What's New in Neurofeedback

• Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain
• Words Sharpen Visual Memory, Study Finds
• Experimental Drug Reverses Brain Injury in Rats
• Autism linked to difficult births
• Alcoholism-Linked Brain Damage Hits Women Sooner

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

• Review the evolution of www.eegspectrum.com since 1999 using the WayBack machine. Not all links work, but here are two early ones: 04/27/1999, 03/04/2000. EEG Spectrum, Inc., the precursor of ESII, went online in December 1995, a mere year after the web was born.

Well, about a month ago one of the regular bus driver was ill and a substitute bus driver accidently stopped in front of our house. Before we realized that it was the wrong bus, Madison had jumped on board and the bus pulled away. My wife caught the number of the bus and called the school to find out if this bus went to the elementary school across the street, and sure enough it did, and with less meandering, but just to be sure the transfer from strange bus to school went smoothly, my wife walked over to the school's back entrance and waited for my daughter to appear. After a moment my little girl did, of course -- it's a very safe town, a bus nearly for every child, something out of the 1950s, but what stayed with me this day is what my daughter said when she hopped off the strange vehicle.

"Mommy," she said, "there was a whole bunch of new friends on that bus."

What a way to be. Dropped into a group of strangers my seven-year-old daughter sees only friends, friends she simply doesn't yet know.

The late Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton published a seminal work on anxiety and fear that organizes the techniques and brain structures employed by adults to defend themselves from the strange people on our bus. It is a very clear and easy way of thinking about "defensive" clinical disorders, as they call them, placing the most common maladaptive defenses into a single hierarchy. Why this work is not well known in our field (though perhaps it is to some) may be partly on account of some bad titling. "The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System", Gray & McNaughton (2000). A good opening followed by a rarely diagnosed form of publisher's introversion -- a subtitle meant to scare potential buyers away, I think. "Septo-Hippocampal Systems" sounds like a how-to plumber's guide more than a cogent and well-organized tome about the neurophysiology of clinical disorders.

Here is their Functional Typology for Defense.

Here is a verbal description of the typology: There are the two types of threat: potential and actual. Depending upon the type of threat and whether it is detectable and avoidable, different brain structures are involved and different responses occur. I reordered the figure and the text below to mimic shrinking defensive distance, as they discussed in their book. I also raise detectability one level in the potential threat hierarchy, which they didn't do, and added some animal perspective to clarify the drama.

LEGEND: Type of Threat-- mental strategy; brain response; clinical disorder; brain structure involved

1. Undetectable avoidable potential threat-- Anticipate; Obsess; OCD; cingulate
2. Detectable avoidable potential threat-- Assess; anxiety; GAD; septal-hippocampus
3. Detectable unavoidable potential threat-- Conserve resources; depression; depression; NA/5HT neurotransmitters
4. Avoidable actual threat-- Flee; fear; phobia; amygdala
5. Avoidable or unavoidable actual-- Fight; anger; (rage and related disorders); medial hypothalamus
6. Unavoidable actual threat-- Freeze; panic; panic disorder, periaqueductal gray (PAG)

Another way is to convert generic terms to an animal perspective:

1. Animal senses danger (Undetectable avoidable threat)
2. Animal perceives distant strange object (Detectable avoidable threat)
3. Strange object approaches (Detectable unavoidable)
4. Object closes until it's within the immediate environment (avoidable threat)
5. Object closes to its likely striking range (avoidable or unavoidable)
6. Object closes to within animal's striking range (unavoidable)

I've been emailing Neil about an illogical aspect in this response order, at the end of the typology. The last two defenses are fight, followed by freeze. Why would we fight for a bit, and failing to keep the predator at bay, suddenly freeze? Given that threats -- a bigger fish, a larger crustracean, an unruly boss -- likely have longer reach than us, a larger zone of attack than its potential victim, why stop fighting when the enemy has finally drawn within range of our teeth and claws? Why not freeze earlier, before we started fighting? Maybe we freeze and the predator may pass us by.

But not everything is a predator. In fact few things are.

Neil's response to what I saw as a reversal of response logic has to do with leaping past the attack, not exposing one's flank when nose to nose, etc. My idea is that we freeze at the closest range because another functional system kicks in. This large object didn't kill you at the fight zone range... so maybe it isn't a predator at all but a potential mate. Many species are dimorphic, males significantly larger than females, so perhaps the last stage of surrender is not defensive at all. A functional typology of mating may ride side by side with defensive behaviors.

Neil summarized it all as follows:
Clinical symptoms such as phobia, fear, anxiety, panic, and OCD are of maladaptive intensity due to either (1) excessive sensitivity to specific eliciting stimuli -- excessive resources used in detection or (2) excessive activation of relevant brain structure -- excessive resources used in response. (PTSD is a special condition which simply predisposes us to comorbidities.)

Defensive assessment and response systems have to be able to override higher brain systems occasionally, but a clinical disorder is when one or more of these systems have performed the obligatory coup d'etat over conscious cortex but then has refused to step down from power. (Not unlike Alexander Haig saying I'm in charge here after Reagan's shooting.) Mental health is restoration of the republic (cortex).

