What's New in Neurofeedback

A Monthly Summary of News and Events

Vol. 3 No. 12 - January 2000

This newsletter is sponsored by EEG Spectrum International, Inc.,
a leader in providing clinical service and training professionals.

Past issues are available at www.eegspectrum.com/newsletter/
Information on how to subscribe or cancel a subscription appear at the end.
The opinions related in this newsletter reflect those of the author only.
Copyright (C) 2000 by EEG Spectrum International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Announcements - Two-Year Index; NEJM Reviewed books since 1993 In the Spotlight - The Operating System of the Brain News & Reviews - Books, journal papers, of interest Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses; New clinicians / offices Last Word - none

Announcements

Two-Year Index of all In the Spotlight and Last Word articles
Psychology & Psychiatry books, reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine 1993-99
The current issue of Clinical Electroencephalography (v.31,#1) is devoted entirely to reviews of EEG biofeedback

In the Spotlight

The Operating System of the Brain

by Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, EEG Spectrum International
Copyright, 2000, EEG Spectrum International

Sometimes the issue in science is more fundamental than answering certain questions about which we are ignorant. The more basic issue may be framing the question. One remaining crucial enigma can be summed up, in the idiom of the day, as figuring out the brain’s operating system.

How does the brain accomplish its tasks from moment to moment? How does it communicate internally?
How does it combine inputs from sensory modalities into our coherent experience of the world?
How does it combine sensory experience with top-level judgments and intention into motor output?
How do emotions and feelings get into the act?
How does the brain organize hierarchies, like the hierarchy of attention? What in the brain allows us to distinguish figure from ground?

More specifically, one might ask:

How does the brain use discontinuous events, the action potentials, to give us the subjective experience of seamless continuity?
How does the image of our world stay stable and organized in our heads even as we move our heads, and let our eyes dart around?
How does the brain organize sequencing, the remembrance of a sequence of numbers or words?
How does the brain organize "working memory", where we hold a thought live in our brain in order to elaborate on it at greater length?
How does the brain record into memory even a single event in our lives?
How does the brain keep track of it all, particularly if it even remembers what you had for lunch yesterday?
And how does it access such arcane information at will?

The importance of timing

It is now clear that information encoding in the brain cannot rely simply on the firing rate of neurons, where the brain listens in on a neuron firing away over time and judges the level of input on that basis. That process does happen, but it is insufficient to explain our ability to appraise events quickly and react to them promptly. To keep us alive, our brain has to do a lot of parallel computing. This means that information is encoded not in individual neurons, but rather in what we call "ensembles." In other words, a nugget of information requires a whole raft of neurons to represent it. That, in turn, places a burden of coordination on the brain, which must have a mechanism for preserving the integrity of that ensemble throughout the signal processing chain. This problem should not be underestimated, because a moment later another volley of information comes down the pike, and it also has to be organized unto itself. Not only that, it has to be integrated with what came before, and with what follows.

Recent discoveries in the neurosciences highlight the centrality of that process, and postulate that the brain, in some generality, distinguishes different ensembles, or cohorts, by subleties of timing. This model is called "time binding."

Some crucial aspects of neuronal function lead naturally to such a model, although these things are always much clearer in retrospect than in prospect. When a neuron is stimulated by an excitatory input, a single such input is never sufficient by itself to cause the neuron to generate an action potential and continue the propagation of the signal. Hence, successful activation of a neuron is always a conspiracy of events. If a neuron is considered as a voting machine, there are always at least two people in the voting booth pulling the levers at the same time in order for the vote to be counted. Neurons, in other words, are coincidence detectors. This brings brain timing front and center.

We can talk about this economically by saying that the input of interest, say from some sensory modality, is always gated, or modulated, at the synaptic junction by another signal, which we can simply say represents the rest of the nervous system. So, at every synaptic junction, and in every signal transfer event, the central nervous system gets a vote! This may be a subtle modulation, but the effect is go/no-go. This sharpens contrast down the information processing chain, and it also sharpens the information in the timing domain. The gating signal has a very narrow window of opportunity in which it is able to "pass" the incoming signal.

