What's New in Neurofeedback

• Drugs to boost brain power will become 'as common as coffee'
• Study: Lorenzo's Oil protects against ailment
• Brain Region May Govern Resilience to Trauma
• A Dispute Over Brain Donations
• Brain development may be influenced by genetic parasites
• Deep, Dark Secrets of His and Her Brains
• A scientific journey into the mind of a child

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

First, how important is sleep? In the great scheme of things is sleep more important than food? More important than water? More important than the World Series? Who knows? Well, one way to estimate the relative importance of any biological function is to deprived some creature of said function. Boston deprived its inhabitants of a World Series champ for nearly a century and it turned many of the people into batty superstitious mystics, so deprivation can change personality. In terms of sleep, what is the effect on survival? It may sound gruesome, and it can be, but it does give us some clue as to the importance of sleep.

Death from Deprivation (approximate duration) in order
• Oxygen (minutes)
• Warmth (hours)
• Water (days)
• Sleep (weeks)
• Sustenance/food (months)
• Social (months at infancy)

So sleep is more important than food. but a more eternal question, is sleep more important than sex? We are always asking ourselves whether we should miss out on sleep for sex? Well, a few of us have lived their entire lives sex-deprived and none the worse for wear (well, who knows). Isaac Newton had this unfortunate and shy distinction, as did (supposedly) Queen Elizabeth I, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and perhaps even the madman Adolph Hitler. Might explain a few things. But regardless, sleep is more important to life than food, less than water, warmth, and oxygen.

So why then do we spend one-third of our life asleep? We don't spend that much time drinking, or breathing even? Or perhaps we spend about 1/3 of our life breathing as the average rate of respiration is 20 times a minute, though lower rates when asleep. Still, what function(s) does sleep serve?

People who cannot sleep die. There is a very rare genetic disorder called as fatal familial insomnia (FFI) that produces a general brainstem deterioration during middle age. The first symptom of this untreatable disorder is the inability to sleep, for months. Eventually the adult man or woman dies, and as with rats who die at 17 days, and young dogs in 6 days, adult dogs in 13 days, these individuals die from the consequences of thermoregulation failure. Thermoregulation is a common theme in sleep. Keeping the body temperature stable is a very critical function (#2 on our list) and sleep (slow wave sleep) in integral to this process.

So what happens short of complete deprivation. Well, we can thank the Chinese Army of the 1950s for knowing this answer. Chronic sleep deprivation was used a form of torture and interrogation during the Korean War on dozens of captured U.S. airmen. It left no physical marks as it forced these men to confess to war crimes they didn't committ (West, 1962). Despite the appearances of normality when the soldiers returned to the U.S., persistent personality dysfunction continued. A documented anecdote also supports how chronic sleep deprivation can alter personality. In 1959 Peter Tripp, a radio DJ who invented the Top 40 countdown, went 201 hours (8 days) without sleep. He suffered paranoid delusions & hallucinations during the stunt, and permanent personality changes after. He was given Ritalin by the doctors to keep awake so the delusions and hallucinations may have been caused by acute amphetamine psychosis, or perhaps intrusions from the periodic REM cycles during the wee hours. At one point Peter confided to the two psychiatrists overseeing his charity wakeathon that he was not Peter Tripp but an imposter -- in other words he went psychotic. He also thought that one of the doctors was actually an undertaker to take him away to his grave. Strong stuff, that Ritalin (or strong stuff, that lack of sleep). As for personality change, his loved ones noticed the change right away. Peter rebounded with a full day of sleep after the marathon, but his wife noticed a change in him. Tripp fought with him boss, got caught in the payola scandal, fired, divorced, and ended his years traveling around the country doing various odd jobs. Other DJs soon followed his wakeathon stunt, staying awake longer, but less was documented of their results. Finally in 1965 a 17-year old high school student stayed awake 11 days (264 hours) with the help of TV reporters and pinball games but with little permanent change in personality. So the effect of prolonged sleep deprivation on personality may be age-dependent, which may explain why I hate all-nighters now, but enjoyed them in college.

