What's New in Neurofeedback

• Brain creates 'new' nerve cells
• Brain 'cannabis' Parkinson's hope
• New brain cells love to learn
• The five biggest neuroscience developments of the year
• How does human memory work?
• 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

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

(1 occasionally maladaptive such as depressed mental set, obsessions; 2 not due to fatigue, injury; 3 includes behavioral tendencies to respond that might not have been tested; 4 excludes maturation, disease, instinct)

Habituation is the simplest form of learning; a response to repeated stimulus declines across repetitions which is not due to fatigue (e.g., a response will reoccur if stimulus is changed). It is non-associative learning as it involves only one stimulus. Associative learning involves associating one stimulus with another.

Learn to associate two events are usually classified into two approaches, Classical Conditioning -- associate two stimuli, where one acts as a signal for the other; and operant Conditioning, being able to associate a behavior in a setting with its consequences. Classical Conditioning (or Pavlovian conditioning) was pioneered by Ivan Pavlov who needed saliva to study early digestive processes and would inject meat powder into a dog’s mouth. He noticed how after a few injections, just presenting the syringe to the dog, or just his footsteps approaching the animal would start the salivation. From this observation grew the fully realized field of Classical Conditioning in which an Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) which automatically triggers a response (e.g.,food in mouth) has a physiological (hard-wired) association called the unconditioned Response (UCR). It is an unlearned automatic response to unconditioned stimulus. You salivate when food is in your mouth automatically. Now the interesting point is not the physiology, but the psychology of it all. How we learn to associate another stimulus with the UCS. The Conditioned Stimulus (CS) -- a neutral stimulus such as a bell sounding -- becomes associated with UCS through repeated pairings. With enough pairings, the CS triggers (is conditioned) response a Conditioned Response (CR), nearly the automatic response but usually a bit weaker (e.g., less salivation). But it is learned, slightly weaker (a bit less salivation in our example)

It was once thought that anything could be used as a signal for any other stimulus and that temporal Contiguity was thought to be sufficient, the CS simply needs to occur immediately prior to UCS for conditioning to take place. Through research we discovered that temporal Contiguity is Not Enough. There must be Contingency: The CS must reliably predict the occurrence of the UCS (Rescorla, 1966) and more importantly, Informativeness: The CS must provide new information for predicting the occurrence of the UCS. If first I train my cat to come running for food when I turn on the can-opener (nearly instinctual to them), and then also sound of the refrigerator door opening at the same time in later training sessions, my cat will never use the sound of the door opening as a signal because she already has a perfect signal. Only if I untrain the can-opener sound by not providing food when it’s run alone and provide food after opening the fridge, only then will the fridge door sound become a signal. In classical conditioning terms, in the earlier scenario, the can-opener blocked the fridge door conditioning.

Another initial idea that didn’t hold in classical conditioning was equipotentiality: any two stimuli could be associated through conditioning. Not true, the taste and smell of our food is associated with sickness, not the sounds of the restaurants or our dining companion.

Turning to Operant Conditioning, this field of study began with the Law of Effect by Thorndike which briefly put says that Rewarded behavior is repeated. That’s it. Through trial-and-error learning, an animal or person learns what behavior will be rewarded in a setting or situation and what will not. We call this field Operant Conditioning nowadays due to the contributions of B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) who built on Thorndike’s Law of Effect and among other things discovered schedules of reinforcement which built Las Vegas in the desert, among other things.

Operant Behavior is called such because this form of conditioning involves voluntary behaviors, not involuntary ones. The person or animals operates [acts] on environment and by linking behavior with its consequences, a behavioral response to a setting or situation is optimized. A reinforcer using Skinner’s definition is any event that follows behavior AND strengthens it. Skinner invented the Operant Chamber (called a "Skinner Box") and I believe he partly raised his daughter for a spell in a modified version. I am raising my kids in one, or they are raising me, but in my case the Skinner box is two stories with a basement and attic. In Skinner’s chamber, there was a bar that an animal can press to obtain a food reinforcer and the frequency of responses were recorded along with whatever parameter was manipulated such as intervals or ratio of responses. It was a dissertation generated extraordinaire, and even better from some of the students’ perspectives, Skinner detested statistical analysis; he thought such summaries often washed out the important findings.

There are two forms of Reinforcers: primary Reinforcer, those items that serve to satisfy a biological need such as food, water, warmth, and Red Sox games. And secondary reinforcers, or conditioned reinforcers, which gain its reinforcing power through association with primary reinforcer, such as social approval from loved ones and money (i.e., social approval from strangers)

In terms of schedules of reinforcement, you can reward after every behavior you are training for or only occasionally after these behaviors are generated. The former is continuous Reinforcement -- reinforcing the desired response each time it occurs -- and although learning occurs rapidly, extinction occurs just as rapidly, which is why the world runs on Partial Reinforcement schedules, reinforcing a response only part of the time. Sure, the learning may occur more slowly, but there is more resistance to extinction, meaning that when the reward is pulled, the behaviors may continue for awhile.