What emerges is the realization that one of the key functions of the brain is to coordinate timing both locally and globally, in order to facilitate communication between different brain regions. The implication is that disruption of timing integrity can wreak either subtle or gross malfunction of the brain. Unfortunately, such timing is not rendered visible on all of the fancy brain imaging techniques we have developed over the last few decades.

A second key problem mentioned above is to understand how the brain organizes continuity of experience, continuity of its own state, and working memory, with discrete and transient events. It apparently does so by organizing repetition. This repetition is crucial for the organization of sensory experience. It is also crucial for those functions that the brain uses to maintain itself from moment to moment, a problem we may call "state management." Perhaps a kind of economy is operative in nature, by which the same process operative in managing sensory information and cognitive events is also used by the brain to regulate its own affairs in considerable generality.

The Brain’s Got Rhythm

The repetition of brain events imposes a requirement for a kind of strobing or reference signal that serves as a template by means of which information is shaped in the time domain. This template may have a local organization, concomitant with the locality of certain information processing, or it may have a more global character, when it is governing relationships and interactions between different brain regions. The analogy to an orchestra comes to mind, where individual instruments have their own locality and frequency characteristics, but each has to fit into an overall pattern of timing and rhythmicity. An overall harmonic structure must prevail in which the whole ensemble is coordinated. Something along the same lines must be going on in the brain, in which case we can assign a major role to what we may call the "virtual conductor," the self-organizing functions in the brain that serve to manage and coordinate this overall timing. If we must localize this virtual conductor somewhere in the brain, it would be at the thalamus, the grand organizer of brain timing.

It is now proposed that high-frequency repetitions organize the very transient events of sensory experience, nuggets of cognitive activity, and specific motor acts. And it is surmised that low frequency repetitions organize those aspects of brain function which have longer persistence over time, such as states of activation and arousal, the sleep-wake cycle, and perhaps even states of our immune system and of the endocrine system.

This more global role of brain timing is gradually coming to be realized. In a treatise on how consciousness might be understood in brain terms, Rodolfo Llinas posited some years ago:

" Attempting to understand how the brain, as a whole, might be organized seems, for the first time, to be a serious topic of inquiry. One aspect of its neuronal organization that seems particularly central to global function is the rich thalamocortical interconnectivity, and most particularly the reciprocal nature of the thalamocortical neuronal loop function. Moreover, the interaction between the specific and nonspecific thalamic loops suggest that rather than a gate into the brain, the thalamus represents a hub from which any site in the cortex can communicate with any other such site or sites". (Llinas, 1998).

Dissonance

What happens when brain timing is disturbed? We have experienced an instructive experiment of nature when Japanese children suffered seizures, nausea, and unconsciousness following a mere five-second exposure to a rhythmically flashing light on a TV screen. About one in 5000 children was affected. On the one hand, scientists were not seriously shaken. They have known about "photic epilepsy" for years. But the significance of this event--of why we are subject to photic epilepsy--received essentially no attention. This is because the context for that information was entirely lacking within the field of clinical neurology. In view of what we have said above, it is quite clear that in these fragile cases, the rhythmic stimulus could not be stabilized by the brain, and instead it escalated into higher and higher amplitudes until a seizure developed or consciousness was lost.

This is a clear demonstration of how utterly dependent we are on the integrity of our own brain rhythms. When that mechanism fails, it can fail gloriously! Such failures must be a rare phenomenon, or we would not survive as a species. Subtle failures of timing can have effects which are somewhat less dramatic. Antonio Damasio speculated in his book, Descartes’ Error, as follows: "Any malfunction of the timing mechanism would be likely to create spurious integration and disintegration. This may indeed be what happens in states of confusion caused by head injury, or in some symptoms of schizophrenia and other diseases." (p.95)

Most recently, David McCormick, who has studied the interaction between the cortex and the thalamus with his research group for many years, asserted:

Recent evidence indicates that "dysrhythmias" cause alterations in the normal function of the thalamocortical loop and lead to various types of neurological disorders. Will decoding this rhythm help us to understand the basis for movement disorders, chronic pain, and even neuropsychological dysfunction?