Prolonged sleep deprivation in children can be deadly, however, leading to failure to thrive diagnoses during infancy. Complete sleep deprivation is nearly impossible unless there is an organic problem because individuals fall into microsleeps (momentary REM and non-REM states of a second or two) whenever they can. But prolonged sleep deprivation, even with the microREMs is dangerous. Many avoidable accidents are caused by sleep-deprived operators, including significant industrial ones such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear incidents, the 1989 Exxon Valdez crash, and the decision to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, which ended in disaster. Perhaps as many as half of the DWI accidents are actually sleep deprivation related -- alcohol relaxes the driver until they are overtaken by their sleep debt (below) and fall asleep. Sleep deprivation impacts significantly two aspects of cognition: vigilance, and our ability to learn -- i.e., integrate new information with old. Memory, rote learning, and many motor skills are unaffected by modest to moderate sleep deprivation.

In characterizing sleep, at one time most scientists believed that sleep allowed the entire brain to shut down to rest, that sleep was passive. But with the invention of single cell recordings it was discovered that some neurons are five to ten times more active during sleep than waking; that some cell's entire function seems to be to maintain sleep. Another false characterization is that sleep onset is gradual, not immediate. For instance when sleep deprived subjects have bright strobe lights shone randomly into taped-open eyes and asked to respond (press a button) whenever the light is flashed, they occasionally miss a strobe or two but fail to notice. This and other evidence suggests an active shutting off process, a "perceptual wall" that is built in milliseconds, and it also explains how come some of my kids can sleep with their eyes open.

As I've aluded to above, sleep is not unitary but consists of two complementary forms, REM and non-REM sleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement sleep, and it was discovered half a century ago (Aserinsky & Kleitman, 1953). Imagine, centuries of people watching other people sleep and no one until these two took much notice of the scanning eyes below the lids. Non-REM is better known as slow wave sleep (SWS) because large EEG waveforms are detected during this part of sleep. There are 4 to 5 REM-NonREM cycles across the night, with each stage going from Stage 1 through Stage 4 before REM occurs. (In narcolepsy one drops immediately into REM from the wakeful state, and because there is no muscle tone in REM, one literally can fall asleep). Each sleep cycle is around 90 minutes and as the night proceeds more and more time is spent in REM, which is why cutting short one's sleep reduces the amount of dreaming. (The lengthy dreams stack up at the end of a good night's sleep.) Stage 1 sleep may be waking, may be sleeping, hard to say, so it's not until the appearance of sleep spindles in the EEG record during Stage 2 that we are sure someone is asleep, as opposed to resting their eyes. Stage 3 and 4 are filled with less spindles and more delta waves and is the physically restorative portion of sleep, as well as the hardest to wake from ("deeper sleep"). After the first cycle or so, we rarely return to stage 3 and 4 but spend the remainder of the night between Stage 2, REM, and the occasional wakings and bathroom run.

What is the minimum units of restorative sleep in terms of time? Edison spoke of feeling refreshed after catnaps lasting only minutes. Well, if I wake you up every 5 minutes, then keep you up 5 minutes, then let you sleep for another 5 minutes, and so on, and on, for 16 hours until you've accumulated 8 hours of sleep (half the time), you would consider yourself tortured by the end of the day. Ten minute units are no better, still tortured, but at 15 minutes you would (in theory) feel rested. The minimum unit of restorative sleep is 15 minutes, but I question this finding. Too many nights in hospitals. Why do they wake us up if sleep is so necessary for immune functon and healing? ... which it is.

For every hour of sleep missed, we need an hour of sleep to make it up. In college I thought I needed only 15 minutes or so for every hour missed, but sleep debt is like real debt in that every withdrawal requires the same deposit, and then some. Most of us carry too much debt (sleep and otherwise) and this can be easily observed by the standard "cave" sleep study. Place a participant in a cave (a room without time of day cues such as windows, clocks, TVs) and let him or her sleep, and most will sleep 25 or 30 extra hours over the first two weeks. This is debt repayment.