There are four general schedules of reinforcement: Fixed Ratio (FR) in which a behavior is reinforced only after behavior occurs a specified number of times. So the faster you respond, the more rewards you get! There can be an number of ratios, e.g., mean half of the trials are reinforced, one-third, one-hundredth.

The FR results in a very high rate of responding. Someone paid by the word is using FR. One could also use the schedule that built Vegas (and all gambling establishments), the variable Ratio (VR), in which a behavior is reinforced after an unpredictable number of times, but will average to some rate like FR. So one average one-third of the trials are reinforced, but it may be the 1st trial, 3rd trial, and 9th trial to produce 3 rewards across 9 behavior elicitations. The VR is prominent in gambling, fishing, dating, and much of life, and it is the hardest schedule when it comes to extinguishing behavior once reward has stopped because of its unpredictability. VR is at work when we buy a lottery ticket. We are guaranteed to win, but not every time; we might have to buy 2 million tickets or more before we get a lucky scratch.

The ratio schedules give control of the reward to the animal or person. The more they do, the more they are rewarded. Control is given to the reward administrator when interval schedules are used. With a Fixed Interval (FI), behavior is reinforced only after a specified time has elapsed. This produces in the person or animal increasing amounts of the behavior when the time for reward window of opportunity or time-window draws near. For instance, if I tell my daughter I will pay her $1 if her room is clean when I check it and I always check it on Saturdays (a fixed interval of 7 days), she will clean her room when? Friday night, of course. In the Variable Interval (VI), behavior is reinforced at unpredictable time intervals like pop quizzes in school or watching the night sky during a meteor storm and seeing a shooting star. This produces slow, steady responding. If I check my daughter’s room randomly, she’ll clean her room but not as often (or predictably) as with a FI, and neither as often than if I use an FR or VR. I can imagine an FR at 1/3rd and she needs $10 for a movie, so she messes up her room, cleans it, messes it, cleans it, etc., as quickly as she can.

Most behaviors are so complex that they will not spring spontaneously from an animal or person’s natural repertoire. Throwing a 75 mile curve ball that cross home plate in baseball doesn’t just happen spontaneously, the individual’s behavior must be shaped. Shaping refers to rewarding successive approximations to goal behavior. So throwing a baseball with spin, then with the proper spin, then with enough velocity, then near the plate, then finally over the plate. Each stage is rewarded and takes months to years to shape to a final behavior rewarded with a swing and miss by the batter.

Where there is reinforcement, there is also punishment. Withholding reward in certain contexts is punishment, as my kids inform me when one gets a treat and the others do not. Punishment is any aversive event that decreases the behavior that it follows. There are two forms of reinforcement and two forms of punishment. Positive reinforcement, Negative reinforcement, Positive punishment, Negative punishment. Sounds confusin, even oxymoronic --negative reinforcement, positive punishment, but the positive and negative refers to presenting a stimulus (positive) or withdrawing a stimulus (negative). A treat is positive reinforcement, stopping your sister’s crying is negative reinforcement (removing an aversive stimulus). Likewise, walking into a door while chatting and distracted is positive punishment (presenting an aversive stimulus) and taking away the TV remote control or taking away dessert is negative punishment (removing an appetitive or good stimulus).

The problems with punishment is mostly that the punished behavior is not forgotten, it's merely suppressed, usually around the punisher, and the behavior may return when punishment is removed. Physical punishment causes increased aggression and fear and may generalize to undesirable behaviors, e.g., fear of school. Punishment does not necessarily guide a person toward desired behavior: Rreinforcement tells us what to do, punishment tells us merely what not to do. So all in all punishment most teaches us how to avoid it

Operant and Classical Conditioning cannot explain a number of phenomena such as latent Learning -- learning without reinforcement (Tolman & Honzig, 1930), Observational Learning -- learning without behaving or being reinforced directly (Bandura, 1977), Overjustification -- when rewards decrease the frequency of behavior (such as paying someone to help you who initially offered the help for free), and the death knell of behavioristic principles in addressing all phenomena was language Acquisition. Chomsky’s critique of Skinner marked the end of behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology. Association is insufficient to explain language learning. We acquire rules of language, not instances, due to genetic endowment for language, according to Chomsky. Mere associations between words cannot explain why a child says "I goed to the store" or "he bringed the candy."

