What's New in Neurofeedback

A Monthly Summary of News and Events

Vol. 9 No. 6 - June 2006

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

Past issues are available at start.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) 2005 by David Kaiser or ESII. All rights reserved.

Announcements - News In the Spotlight - The World is Too Much with Us News & Reviews - Books & journal papers Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses Last Word - Re-evaluating one's belief system

Announcements Last month marked the 100th issue of this newsletter!

In the Spotlight

The World is Too Much with Us


Sometimes it is enough just to remember 
There was once a time before we knew about time 
When the self and the world fit snugly together. 
 - E. Hirsch

Birds, bees, bats, and pterodactyls developed wings. Monkeys, apes, and humans developed color vision. The first occurred because of common environmental pressures, the 2nd because a distant ancestor passed down the ability to her many descendents. The first is an example of convergent evolution, the second divergent. Divergent evolution is the more familiar form of evolution, due to genetics, but both processes work to shape life and the latter is more interesting because it suggests commonalities about the environment across species.

I bring up convergent evolution because of hemispheric specialization - each hemisphere of the brain specialized for its own complement of functions such as speech, math, or face recognition. Hemispheric specialization is present in species as diverse as birds, rats, dolphins, and humans, and it is likely a product of convergent evolution. Cerebral asymmetry arose in both mammals and birds, creatures who are similar in appearance only, if that. Convergent evolution indicates common environment pressures at work, but what selective pressures are shared by killer bees and killer whales? What in the world split the rat brain, bird brain, whale brain, and my child's brain into PC and Mac? Was it an accident of nature, or a necessity?

Evolution is the story of organisms adapting to a larger organisms or worlds. Adaptation involves acquisition of rules and acquiring rules, through heritage or experience, allows one to respond to challenges. Animal that falter or fail to acquire appropriate responses do not live to play another day, but what are these rules? What inspired neurons to duplicate and specialize into PC and Mac on a wide scale?

We do know that the world designed us. Theological considerations aside (whether we live in God's world or nature's), each organism is a work of art, sculpted out of raw materials and refined through 3.8 billion years of constant vigorous evolutionary pressure. So what made a double-brain design advantageous through all those years of biological sand blasting? Why did only bihemispheric vertebrates survive?

The answer lies with the environment. All organisms seek a balance between themselves and the environment, a balance between reward and risk. A balance presumes the idea of a self in all creatures and surely animals conceive of themselves as we do, a part of existence under intimate and immediate control. Some animal may have selves that only extend to their bodies and little else, perhaps into their young, but social animals are something else. We --as well as dolphins and dogs, to name conspicious members of the social predators club on this planet -- include our companions and other members of the tribe into our self. And young social animals have little sense of self to speak of, which is why playing fetch for hours isn't tiresome to children. In fact willingness to play fetch or catch or shagging fly balls is central to understanding ourselves. All of these games are social, even cross-special, indicating a greater sense of self than any non-social animal could possess. When I worked with dolphins years ago, I spent hours reaching my hand into their mouths to retrieve balls, games across the species-line, and such trust games were rewarding into the wee hours for both me and the dolphins. "Are you still playing with them?" I hear ringing in my ears. Yes, and so should you, because the human sense of control and consent always must be in the process of extending, across others as well as space and time. But we need to remember how each person makes his or her own path and decides on his or her own where to lay the boundary between world and self, and for each child and adult setting the dividing line is the greatest challenge they will ever face, as they face it alone.

The world is too much with us.

World and self distinctions reflect hemispheric differences, what nature developed to handle the separation between others and oneself. The left hemisphere provides a universal self, one filled with categories and abstraction such as catness or blueness, while the right hemisphere provides a cherish and nurtured view, individualized and concrete, a memory of a particular cat or sky. Platonic logos struggles against Aristotlean diversity in all of us.

Flor-Henry (1969) was one of the first to consider hemispheric specialization and mental illness and he discovered how left- and right-sided foci in temporal lobe epilepsy were associated with schizophrenia and manic-depression. Others made much of the left/right brain distinction in emotional and mental disturbances such as children who exhibit socially inappropriate behavior and have difficulty perceiving emotional states of others who were found to be right brain damaged. The world never gains status in such a child, but what may be worse , definitely worse, is those children in whom the self never gains status. That is the worse form of mental illness and surely the future of this field as nothing else but learning -- not pharmaceuticals or love -- can resolve it.

