What's New in Neurofeedback

• Want a better memory? Stop and smell the roses
• Brain stimulation may ease headaches, studies find
• Study: Seeing Red Lowers Test Scores
• Scientists try to predict intentions
• Technology Review: Fueling Brain Research
• Can a brain scan prove you're telling the truth?
• Quiz: How healthy is your brain?
• Boosting Brain Power May Be Steps Away
• Fighting memory loss through brain games, exercise and rest

  All links at: news.yahoo.com/fc/Science/Brain_Research

Groups needs to synchronize and the best synchronizing event of all time for AAPB belonged to Herbert Benson, a pioneer in behavioral and mind-body medicine, who had an entire auditorium of 300 souls breathing in unison to start off his keynote address two years ago. This year we didn't breathe in unison like a pod of killer whales but the opening keynote was very good and helpful, entitled " Stress Enhanced Hippocampal Throughput & Mesolimbic Dopamine - A Model for the Development of Fibromyalgia Syndrome" by Patrick Wood. Dr Wood explained a model of dopaminergic involvement which explained FMS quite well. I know next to nothing about fibromyaglia but I came away from the talk believing that one might treat this condition incorrectly if one didn't understand the full circuitry involved.

In the evening talk of the first day, Bob Thatcher presented his interest in phase reset in EEG signals at the Neurofeedback Division dinner. He conjectured that phase reset might be involved in consciousness. Phase reset suggests a time-sensitive global inhibitory influence on the entire cortical circuitry. Amplitude reset also occurs (Mormann et al., 2005). Bob plans to investigate phase reset further, studying its topography and other aspects of behavior.

The next day I slipped into the symposium entitled "QEEG Subtype Patterns in Autistic Spectrum Disorder" by Laurence Hirshberg, Robert Coben, Michael Linden, and Lynda & Michael Thompson. More and more we are finding frontal and temporal connectivity disturbances in autism and this is very promising in terms of treating this condition as now we have the tools for comodulation and coherence training. I once thought that prolonged autism structurally damages the brain, and this may true, but of late I simply believe that these individuals have the same complement of tools and modules we all have and are simply using them wrong> It's like we've all been given a Lexus to drive, but these individuals never learn the consensual way to work the vehicle and instead drive them in reverse, without mirrors, and offroad. It's true that cortical structures may alter under this severe learning disability, but if they turn around and drive on the road with the rest of us, we might find out how normal the equipment can become. This talk made me think about a lecture I gave to students recently on the Stroop effect and automatic processes. There are controlled processes in the brain, such as naming the color ink of a word, which require attention and our spotlight of consciousness in order to work; and there are those functions which are automatic, like reading or attending auditorily to the environment, which are done with little or no effort, often in parallel, and really occur in our preconscious. Autism may often be a case of too many automatic processes remaining controlled processes, especially socio-emotive and holistic integrative functions. We see the wholenesses of the world because we don't try to see them.

The Claude Bernard Club was scheduled that night. The requirement for attendance to this talk is that each person has a peer reviewed publication to his or her name so the standard is not out of anyone's reach, though it might be construed as an elitist affair. Actually the $50 cover charge makes it more so. Marco Iacoboni gave a great talk on the mirror neuron system which included video presentations of evidence of the mirror neuron system in monkeys. A monkey would see movement by an experimenter and these mirror cells would fire, ratatatat. The video was more impressive than the details in any journal paper. Marco outlined the mirror neuron system in humans as we currently know it, with important parts of the MNS in right Brodmann area 44 and 45, if I recall correctly, the right side analog to Broca, along with parietal circuitry.

The next morning was our four hour symposium entitled "Hemispheric Interactions in Neuroregulation and Neuropathology" with Eran Zaidel, Marco Iacoboni, Dirk De Ritter, M. Barry Sterman, and myself. Dirk, a neurosurgeon from Brussels, explained how neurosurgeons are needing more and more to know how the brain actually works. As a neurosurgon, what they only need to know until now was simply how to get at various structures without damaging much tissue. His research focuses on tinnitus and embedding electrical stimulators to ameliorate the condition, but there was an opening for gamma training if such training could triangulate locations within the cortex with better accuracy than referential recordings can do. Barry followed with a discussion of neurofeedback training effects on epilepsy and the development of a mirror foci in seizure disorder in the contralateral site (homologue). In one case study, a seizure patient caught in the first year of the disorder underwent neurofeedback and it apparently intervened and blocked development of a mirror focus. I then presented my evidence of magnitude asymmetries in homologue sites of focal seizures. A site's homologue has a very special relationship with a site, appearing to govern its energy relationship with other brain sites. The homologue is not unlike a spouse, I added, influencing how much or how little one should react to circumstances. An anterior callosotomy patient I presented had an energy disruption between those brain site disconnected by the surgery, the cut in the callosal fibers between them. This didn't disturb the energy patterns between the two primary sites adjacent to the cut (F3 and F4) but each site's relationship to all other sites was disrupted as each lost its governing partner. The same was true for a unilateral temporal lobe seizure case where the site and its homologue showed abnormal magnitude relationships with all other site pairs. I also presented my "periodic table" of EEG spectral properties, reviewing local, network, and transformational properties of EEG, putting each measure such as comodulation, coherence, magnitude, band ratios, etc into an extended table based on phase or magnitude, consistency or difference, one site or two, one frequency or two. Eran, one of my two dissertation chairs, described his impressive research on hemispheric specialization and Marco repeated his Claude Bernard talk, but now with a focus on lateralization of the MNS. There is evidence of different forms of information being lateralized in MNS, but for much of the system is bilateral. One of the attendees commented at lunch how this symposium was worth the cost of the conference, which made the organizer of the event extremely happy.