One way to elegantly quantify sleep debt is with the Minimum Sleep Latency Test (MSLT). Starting at 8 am or 10 am, we place you in the cave on a cot and time how long it takes for you to fall asleep. If you are not asleep after 20 minutes, we tell you to scoot and come back later (noon, 2 pm, 4 pm etc). If you fall asleep, we wake you at the 20 minute mark and every two hours after that. The MSLT time quantifies how sleepy you are.

As it turns out, 9 and 10 year olds average 20 minutes in the MSLT. In other words they get all the sleep they need and are not at all sleepy. But a few years older, in high school or college. they score around 3 minutes, similar to the elderly and sleep apnea sufferers. Elderly carry heavy sleep debt because they need 8 hours of sleep like any adult but their sleep onset switch (a neurotransmitter system) often becomes impaired and cannot keep them asleep for very long, that and their bladders. Apparently we have 5 or 6 neuronal arousal systems such as histamine (which is why antihistamine knocks us out) but only one sleep-onset system, but these neurotransmitter "switches" still need more study before we can understand them.

The behavioral definition of sleep is a state of little movement, stereotypic posture (lying on one's back or side or stomach for humans, floating in kelp if an otter, draped across a tree limb if a leopard or one of my kids), reduced response to stimulation, immediate reversibility (thus not coma or death), periodic, and naturally occurring. However behavior is not as clear as electrophysiology (which is less clear than molecular biochemistry); still, sleep is nearly always characterized with the help of simultaneous EEG, EOG (ocular, for eye movements) and EMG for muscle tone.

REM appears in the EEG as waking, but the associated loss of muscle tone shows clearly in the EMG. The function of REM is probably to provide early videogame experience to the prenatal brain... well, nearly so. Heteroplasticity is one theory for REM -- early stimulation for the maturing brain, which is supported by antidepressant evidence in adults (we can eliminate REM with tricyclics in adults without major problems). REM may motorically tune our binocular vision system, or may provide neuronal stimulation for the third-trimester brain, or something else entirely. Regardless of the reason, the pre-natal brain is nearly always in REM, kicking away, but by week 40 (birth) half of the sleep state is now non-REM. Fortunately for parents the newborn sleeps 16 hours a day; but unfortunately sleep consolidation is a thing in their future and the 16 hours are not all at once but evenly spread across both day and night. This means an infant is awake every third hour or so along with his or her mother (and occasionally, father). It's not until school years that sleep consolidation approximates the adult, all hours in a row. By this time REM now makes up only a quarter of the sleep duration. We do know that all mammalian young sleep more than adults, and all show more REM sleep. REM is called paradoxical sleep as the EEG records during this aroused state resemble waking.

Dolphins exhibit unihemispheric sleep: one hemisphere of the brain is always awake. Unlike us, they are voluntary breathers and when anaesthetize they die. Now it may be the case that unihemispheric sleep is the first form of sleep, and our type (bihemispheric sleep) evolved later. Watching evolution in real time is difficult to do, but we do have old mammalian reruns hanging about, especially in Australia. Monotremes, the egg-laying mammals that somehow escaped slaughter of marsupials and placental mammals, show co-evolution of REM/NREM states, a state mixed with both elements. So duck-bill platypuses (or platypi) also look weird in the inside as well.

Why is sleep necessary? Why is sleep universal? Why is there such prevalence in early life? And what is the function and role of dreaming? Most sleep researchers are a cranky lot because they cannot answer Question One when asked by their kids what they do. I would also be cranky if when people asked me what I studied (the brain) and I didn't have a clue what it was or did. (And who knows, perhaps I don't -- I mean, how often in the equilibrium of nothingness does an asymmetric hyperdimensional break in physical laws actually become self-representational and dyadic....not every day, I call assure you.) Well, perhaps there is some shreds of certainty in our knowledge of sleep,. Sleep serves some role in restoration and recovery of function, especially in connection with thermoregulation. There may be an energy conservation aspect to sleep, although we sleep after bedrest and the young sleep more than old and the energy used during sleep is something like 85% of that during wakefulness. Okay, so the energy conservation idea is a hard sell. Maybe sleep keeps kids quiet and alive (i.e., uneaten) as past predators sought motion instead of snoring during prime hunting hours.