Selected References

Glick, S.D. (1985) Cerebral lateralization in nonhuman species, New York: Academic Press.

Lerner, J., Nachshon, I., & Carmon, A. (1977) Responses of paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenics in a dichotic listening task. J Nervous Mental Diseases, 164, 247-252.

Voeller, K. (1986) Right-hemisphere deficit syndrome in children, Am J Psychiatry, 143, 1004-1009.

Wordsworth, W (1807). The world is too much with us.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think About the Brain, Free Will...
by Susan Blackmore
Interviews with leading figures in study of consciousness. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195179587/eegspectrum

Alcohol Abuse Revolution: Complementary and Alternative...
by Donna J. Cornett
Alternative medicine to reduce alcohol craving and consumption. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0976372029/eegspectrum

Only a Mother Could Love Him : My Life with and Triumph over ADD
by Benjamin Polis
Guide to managing ADHD from a mother's perspective. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345471881/eegspectrum

Concise Guide to Evaluation and Management of Sleep Disorders
by Martin Reite, et al
General practitioner guide to sleep problems --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585620459/eegspectrum

Breaking The Grip Of Dangerous Emotions
by Janet Maccaro
Personal perspective on beating stress and negative emotions. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591857872/eegspectrum

Interactive Play for Children with Autism
by Diana Seach
Introduction to the value of play in social and emotional development of children. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415333261/eegspectrum

JOURNAL PAPERS

Failing to deactivate: Resting functional abnormalities in autism. : Social impairment correlated with activity in ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which is perhaps indicative of abnormal internally directed processes at rest for autistics. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16702548

Functional MRI to study brain plasticity in clinical neurology. : Exhaustion of adaptive properties of cerebral cortex may be responsible for 'fixed' neurological deficits. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16708177

QEEG discordance: predicting cocaine-dependent treatment attrition. : Concordant (high perfusion correlate) patients had much higher successful treatment completion rate than discordant patients. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16720798

Self-Regulation of Slow Cortical Potentials in Seizure Patients. : Decreased seizure frequency from this form of neurofeedback training may be due to inhibition in cortical areas proximal to active electrodes, frontal cortex, and thalamus. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16691432

An fMRI task battery for assessing hemispheric language dominance in children. : Techniques to assess hemispheric dominance for language in children, to identify athological language organization. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16651012

Discriminative analysis of brain function at resting-state for ADHD : Abnormalities in prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, along with other areas, discriminated the ADHD brain from others. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16685993

Simultaneous EEG and fMRI applied to epilepsy. : Integrating of both electrophysiologic and metabolic information provides much insight into cerebral physiology. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16630747

Brain network dysfunction in bipolar disorder. : Bipolar disorder may arise from abnormalities within networks like the the anterior limbic network, not a localized lesion. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16641836

Adolescent risk behaviors and religion: Findings from a national study. : Religiosity was associated with reduced risk behaviors in smoking, marijuana and alcohol use, truancy, sexual activity, and depression. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16677701

Hippocampal volume in chronic PTSD : Hippocampal volumes in chronic PTSD patients compared to controls were similar, despite other short term studies finding differences. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16701903

Does neuroscience hold promise for the further development of behavior therapy? : Integration of biological and psychological models are extremely important for treating many disorders. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16696847

Observation of children with ADHD problems in classroom contexts. : children with ADHD were more disruptive and inattentive than peers and less on-task. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16719970

Post-lesional cerebral reorganisation : Functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation were used to assess post-lesional brain plasticity. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16723211

Events & Locations

Upcoming Courses

A Pathway to Brain Regulation - Neurofeedback helps improve neuroregulation. It's used by health care professionals for ADHD, depression, anxiety disorders, LD, mood disorders, and behavioral problems. This 4-day course, Neurofeedback in a Clinical Practice, provides the basis for using Neurofeedback clinically. - *28 CEs

Washington DC Jun 22-25
Raleigh/Durham, NC Jul 20-23
Los Angeles CA - Aug 17-20
Philadelphia, PA Sep 14-17
Chicago IL Oct 19-22
Portland OR Nov 16-19
Los Angeles CA Dec 7-10

Our course is a hands-on experience right from the start. Attendees consistently say this format is a very good way to learn Neurofeedback.