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Complete Guide ...
by Chantal Sicile-Kira
Popular resource for parents and educators. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399530479

Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Proactive Intervention
by Jean L. Blosser, Roberta DePompei
Addresses unique needs of children with traumatic brain injury and the role of speech- language pathologists in recovery of skills. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0769300553

Therapeutic Exercises for Children
by Robert D. Friedberg, Barbara A. Friedberg, Rebecca J. Friedberg
Cognitive-Behavioral exercises --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568870655

Clinical MR Neuroimaging: Diffusion, Perfusion and Spectroscopy
by Jonathan H. Gillard, et al
Discusses technology and applications of clinical MRI machines. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521824575

A Bird's-Eye View of Life with ADD and ADHD: Advice from Young Survivors
by Chris A. Zeigler Dendy, Alex Zeigler
Survival guide to help kids/teens with attention deficit cope with life. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967991137

The Traumatic Brain Injury Handbook
by Camilia Anne Czubaj
Discusses different classifications of concussions, and cognitive and affective learning strategies and outcomes. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972123806

Psychic Trauma: Dynamics, Symptoms, and Treatment
by Ira Brenner
Clinical study of psychic trauma, focusing on two groups--early physical and sexual abuse and Holocaust survivors. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765703653

Somatoform Dissociation: Phenomena, Measurement, and Theoretical Issues
by Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis
Describes how trauma, somatoform dissociation and defense may work together. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393704602

The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook
by Edmund J. Bourne "
Clearly written workbook for phobia and related problems. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157224223X

Cognitive Neuropsychology Of Alzheimer's Disease
by Robin Morris
Theoretical and clinical issues, how it progresses over time and the characteristics of the prodromal phase. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198508301

Mapping Cognition in Time and Space
by Th. Muente, H.J. Heinze
Focuses on high temporal resolution neuroimaging techniques -- event-related brain potentials, magnetoencephalography --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9051994923

Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook
by Joyce H. Lowinson, et al
Textbook on biological, psychological, and social aspects of substance abuse. For clinicians. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0781734746

Methylphenidate-evoked changes in striatal dopamine : Correlational evidences suggests that methylphenidate decreases dopamine neurotransmission in ADHD. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15808987

The thalamus in patients with refractory medial temporal lobe epilepsy. : Anterior thalamic atrophy was found with medial temporal lobe epilepsy, with greater ipsilateral atrophy. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15809001

Affect-modulated startle in adults with childhood-onset depression : Participants with numerous depressive episodes display a blunted startle response across affective conditions. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15808286

Disturbance of dorsolateral prefrontal-hippocampal functional connectivity in schizophrenia. : During working memory, patients showed reduced activation of the right DLPFC and left cerebellum. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15809405

Left prefrontal rTMS impairs performance in affective go/no-go task. : A picture-based affective go/ no-go task was impaired by left prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation compared with right prefrontal or occipital stimulation. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15812319

Examining the diagnostic utility of EEG power measures in ADHD : Classification results support an independent diagnostic test for ADHD based on EEG power at rest. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15826843

Functional connectivity of dissociative responses in PTSD : Greater activation of neural networks involved in bodily state representation was seen in dissociated PTSD subjects than in controls. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15820708

Frontal lobes and the regulation of mental activity. : Discusses the implications of possibly specific or modular frontal lobe mechanisms compared to general regulatory mechanisms. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15831406

Neuropsychological correlates of EEGs in children with epilepsy. : Conclusions drawn from adult surgical studies cannot be generalized to pediatric patients. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15847849

Functional neuroanatomy of spatial attention in autism spectrum disorder. : Autism spectrum disorders exhibit a dysfunctional cerebello-frontal spatial attention system . www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15843105

EEG spectral changes in treatment-naive, actively drinking alcoholics. : Increased EEG power across theta to high beta bands distinguishes treatment-naive alcoholics from controls. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15834218

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. 
-- Edward Hirsch 

Frank Conroy, Director of the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, died recently at the age of 69, the same age as my father, also named Frank, when he died on Christmas Eve 2000. Before his death Conroy was interviewed about his life in Iowa City as director of the world's oldest and most prestiguous writing program. The Workshop has been around for 70 years and it has been a revolving door for famed literati since its inception. Writers such as John Irving, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, have taught or studied here, to namedrop a few. Frank came in to take the job during my final year of the program and he occasionally hung out with us at the Foxhead, playing pool and drinking beer or martinis or whatever the night's poison happened to be. He was closer to my poet friends than he was to me because, frankly, I was a kid. He was famous in literary circles for as long as I had been alive, having authored the most well-received bildungsroman (coming of age novel) since Catcher in the Rye. His novel was Stop-Time and it would eventually land him a cushy job at Iowa. We chatted occasionally but never man-to-man. In his eyes I was a boy and I could see that. Most of the writers had already lived before trekking out to the wilds of Iowa. They had spent time in Morocco or South Africa or South Texas, or were emerging from with their first divorce or second child or a Hollywood contract that went sour. Everyone was deep into their 30s or 40s and I was a boy, 22 years of age, writing well beyond my age and ability.