So all in all, a stimulating few days among the neurofeedback community.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Be a Parent, Not a Pushover: Guide to Raising Happy, Emotionally Healthy Teens
by Maryann Rosenthal
Parenting guide for those years when children are pulling away but still in need of guidance, structure, and love. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785218912/eegspectrum

Depression and Physical Illness
by Andrew Steptoe (Editor)
Clinical, biological and epidemiological information on how to manage depression in people suffering from physical illness. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521603609/eegspectrum

The Frontal Lobes: Development, Function and Pathology
by Jarl Risberg, Jordan Grafman (Eds)
Evolutionary significance of frontal lobes and typical and atypical development pathways. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521672252/eegspectrum

The Architecture of the Mind
by Peter Carruthers
Defends evolutionary psychology view of a modular mind -- i.e., brain composed of numerous semi-independent modules with varying connectiveness. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199207070/eegspectrum

Applied Emotional Intelligence
by Tim Sparrow, Amanda Knight
How to develop emotionally intelligence attitudes and tactics for their application. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470032731/eegspectrum

Freedom And Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, And Political Power
by John R. Searle
Free will debate, relevant to addiction perhaps. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0231137524/eegspectrum

Epilepsy from extended treatment with electroconvulsive therapy. : Describes a handful of patients who developed epilepsy during extended courses of ECT. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17185006

Heritability of EEG Spectra in a Sib-pair Population. : Heritabilities of bipolar EEG spectral power ranged from 0.10 to 0.63 in 38 electrode-pairs, monopolar from 0.23 to 0.68 in 19 electrodes, in six frequency bands. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17180712

In vivo mapping of functional connectivity in neurotransmitter : Mapped functionally connected brain areas responding to pharmacological challenge. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17188903

Independent Component Analysis in the Study of Focal Seizures. : ICA separated components of ictal onset from propagated activity in focal seizures. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17143142

Magnocellular advantage in visual impairments in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. : Abnormal visual information processing in neuropsychiatric conditions may reflect dominance of magnocellular pathway in driving cortical involvement. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17141311

Neurobiology of substance and behavioral addictions. : Neurobiology of both forms of addictions (chemical and behavioral) may provide insight for prevention and treatment strategies. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17146406

Gray matter changes in autism- social and repetitive behavior. : Gray matter was enlarged in medial frontal & temporal gyri as well as sensorimotor cortex. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17166273

Awareness of deficits in traumatic brain injury : Low self-awareness scoring TBI patients exhibited disinhibition, interpersonal problems and more difficulties in total competency. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17166302

Spontaneous magnetoencephalographic activity in OCD : Prefrontal and temporal cortices were linked to pathogenesis of OCD. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17156764

EEG abnormalities in adolescent males with AD/HD. : ADHD subjects showed lower relative beta activity in posterior sites during eyes closed rest. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17166762

Alcohol and marijuana use during adolescence on hippocampal volume and asymmetry. : Hippocampal asymmetry and left hippocampal volumes were associated with adolescent heavy drinking. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17169528

Spotlight articles

1. Autism Neurotherapy Research
2. Blinding the Brain
3. Brain as plurality of organs
4. Epilepsy
5. Heights of rivers, lengths of mountains
6. More about Child Development and Schools
7. Social Normalization
8. Technology-assisted self-regulation
9. Two Angles at Testing Neurofeedback
10. When will Neurotherapy Research go under the microscope?
11. World is Too Much with Us
12. Year in Neurofeedback - 2005
13. Year in Neurofeedback - 2006

1. Addiction Numbers
2. Autobiographical and Universal Selves
3. Catering to Agency Deficiency
4. Just a thought
5. New Math
6. Online Resources
7. Other People's Words
8. Re-evaluating one's belief system
9. Selected Psych Films
10. Somewhere over New York