"Neurofeedback should be viewed as one of the three essential or primary forms of intervention - psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and Neurofeedback. In my experience, neurofeedback is every bit as important and powerful as the other two forms of treatment." - Dr. Laurence Hirshberg, Brown University Medical School, psychologist specializing in Developmental Disorders and Autism.

Contact Karie Kramer, our training coordinator, for more information 818-789-3456 ext 847 or see www.eegspectrum.com/Training

* EEG Spectrum International, Inc. is approved by the APA to offer continuing education to psychologists. ESII maintains responsibility for the program.

Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers

CONFERENCE LOCATION DATES

ISNR - www.isnr.org Atlanta GA Sep 7-10

Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers
CONFERENCE	LOCATION	DATES
ISNR - www.isnr.org	Atlanta GA	Sep 7-10

Last Word

Re-evaluating one's belief system (100 issues later)

May marked the 100th issue of WNIN, this newsletter. To see how the longest webzine dedicated to mental health has held up, here is the first Last Word from Jan 1998, unedited, with only minimal wincing by the editor upon reading the original editor's work, a 33 y man-child who wrote it and who shares my name and genes.

A common criticism of neurofeedback is its remarkable ability to treat numerous disorders. Most scientists are skeptical of "panaceas" If you say you have a technique or molecule that treats more than, say, three conditions, their panacea detector in their head goes off and they usually suspect this intervention treats none.

One of the problems lies in the categorization of disorders made by DSM IV, which defines conditions mostly based on symptoms, age at onset, predisposing factors, and prognosis. The neurophysiological and neuroanatomical substrates of disorders are overlooked. Thus disorders that reflect similar cortical dysfunction are delineated from each other. When a treatment is developed which targets a specific neurophysiological dysfunction, a whole host of DSM-IV conditions can be impacted. Studies have found that Prozac is effective in treating bulimia, anorexia nervosa, adult and childhood depression, fibromyalgia, and some autistic symptoms. Are we to believe that Prozac must not work on any, as more than three are listed? Did Eli Lilly develop the drug to affect one DSM condition, or as I suspect, did they target a specific neurotransmitter system. Clinical studies have found Depakote to be effective in treating migraines, anxiety, and complex partial (epileptic) seizures. What if the term neurofeedback appeared in the previous sentence where Depakote now appears? Any difference in reaction from those skeptics?

Grant applications also fall victim to DSM balkanization. One reviewer of a chemical dependency grant rejected the grant partly on the grounds that although there was good evidence of alpha-theta neurofeedback being effective in treating alcoholism, there was no evidence whatsoever of alpha-theta neurofeedback being effective in treating chemical dependency. I can think of no two conditions in the DSM IV that resemble each other more and co-occur more often than alcoholism and substance abuse. But because the DSM IV describes these disorders on different pages under different headings, they are treated as two separate and unrelated entities in the minds of many scientists.

The other problem with the acceptance of neurofeedback is that that too few people (outside of neuroscientists and neurologists) grasp the importance of rhythmicity and feedback loops in the brain. Here is a simple model of the brain taught to me by neurosurgeon Joe Bogen to help the non-neuroscientist understand how the brain works:

The brain consists of inhibitory systems that inhibit inhibitory systems which inhibit inhibitory systems.

If you grasp this, you grasp why neurofeedback is so powerful in remediating cortical dysfunction and subsequently psychopathology. Neurofeedback provides an external feedback loop that can come under some volitional control. This feedback loop impinges on the extensive feedback loops inherent in the thalamocortical circuitry and the therapist moderates these feedback loops to increase or decrease activation of neuromodulatory circuitry at various topographic regions of the brain. (See David McCormick's work for a clear and visual presentation on neuronal feedback loops - info.med.yale.edu/neurobio/mccormick/seminar/seminar.htm

Neurofeedback may require a re-evaluation of one's belief system, especially those who memorized the DSM-IV. But I doubt that the Nobel Prize has ever been awarded to any scientist who did not re-evaluate his or her belief system at one time during his or her lifetime.

David Kaiser (Jan 1998 version) -DK