I tried to read Conroy's novel once but I couldn't get into it. "My father stopped living with us when I was three or four," it begins. I didn't want to approach that kind of grief. Perhaps I'll never read it, but I did come away with the title: Stop-Time. As a command or even a faint whisper of adolescent power, it's beautiful. Time should be stopped. Stop the world now, I want to get off. Time is our enemy and our only friend and one thing for sure, she is more beautiful than we deserve and not the same beauty we knew in our youth.

Okay, leaving beauty aside and getting back to reality, I had two career options when I left Iowa in 1988: Enter a doctoral program, or park cars at Comiskey Park. I never cared for the Chicago White Sox and I hoped to keep my mind alive for another year or two so I sought out the intellectual sanctuary of more graduate school. Graduate school is where you gradually realize you don't want to go to school any more, to quote a workshop alum (Irving). I applied to seven Psychology programs and was turned down by nearly all, which didn't surprise me as my sole preparation for a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology was an MFA in fiction writing, a BA in English, and a handful of classes in the discipline I planned to take on as my career. Worse still, my research statement was a discourse on beauty, a topic few scientists (save physicists and mathematicians) ever admit they are studying until their last decade of life and here I was tackling taboo on page one of my application. Fortunately UCLA didn't balk and gave me a home for six years, for which I will forever be grateful.

As we all realize, the laws of beauty are not subtle, just hard to pin down. Like obscenity, we may not be able to define it, but we can recognize it when we see it. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That is beauty, push is pull. Physics is nothing but beautiful ideas, one of the better ones being imaginary time. Stephen Hawking uses imaginary time to keep the Big Bang at bay, and I could use it to avoid loneliness (zero) at any scale, but the imaginary time metaphor I want to talk about is the one we all share, our sense of self, our real and imaginary senses of self.

We are born a fawn, a dove, a cloud. We fit into a universe more perfectly than we can ever imagine. Beauty is the normal state of life in this world; we know this because of "the perpetual effort of Nature to attain it" (Emerson). Beauty is alignment, attention, devotion to that which is more beautiful. This is rule one in a universe of very few rules. (Another rule seems to be 0 plus 0 is 2 for very large or unstable values of 0.) So the mind is real, the body imaginary, but like the hands of a clock we need each one to tell time. Beauty reveals the secret laws of Nature (Goethe). Beauty is the moment of transition, (Emerson). Beauty is when reality and the imaginary are interchangeable (Kaiser).

We are born real and slowly realize that we live in an imaginary world that we depend upon. Imaginary in the sense that it came before us, is not us, and yet is us and affects us and we affect it, if we so endeavor. We often lose balance between ourselves and others, our mind and body, the imaginary and the real, the consensual world and our private one. These can be times of learning or times of crisis -- it is your choice. Choice may be the third rule of life, and hopefully the last. Perhaps our brain is too big for us, too large for a primitive species. As a child this endless expanse can come easily or painfully or not at all. For some, infinities are granted, and freely; to others there is constant fear and doubt. Two worlds seem to collide in the same schoolyard: Seek and we shall find, for some, and seek and you will be lost, for others. This parrots RD Laing -- a person secure in her sense of self gratifies herself whereas an "ontologically insecure person is preoccupied with preserving (herself)."

Most of my life I've experience the former, but not always, and I've never skated through any part of life. Let me give you example of the latter. In 5th grade science class we had to complete a team project and two boys on the brink of becoming the class bullies grabbed me for their team. I already had a reputation of taming teachers so they thought it would be a breeze. Unfortunately my imaginary world was not as powerful as theirs.

I happily joined them and we set out to work on learning everything about the bathysphere, a small submersible submarine for one, collecting various facts of interest for a brief class presentation. But minutes before our talk, the teacher launched into a lecture and it was, strangely, all about the bathysphere. Here it was, all the work we had found on our own in the books and materials in class, and it was being spooled out of head by the only adult in the classroom. When it came time to give our talk, we sounded like simpletons, repeating everything he had just said. Instead of recognizing his error, the teacher leaned into us, criticized our laziness, our lack of diligence, and gave us all a D for our (lack of) work. I stood there dumbfounded as I listened to him, focused on his crossed and aggressive body language. I could sense the scolding, but was also above it as it happened. This was not meant for me, this was not my imaginary world. This was a glimpse into the world of the two boys beside me, a world I would never make for myself. School to my chums was a place without rules, or worst, a place where effort mattered not, rules were fixed, outcomes predetermined, and the dice were always rigged against you.

Their imaginary world was dead set on killing those boys. Who would create such a monster, except a child. It taught me that not everyone is living in my imaginary world and how we should all tread gently when we accidently step into an imaginary world someone else has drawn. As Ethel Thayer, the matriach in the 1980 film "On Golden Pond" explains it, "Sometimes Billy you have to look hard, you have to look really hard at a person to realize he's doing the best he can; he is just trying to find his way." Perhaps some of us create imaginary worlds that have no way, no exit, no freedom. Some are so much a trap they kill even the kindest souls who draw near them. So my last thought on beauty is a bittersweet one, when last century the imaginary overcame the real.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
       Anne Frank (1929-1945), Diary of a Young Girl