A New Model for Psychopathologies

These considerations may be the opening foray into an entirely new model for psychopathologies, a model based on deficiencies in the brain as an operating system, and as a control system. This emerging model has much greater richness than the present pharmacologically driven model, where the brain is treated almost like an endocrine gland, and where the failures are attributed to either too much or too little of one or another neuromodulator substance. In the future, such one-dimensional models of brain function, in which something so complex as Tourette Syndrome or addictions is attributed to a dopamine deficit, and something so multi-faceted as depression is reduced to a serotonin deficiency, will be displaced with models that match the complexity of the phenomenology they are trying to explain.

Already it is becoming clear that these one-dimensional models serve the marketing interests of the pharmaceutical companies more than they do scientific understanding. One physiologist said he has given up thinking that a person’s well-being is determined by the amount of dopamine floating around in his brain. And a professor of neurophysiology, in trying to understand the role of Prozac in the brain, said that the best analogy he can come up with is that of kicking his ancient clock radio, which had some chance of provoking the radio into a more functional state. In other words, the role of Prozac is not as a remedy in its own right, but as a means of provoking the brain into a more functional state. In order to understand this, we have to understand more than the neurochemistry of serotonin in the brain. We have to understand the brain in its timing and bio-electrical function.

A Remedy Tailored to the Model

Even though there is now some recognition of the need to understand regulatory systems in their temporal properties, researchers are currently tempted to conclude that this information will simply allow us to do better pharmacology and more targeted surgeries. However, there is a technique that precisely matches the problem of disregulation, and that is simply training the brain toward improved self-regulation. We take advantage of the fact that most of the mechanisms underlying the dysfunctions are typically functioning at some level. We are not usually talking about an all-or-nothing situation. If there is function at all, then it can be discerned, and challenged to function better over the long term. This is what neurofeedback is all about. We observe the brain in its regulatory activities with the EEG, and we challenge the brain to change the EEG in particular ways.

By rewarding a person whenever the brain chances to move into a more favorable state, we enhance the probability that this happenstance will be repeated. This is known as Thorndike’s "Law of Effect," which has been a staple of biological psychology for the last century. Over time, the brain learns the new behavior, and concomitantly we observe more regulated organismic behavior.

Clinical evidence for the effectiveness of this approach has now been found for a large variety of clinical categories that in many instances don't appear to have much in common. The capacity of the brain to respond to EEG-training challenges seems, therefore, to have a broad reach over the domain of psychopathology. Such clinical efficacy is the final link in the chain of argument that it is time to reframe the discussion of psychopathology as primarily an issue of brain self-regulation, and to adopt a remedy that is attuned to the problem.

NEW BOOKS

Psychiatry in the New Millennium
by Sidney Weissman, Melvin Sabshin, and Harold Eist

Psychiatry faces revolutionary changes, particularly from advances in neuroimaging, neurosciences, and genetics, changes which will affect in the near future both personnel training and delivery of care. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0880489383/top100

Assessment of Neuropsychological Functions in Psychiatric Disorders
by Edited by Avraham Calev

A patient's cognitive strengths and weaknesses in memory, attention, language, visuospatial ability, and executive functioning can provide valuable clues about the neurologic underpinnings of the psychiatric disorder, its prognosis, and its effect on everyday functioning. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/088048912X/top100

The World of the Autistic Child : Understanding and Treating Autistic Spectrum Disorders
by Bryna Siegel, Bryna Siegal

The most complete and comprehensive book ever written for the parents of autistic children. Symptoms, labels, available treatments. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195076672/top100

Parenting a Child With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
by Nancy S. Boyles, Darlene Contadino

Teaches parents to collaborate with the child and educators to overcome this disorder. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0737302577/top100

Neurodevelopmental Disorders
by Helen Tager-Flusberg

Integration of molecular genetics with developmental cognitive neuroscience. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/026220116X/top100

