• What physicians say about EEG biofeedback - Compiled by Barry Belt [http://www.eegspectrum.com/affil/belt3.htm]

• New Way of Looking at Diseases of the Brain - [http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/102699hth-brain-symptoms.html]

In June 1998, two German physiologists determined that EEG signal complexity can foretell the occurrence of an upcoming seizure. Using nonlinear time series analysis, EEG data recorded intracranially minutes prior to a seizure, at the site of the seizure, was less complex than usual. EEG recorded well before such events, or from other sites during a seizure, were more randomly correlated with each other; i.e., more complex. In other words, too much synchrony can be bad for you.

An unequivocal "pre-ictal phase" of low-dimensionality appears to precede an epileptic seizure; with an average lead time of 11 minutes, and up to 25 minutes for some. Such results have great and obvious clinical implications: warn the patient before the seizure, or better yet, reverse the drop in complexity before it enters positive feedback space and by doing so preempt the seizure. This work was published in Physical Review Letters, essentially burying it from thousands of clinicians.

"It's a good, solid piece of work," says Steven Schiff, a neurosurgeon and epilepsy researcher at Children's Research Institute. "In the future, if we're going to develop technologies to have electrical control of seizures, we'll need techniques like this."

What is it? Is it the Mary Shelley in all of us that constantly seeks out ways to apply jumper cables to the cortex? Or is it simply coincidental that the first major application of electricity was to awaken the dead with electric shocks (Albini, 1790). Albeit with limited success. Why doesn't any of these experts search Medline for "EEG" and "conditioning". Did they sleep through the Intro Psych lecture on Pavlov and Skinner and shaping behaviors by external rewards?

A second study, published in Brain Research in 1999, failed to replicate the first study's findings to a significant extent. In particular, a loss of complexity was missing in low-magnesium and veratridine models of epileptiform activity. Apparently interictal-like activity is predictable only in some epilepsy models. But undeterred, the researchers are working towards an implantable monitor capable of providing a warning or automatically delivering drugs or electrical stimulation whenever neural synchrony creeps past a comfortable point.

The consequences of this work are great, but logical deductions made by the authors are even more astounding. Lehnertz and Elger concluded the following:

"It may be extremely beneficial for the treatment of patients suffering from epilepsy enabling specific pharmaco- or electrotherapeutic possibilities to prevent seizure generation."

DK

Further Reading

• Klaus Lehnertz & Christian E. Elger (1998). Can Epileptic Seizures be Predicted? Evidence from Nonlinear Time Series Analysis of Brain Electrical Activity Physical Review Letters, 80, 5019-5022.

• Lehnertz K (1999). Nonlinear time series analysis of intracranial EEG recordings in patients with epilepsy -- an overview. Int. J. Psychophysiol., 34, 45-52.

• Lehnertz K, Widman G, Andrzejak R, Arnhold J, Elger CE (1999). Is it possible to anticipate seizure onset by non-linear analysis of intracerebral EEG in human partial epilepsies ? Rev. Neurol. (Paris), 155 , 454­456.

• Widman G, Bingmann D, Lehnertz K, Elger CE (1999). Reduced signal complexity of intracellular recordings: a precursor for epileptiform activity? Brain Res, 836, 156-163.

• Weber B, Lehnertz K, Elger CE, Wieser HG (1998). Neuronal complexity loss in interictal EEG recorded with foramen ovale electrodes predicts side of primary epileptogenic area in temporal lobe epilepsy: a replication study. Epilepsia, 39, 922-7

• Elger CE, Lehnertz K (1998). Seizure prediction by non-linear time series analysis of brain electrical activity. Eur J Neurosci, 10(2), 786-9

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The Undiscovered Mind : How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation by John Horgan --What are the limits of self-knowledge? Is the brain more complex than its complexity would allow it to comprehend? This is not a new idea, but it is timely. Should we be dampening our enthusiasm for neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and AI -- for good reasons? You decide.

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Acute tolerance to methylphenidate in the treatment of ADHD in children.
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ADHD and psychotropic medication in very young children.
--Children aged 3 years or younger diagnosed with ADHD often exhibited comorbid psychiatric disorders, chronic health conditions, and injuries, calling into question diagnoses and psychotropic medication regimens.

Frontal brain damage and mood
--Lateral prefrontal damage disrupts mood regulation and drive whereas medial damage inhibits experience of mood changes.