As for sleep mentation (dreaming, both REM and nonREM states), that will have to wait for another time because it's 4 am now and I'm certain to make mistakes if I continue writing at this hour. When it comes to sleep we can agree that it prevents sleepiness, and that is the function I seek right now ;-)

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Delivered from Distraction : Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder
by Edward M. Hallowell M.D., et al
Follow-up to Driven to Distraction, a personal testimony regarding adult Attention Deficit Disorder which includes the latest research. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034544230X/eegspectrum

Sleep Disorders Sourcebook
by Amy L. Sutton et al
Consumer health information about sleep disorders such as apnea and insomnia and others. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078080743X/eegspectrum

Depression and Anxiety
by Johns Hopkins Consumer Health
In-depth special reports written by specialists in each respective field, providing latest research and findings from all major medical journals. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933087048/eegspectrum

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: From Genes to Patients
by David Gozal
Newest publication in the Contemporary Clinical Neuroscience series. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1588293122/eegspectrum

Clinical Disorders of Balance, Posture and Gait
by Adolfo M. Bronstein, et al
Clinical guide for diagnosis and management of abnormal balances, postures, and gaits. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340806575/eegspectrum

The Brain Takes Shape: An Early History
by Robert L. Martensen
Reviews how during the 17th century primarily the heart was supplanted by the brain as the primary locus of one's self. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195151720/eegspectrum

Do-Watch-Listen-Say: Social and Communication Intervention for Children With Autism
by Kathleen Ann Quill
Guide for designing and implementing intervention plans, and collecting data. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1557664536/eegspectrum

Sleep Psychiatry
by Alexander Z. Golbin, et al
Discusses the role of sleep in mental health disorders as well as health and healing. Cure sleep and the day will follow. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1842141457/eegspectrum

Severe Emotional Disturbance in Children and Adolescents: Psychotherapy in Applied Contexts
by Denis Flynn
Argues for psychoanalytic psychotherapy in treating severe cases of emotional disturbance. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583912126/eegspectrum

The Mind: Its Nature and Origin
by Christiaan D. Van Der Velde
General introduction to neuroscientific investigations into the ultimate black box, mind. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591021901/eegspectrum

Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon
by Barbara Hodgson
The history of opium, perhaps the most celebrated and notorious psychoactive substance in the world. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1553650581/eegspectrum

Functional MRI in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder : More evidence of hypofrontality in ADHD children; also evidence of a compensatory network including basal ganglia, insula and cerebellum during low cognitive load. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15876503

Neural synchronization in the emergence of cognition across the wake-sleep cycle. : Review analyzes state-dependent brain dynamics at different levels of neural integration www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15810655

EEG measures of regional hemispheric activity in offspring at risk for depressive disorders. : Offspring at risk for a major depressive disorder show relatively more alpha activity over right central and parietal regions. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15705347

Electrophysiological and neuropsychological analysis of a delirious state : LORETA findings suggests that theta excess associated with delirium were primarily localized in the anterior cingulate and right fronto-temporal brain areas. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15766639

Functional neuroimaging of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder : Convergent findings from numerous research approaches implicate dysfunction of fronto-striatal structures in ADHD (lateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate, caudate, and putamen). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15949999

Cerebral blood flow and separate symptom clusters of major depression: SPECT : Blood flow correlated with severity of depressive mood, insomnia, anxiety, and cognitive performance at different brain locations in depressed individuals. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15921853

Compositions of brain oscillations. : Using a probability-classification analysis of short-term EEG spectral patterns, researchers found relatively low variability within and between sessions for individuals. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15946755

Alcoholism is a disinhibitory disorder : Alcoholics appear to activate inappropriate brain circuitry during cognitive processing and produce lower p300s in a Go-NoGo task. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15925035