Drug-Free Alternatives for Attention-Deficit Disorders
by Laura J. Stevens

Offers specific steps parents can take to help their children, including improving eating habits, determining food allergies, & increasing vitamin and mineral supplements. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583330399/top100

Disorders of Brain, Behavior, and Cognition: The Neurocomputational Perspective
by James Reggia, Dennis Glanzman

Models of brain disorders at the neurocomputational level; includes functional brain imaging and modeling, thalamocortical mechanisms, and neural network models of attention http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444501754/top100

Clinician's Guide to Neuropsychological Assessment
by Rodney D. Vanderploeg

Fundamental elements of the assessment process; special issues, settings, and populations; and new approaches and methodologies. An invaluable handbook for interns, postdoctoral fellows, and experienced neuropsychologists alike. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444501754/top100

Mechanisms of Stress and Emotion

Proceedings. Learning, memory and endocrine studies on stress; psychosomatic disorders; stress and immune system; neurophysiology of neuroendocrine responses http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444501185/top100

Communication Disorders Following Traumatic Brain Injury
by Skye E. McDonald, Chris Code

Comprehensive source of contemporary approaches that characterize the communication problems of people with TBI and for planning rehabilitation. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863777244/top100

JOURNAL PAPERS

Stress early in life may lead to increased stress reactivity in adulthood and subsequent vulnerability to depression and anxiety disorders.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10599479

Anxious symptoms in children may be predicted by the presence of certain biological features which can include right frontal EEG asymmetries and more higher frequency EEG activity range.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10599481

Distinct circadian variations of theta and high-frequency alpha activity may represent EEG correlates of different aspects of the circadian rhythm in arousal.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10600925

Psychotherapeutic medication patterns for youths with ADHD Doctor office visits for ADHD for youths nearly doubled since 1989. Stimulant therapy rose from 62.6% in 1989 to 76.6% in 1996.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10591302

Attentional deficits in closed head injury are reviewed in light of various neuropsychological cognitive models of attention.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10541596

Transcranial magnetic stimulation holds promise for obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumantic stress disorder and mania.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10595677

Two different types of alpha rhythms may exist: those with a point attractor and others with a limit cycle attractor.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10592017

Psychobiological risk factors for vulnerability to psychostimulants in teens: an animal model
Adolescents were more "protected" from amphetamine-related aversive properties but more vulnerable to internal reward states than older animals.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10580313

ADHD in adolescents. Common pediatric concerns.
ADHD persists into adolescence for 78% of the children diagnosed with this condition, predisposing teens to many high-risk behaviors.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10570703

Two weeks of daily left prefrontal TMS.
In depressed adults, 10 days of prefrontal TMS affects prefrontal and paralimbic activity, which may explain its antidepressant effects.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10570754

Modern electroencephalography: its role in epilepsy management.
EEG assessments are important for answering specific questions that commonly arise in the management of seizure disorders

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10574283

Event-related EEG/MEG synchronization and desynchronization: basic principles.
Quantification of ERD/ERS is demonstrated topographically and temporally on various movement experiments.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10576479

Long-term intra-individual variability of the background EEG in normals.
Long-term intra-individual variability across 25 months for most EEG parameters, esp. total absolute power and alpha mean frequency, was less than the inter-individual variability in the normal population.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10574286

Stress, cognitive factors, and coping resources as predictors of relapse in alcoholics.
Self-efficacy during detoxification and social support following treatment were the best predictors of a favorable drinking outcome.