The end of behaviorism’s dominance led directly to the cognitive revolution in Psychology. By George, people actually do possess a mind.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

The Johns Hopkins Atlas of Digital EEG
by GL Krauss and RS Fisher
Tutorial on how to read digital EEG, including a collection of MRI images showing positions of standard EEG electrodes. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801883725/eegspectrum

Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read
by Howlin
How to teach social brain skills to those less inclined. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470093226/eegspectrum

Medtronic Forum for Neuroscience and Neuro-Technology 2005
by Bob van Hilten (Editor), Bart Nuttin (Editor)
Newest neurotechnology advances are described. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0: 3540327/eegspectrum

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Communication
by Vesna Mildner
One of the most exciting applications for neuroimaging is in the field of human communication - disorders and normal development. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805854363/eegspectrum

Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition
by Paul Thagard
Explains how emotions influence thought. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/026220164X/eegspectrum

Addiction and Change
by Carlo C. DiClemente
Discusses competing theories, data, and arguments on addiction treatments. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593853440/eegspectrum

Mapping brain structure in attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder : Structural brain abnormalities associated with ADHD were localized to attention and executive systems. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17291727

Cortical inhibition and excitation in abstinent cocaine-dependent patients : Cocaine users show an elevated resting motor threshold and increased intracortical facilitation. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17314673

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Biofeedback for Fibromyalgia. : A pilot study with promising results of using HRV biofeedback for fibromyalgia. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17219062

Greater Cortical Gray Matter Density in Lithium-Treated Bipolar patients. : Gray matter density was greater in treated bipolar patients, notably in cingulate and paralimbic cortex. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17240360

Lifetime Prevalence of Learning Disability Among US Children. : Half of all learning disability occur in children with special health care needs. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17272589

Nonlinear analysis in EEG biofeedback treatment of intractable epilepsy : Complexity and approximate entropy of EEG increase after a month of SMR uptraining and theta downtraining in 5 epileptics. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17281256

Classification of Schizophrenia and Depression by EEG with ANNs. : Artificial neural networks were used to effectively distinguish clinical disorders based on their EEGs. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17282791

Frontal brain asymmetry measures in diagnosis of depression. : Frontal EEGs in 21 individuals revealed that current or previous incidence of depressive disorders tend to have an extreme asymmetry ratio. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=17282020

We divvied up social control on much of this continent to three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. The brain is similarly divided in three governing bodies, at least in terms of organizational rhythms. Frontal theta, sensorimotor, posterior dominant. Judicial, executive, legislative. Why rhythms instead of constant chatter? See it once, maybe it’s real or maybe it’s imaginary, hallucinatory, false. See it twice, likely real, unlikely false. Witness it three times, more and more real with each repetition. Rhythms stabilize the processors so they are unified in time and energy when new information comes in.

Too few people outside of neuroscience and neurotherapy who grasp the importance of rhythmicity and feedback loops in the brain. The sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) was identified in cats when the animals were forced to wait before responding to a reward. Each cat awaited a signal -- a light above a lever -- and stood quietly until the light went on. When it did go on, the animal transformed ongoing imagined movement in its head into external motor movement. You might say the sensorimotor rhythm was present whenever a cat imagined moving without moving. My shorthand for SMR is the motor quiescence rhythm, present whenever the motor pathway is inhibited. Likewise, alpha activity is the sensory quiescence rhythm, and frontal theta the executive quiescence rhythm -- all this inhibition going on. The importance of inhibition to brain function, however, cannot be understated. Neurosurgeon Joseph Bogen used to summarize brain function for non-neuroscientists with the following koan:

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

If you grasp this, you grasp why neurotherapy is so powerful. Neurotherapy provides a feedback loop under volitional control. Volition is the most important source of action we have. Once something falls under volitional control, it can be reorganized to our benefit including the brain. In human EEG we primarily alter the rhythms associated with the extensive thalamocortical circuitry of the brain, bringing one of the major sources of inhibition to a tangibility never before known. With the proper tools an individual may adjust the amount of inhibition (or shared inhibition) for any accessible regions of the brain. Not bad. The mind can finally watch and control the brain.

The Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM) defines mental disorders by symptoms, age at onset, predisposing factors, and similar factors. Neurophysiological and neuroanatomical substrates of disorders are overlooked. This means that disorders of similar cortical dysfunction are delineated from each other, even segregated into different axes. However pharmacology shows us that when a treatment is developed to remedy a specific neurotransmitter action, a whole host of DSM conditions are impacted. For instance, Prozac has been found to be effective in treating bulimia, anorexia nervosa, childhood depression, and fibromyalgia. Depakote may be effective in treating migraines, anxiety, and complex partial seizures, but what if the term neurofeedback appeared in its place? Would there be any different reaction from skeptics? Do we believe molecules control the brain more than the mind?

Grant applications often 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. (The study was eventually published despite NIDA’s refusal to fund it; Scott, Kaiser, Othmer, & Sideroff, 2005.) Fifty years of research has shown neuroanatomical commonalities among all behavioral and chemical addictions (e.g., Olds, 1955; Sari, Bell, & Zhou, 2006); but because the DSM-IV describes various addictions on different pages, they are often treated as separate and unrelated entities.

Neurofeedback requires a re-evaluation of the power of the mind to affect the brain, which is not anything new to those of the younger generations. But for those who memorized the DSM and think of the brain as the controller or apart from the mind in some ethereal way, then such mental dominance of the hardware is hard to grasp. But the mind inhabits the brain, it is a mate created by the reaction to volition, a higher representation of mind, solidified to so where the infinities interact. We have only to embrace the brain fully to be always new again.

-DK

References