Gray matter volume reduction in the chronic fatigue syndrome. : A decline in gray matter volume linked to reduced physical activity was found. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15955487

Alpha synchronization and anxiety: Implications for inhibition vs. alertness hypotheses. : Anxiety is associated with increased alertness, as shown by higher alpha power during reference intervals; which was interpreted as increased readiness for information processing. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15961174

Neurophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. : Reviews neurobiology of ADHD and concludes there is no single pathophysiological profile underlying this disorder althought two QEEG subtypes have been reported. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15979751

Psychiatric comorbidity in epilepsy. : Little research has been done on axis II personality disorders and epilepsy, and more needs to be done. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15975853

Age distribution of MEG spontaneous theta activity in healthy subjects. : Younger individuals show theta dipoles more posterior than adults and elderly. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15974475

Functional brain imaging of tobacco use and dependence. : Smoking enhances neurotransmission through cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic circuits. Acute administration of nicotine activates prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and visual systems and increases dopamine in the ventral striatum. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15979645

1). Satellite radio. I rented a car with XM radio and drove 6 hours to and from Rochester but it was a joy with Satellite radio, on Baseball Hall of Fame weekend... well, nearly a joy.

2). Orr & Naitoh (1976). I cruised Cornell's archives for an obscure paper important to coherence and found the numbers incorrectly presented in a coherence tutorial currently being circulated (online). If you had trouble with online tutorial, no wonder, a few of the initial numbers are wrong; the correct numbers are below.

And

3). Connectivity training is a must, a great addition to neurofeedback. EEGer will be the first system to incorporate both coherence and comodulation training, at least the first to do both approaches to connectivity correctly.

Here is the abstract from my 2 hours talk at the meeting:

Comodulation and Coherence are independent measures of EEG synchrony

by David A Kaiser, Ph.D. Rochester Institute of Technology, NY

Coherence quantifies phase consistency and comodulation magnitude consistency between EEG signals. Each approach captures two estimates of linear similarity: coherence and phase delay, comodulation and magnitude proportion. Coherence assesses shared constraint between signals in general (e.g., a common generator or origin) and comodulation quantifies shared energies (e.g., related activation across time). Both techniques are typically performed on the same frequency band at each site, but bicoherence and bimodulation between different frequency bands at the same site may provide useful indices of consciousness and mental representation which can be trainable.

Comodulation and coherency were compared using random numbers and empirical data. Twenty adult normals, 10 children with Asperger's syndrome, and 9 children with attentional deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were also analyzed. As expected, no significant coherence or comodulation was found between numerous pairs of random digits. Despite being orthogonal measures, comodulation and coherence did correlate strongly with each other, in the r=.70 range for eyes closed data. Related comodulatory measures were also analyzed, including a gross mean that may reflect cortical maturation. This measure correlated with age in ADHD children, and separated ADHD from age-matched Asperger children, and children from adults.

The role of coherence and comodulation in QEEG assessment will be discussed, along with practical issues in implementing training of either measure such as the length of history to use and the sampling rates of this history. Techniques to provide fluidic, moment to moment representations of comodulation and coherency are described. Finally, a clarification of spectral analysis is provided, separating frequency analysis from power transformation which was mistakenly conjoined by past investigators (e.g., Blackman & Tukey, 1958).

Orr & Naitoh's Raw Data

Observation 

CHANNEL X
Record 1:  3  5 -6  2  4 -1 -4  1
Record 2:  1  1 -4  5  2 -5 -1  4
Record 3: -1  7 -5  0  2  1 -1 -2

CHANNEL Y
Record 1: -1  4 -2  2  0  0  2 -1
Record 2:  4  3 -9  2  7  0 -6  1
Record 3: -1  9 -4 -1  2  4 -1 -5

The calculation in the online tutorial is for power coherence. I would alter it to magnitude coherence for EEG. Tukey had a magnitude version calling coherency, the square root of coherence. (not a great difference in name, if clarity is one's goal). -DK