Further info: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=6&uid=10574307

Events & Locations

Advanced Training Courses

BETA/SMR Advanced Practicum
with Sue Othmer
Topics Covered
Evaluating Raw EEGs
Spectral Density
Choosing Inhibit Filters
Coherence Training
New Protocols
Discussion of Difficult Cases
Clinical Strategies/Testing

Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum
with Bill Scott
Topics Covered
Guided Imagery
Interpreting Imagery
Working with Addictions
Facilitating Cross-Over
Recognizing Progress
When to bring in BETA/SMR
Alternative Protocols

Advanced Training Courses
BETA/SMR Advanced Practicum with Sue Othmer Topics Covered Evaluating Raw EEGs Spectral Density Choosing Inhibit Filters Coherence Training New Protocols Discussion of Difficult Cases Clinical Strategies/Testing		Alpha-Theta Advanced Practicum with Bill Scott Topics Covered Guided Imagery Interpreting Imagery Working with Addictions Facilitating Cross-Over Recognizing Progress When to bring in BETA/SMR Alternative Protocols

2000 Schedule (through June)
Encino, CA	Advanced Practicums	Jan 24th-25th, 2000
W Palm Beach, FL	Advanced Practicums	Feb 21st-22nd, 2000
Encino, CA	Advanced Practicums	Mar 13th-14th, 2000
Kansas City, MO	Advanced Practicums	Apr 10th-11th, 2000
Philadelphia, PA	Advanced Practicums	May 1st- 2nd, 2000
Nashville, TN	Advanced Practicums	Jun 5th- 6th, 2000
Encino, CA	Advanced Practicums	Jun 26th-27th, 2000

DATESCOSTSLOCATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE

PREREQUISITES FOR EITHER PRACTICUM:
Completion of 1 EEG Spectrum International Biofeedback Training Course for Professionals
EEG Biofeedback experience using NeuroCybernetics Instrumentation

Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers
CONFERENCE	LOCATION	DATES
Winter Brain 2000	Palm Springs	Feb 4-8th, 2000

New Neurofeedback Clinicians / New Offices

Thea Schulze, MSW, LCSW
12 1/2 Wall St, Suite E
Asheville, NC 28801
828-251-2681

Dr. Esther Romero Tannenhaus
Rosario 478 - 2nd floor
Buenos Aires (1424)
Argentina
54 011 4902-1473
fax: 54 011 4901-8911
esther@unifax.com.ar

Brislain Learning Center
P. David Graham, MA; Judy Brislain, Ed.D.
1550 Humboldt Road, Suite 3
Chico, CA 95928
(530) 342-2567; Fax: -2578
 grahampd@aol.com
 JAB_shrink@aol.com

Georgianne Akers
643 Haryu Rd
Longview, WA 98632

Betty Jarusiewicz, Ph.D., CADC
Atlantic Counseling Center, Inc
51 Memorial Parkway (Hwy 36)
Atlantic Highlands, NJ 08106
732-872-8700
 bjarus@home.com

Marcie Glousman, MA
19224 Rosita Street
Tarzana, CA  91356
818-881-7170; fax: -0887
 marcieged@aol.com

Patricia K. Lyons, RN, MS, CS
South Deerfield, MA 01373
(413) 665-4038; Fax -586-6550
 patmikel@aol.com

Mark Darling, B Soc Sc (Hons) (Psych)
Suite 7, 1st floor, Noosaville Plaza
10 Thomas Street
Noosaville
Queensland 4566
Phone: 61 (0)7 5474 4335
Fax:   61 (0)7 5474 2626
  mdarling@powerup.com.au

Avril Carruthers
Psychotherapy, Healing, Neurofeedback.
New Directions Healing Centre
Suite 202 / 75 Archer Street,
Chatswood, NSW, 2032
Ph (02) 9415 2767
Mobile 0412 912 164
  avrilcarruthers@clairvision.org

Last Word

Catch ya next month

What's New in Neurofeedback

The Operating System of the Brain

NEW BOOKS

JOURNAL PAPERS

Advanced Training Courses

PREREQUISITES FOR EITHER PRACTICUM: Completion of 1 EEG Spectrum International Biofeedback Training Course for Professionals EEG Biofeedback experience using NeuroCybernetics Instrumentation

Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers

New Neurofeedback Clinicians / New Offices

PREREQUISITES FOR EITHER PRACTICUM:
Completion of 1 EEG Spectrum International Biofeedback Training Course for Professionals
EEG Biofeedback experience using NeuroCybernetics Instrumentation