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750699728/top100

Evoked brain potentials in adolescents in normal conditions and in attention deficit : Adolescents with ADD discriminated signal of duration 11 msec significantly worse than normals during the oddball paradigm. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15779327

Neuroimaging of emotion : Unwarranted use of proportional global signal scaling (in fMRI) might contribute to conflicting results in affective neuroscience. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15784431

Depression predicts drug abstinence in outpatient substance abuse treatment. : Depression affects successful substance abuse treatment outcomes. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15780549

Effects of mild traumatic brain injury cannot be differentiated from substance abuse. : Patients with uncomplicated MTBIs and those with substance abuse problems scored similarly on concentration, memory and processing speed. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15762097

Neurobiologic processes in drug reward and addiction. : Compulsive drive for drug use is complemented by deficits in impulse control and decision making, mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15764467

Neural basis of eye gaze processing deficits in autism. : A difference in the response of brain regions underlying eye gaze processing was found for autism. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15758039

Amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex responses to fearful faces in PTSD : PTSD group exhibited exaggerated amygdala responses and diminished medial prefrontal cortex responses to fearful vs happy facial expressions. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15753240

Neuroimaging studies of aggressive and violent behavior : Reviews 17 neuroimaging studies: compromise in prefrontal cortex and medial temporal regions are implicated in aggressive or violent histories. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15753199

Effects of Methylphenidate on Quantitative EEG for ADHD during a CPT : Methylphenidate increased alpha activities and decreased theta in numerous areas during the CPT task but not during rest. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15744803

Now let's get mathematical: Let's divide by zero. Well, that's hard, my calculator freaks out. So let's start by multiplying by zero.

0 times infinity should approximate 1. But if I had a number larger than infinity I know for sure I could merge it with nothing to make something. Kind of like the universe.

Well, if you want to have a number larger than infinity, that's simple. Just stack another at a right angle to it (orthogonal axis). So infinity in the real and infinity in the imaginary create a vector of the square root of two infinite. Multiply this by zero -- she also demands fairness so she has both real and imaginary axes, leading to square root of 2 zero. Multiply the sq(2) zero by sq(2) infinity and we get two. And two is all we have here, yin and yang, the infinite and the infinitesimal, male and female. (0ir)(INFir)=2 We cannot live with them, and we cannot live without them.

Let's set infinity to C so that we can stay within our light cone. This means (0ir)(Cir)=2, which means we can divide by zero more easily, given a nicer algebraic term than INF. So 1/0ir=Cir. Actually it looks like zero can mess with anything thrown at it, much like my two sisters, so perhaps the equation that started it all is best to be described as a flowing spectrum: 0 < C0 < C . But going back to unity, 1/0=C and therefore 0=1/C meaning the smallest something can be in the physical domain is never empty of content, not in this light cone, but it is Planck's constant, which makes C the reciprocal of Planck, around 1.5 times 10^33 or whatever, our creation ratio. Relativity and quantum mechanics in a single equation, 1/0=C, the infinite and infinitesmal, male and the female, wave and particle, no spare parts.

This also unites math and science. Math cannot act freely, abstractly, but must have a real referent on one axis, a representation of something. Using an Einsteinian thought experiment, take the ratio of temperatures in a room as it approaches freezing with three thermometers, one Fahrenheit, one Celsius, and one Kelvin, and now compare the F/C behavior to the F/K behavior. The math in one ratio freaks near water freezing while the other behaves, while the physical reality is unaffected. Note how three elements are needed to create two different ratios, like men and women requiring a third, the third being obvious perhaps.

Ok, now let's fix the most famous equation.

For E=mc(squared) the two Cs are not the same, one is real, the other imaginary. Now, 1/0ir=Cir which suspiciously resembles E/m=c(squared)... perhaps mass is so heavy because it weighs nothing in two directions and it's hard to lift that much nothing. Instead of Ci and Cr lets keep the imaginary speed of light constant as C and the real one as D, the next letter in the alphabet. So this breaks the terrible symmetry of Einstein's equation E=mc^2 to make it E=mcd. This movement from imaginary to real is how Creation continues to this day and how we progress towards more understanding of ourselves and the world.

So a real short history of time is: Nothing gets reorganized as singularity which divides into symmetry which breaks into infinity which evoles into Mind/Body (relativity on one side, QM on the other) which is regulated by the next dimension, brain, a perfect 5d sphere, which gets pressure from ...

Oops, interrupted by my 7-year old autistic son. He just awoke (5 am) needing to use the bathroom. To get him out of the hypermale mode of processing, invariant, left brain extraordinaire, will require more neurotherapy, and perhaps a little estrogen. We'll see. The battle for Jared is far from over. I've made a system of feedback games, Infinite Content, that can evaporate even the darkest of black holes, or so I hope, and bring them back to this world. Hey, I've come out of holes nearly as deep and dark as the one my son is in now, so it's very doable. But speaking of doable, it's 6 am and I got to go defend my teaching job at 1 pm, so I have to go back to sleep. I wish I could elaborate all this, but with four kids to raise and play with, I rarely have a moment to myself. Which is good... -DK