Unravelling sleep problems in treated and untreated children with ADHD.
--Children with ADHD treated with stimulants were three times more likely to exhibit nightly severe" sleep problems than did untreated children with ADHD.

QEEG findings associated with chronic stimulant and cannabis abuse and ADHD
--Eyes closed QEEG data from 56 subjects with mixed substance use disorder were analyzed. Right temporal abnormalities were observed with stimulant dependence. Cannabis and stimulant dependence together produced more QEEG changes than either alone. QEEG abnormalities associated with chronic stimulant dependence were independent of ADHD status.

Factors associated with the development of substance use disorder in depressed adolescents.
--The risk for substance use disorders was high in both depressed and normal adolescentss (34.6% depressed group, 24.2% controls) across a 7-year study. Depressed adolescents had earlier onset than controls and those with anxiety traits and active hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (when the system was normally quiescent) were at greatest risk. Identification of other risk factors should be helpful in developing more effective treatment and prevention programs.

Alpha EEG coherence, an index of arousal
--Fronto-frontal and fronto-occipital coherence values in the alpha frequency band are useful indexes of brain arousal states.

Treating substance abuse with comorbid psychiatric disorders.
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Psychopharmacology of pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder.
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New Neurofeedback Clinicians / New Offices

Donna RB Rogers, Ph.D.
Green Valley Psychiatric Association
2920 N. Green Valley Parkway, Suite 413
Henderson, NV 89014
(702) 454-0201; Fax -1245

Lisa Enneis, MA, MFT
24151 Big Timber St
Lake Forest, CA 92630
(714) 375-0568
lisaennt@aol.com

Center for Attention Deficit and Learning Disorders
Sanford J. Silverman, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist
10505 N. 69th St, Suite 1100B
Scottsdale, AZ 85253
(480) 314-4299; Fax-4994
info@centerforadd-az.com

We may be in flagrant violation of patent laws...

...had one company had its way in the early 90s. (And I'm not refering to Microsoft -- they had their way.)

In 1993, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Compton New Media a patent for its multimedia system. This patent protected their process of retrieving sound, images and text via a software menuing system. According to their lawyers, in the process of creating an encyclopedia on CD-ROM, Compton invented multimedia itself. "Any multimedia work which contains textual and graphical information relating to each other and a menu driven, computer controlled research and retrieval system which allows the user to step through interrelated information using text or graphics as a starting point" became their intellectual property. Hypertext, a term invented in 1965, was no longer public domain. The Web (when it came into existence the following year) would be a company asset. Perhaps certain sentence structures were now under corporate control.

(For a history of hypertext pre-dating Compton by 45 years, see http://www.useit.com/alertbox/history.html

The existence of Compton's patent effectively inserted a new level of intellectual property rights which all multimedia works infringed upon. Compton planned to charge a small, tiny, insignificant royalty (around 1.25%) on everyone else's CD-ROM products. Needless to say, the patent was overturned. Within months.

The US Patent & Trademark office is overworked and relies very heavily on antiquated records and an inventor's knowledge and perspective to determine whether an invention is actually that, a novel mixing of earth and brain. The founders of EEG biofeedback did not patent their work, possibly because they were scientists and understood the value of a free flow of information. But another generation of investigators now populate the field.

Ever hear of the urban myth about a Connecticut inventor who patented the wheel. Guess what? It's U.S. Patent number 5,707,114, granted in 1998. Here are some claims from the patent summary:

Claims

1. A spoked wheel comprising: 

an annular rim having an inner diameter; 

a central hub; 

a plurality of spokes running between the rim and hub,

Here's one solution for discriminating patentable processes from public knowledge. Bring in five experts of a field to review each new application. In order to obtain a patent, at least four of the five experts must agree that this invention is utterly nonsense and can't possibly work the way the claimant say it does. If two of the five experts or more fully understand the logic behind the invention, it falls under the legal term "inevitable discovery" meaning that the process was the logical consequence of pursuing a normal inquiry; it probably exists in a a few dozen minds around the country, and prototypes may already be gathering dust in university basements around the country.

We rest atop the shoulders of giants who themselves stood on the shoulders of titans. There is nothing new under the sun. Yet still invention goes on. The question is, where do we demarcate the contributions of an individual from the contributions of a civilization or a community?