What's New in Neurofeedback

• Experiment Gives Illusion of That Shrinking Feeling
• Coffee Perks Up Short-Term Memory
• Ignoring useless information aids memory: study
• Memory loss link to early stress
• Study: Adept Liars' Brains Are Built Differently

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

"Honored Members of the Academy! You do me honor by inviting me to give your Academy an account of the life I formerly led as an ape." - Franza Kafka (1919)

In "A Report for the Academy" by Franz Kafka a chimpanzee escapes captivity by imitating his captors. Sixty years later Herbert S. Terrace, professor of psychology at Columbia University, alluded to this work in his examination of nonhuman primate cognition, a critique of ape sign language research that undermined the field's credibility for decades to come. Terrace had entered the fray with the lofty or naive goal of training apes in sign language so they could, in part, encompany him into the bush and translate vocalizations of wild apes but by the end of his investigation he was of a different mind and believed that great apes possessed no true linguistic ability. Apes may have capacity for reference (semantics), assigning a symbolic label to an object or category, but no competence for lawful and hierarchical relation between symbols (syntax). He was converted to the theory of discontinuity, how language is unique to humans; and like many converts shortcomings associated with his new stance were overlooked. More to the point he failed to realize what he had actually discovered.

The earliest experiment in behavioral science was the Forbidden Experiment, an inquiry into innate human behavior, first attempted in ancient Egypt. King Psammetichus in the 7th century BCE aspired to prove that Egyptians were Earth's oldest race of men with a remarkably modern approach, both empirical and linguistic. Two newborns were removed from their mother and charged to a shepherd who was instructed not to speak in their presence. The reasoning was that when these poor children finally would utter a word, it had to be innate, spontaneously combusted from the original human mind. Legend has it that the children first said "becos", the term for bread from a neighboring city-state. Perhaps the shepherd could not grasp the no-speaking-at-all rule and although he did not speak Egyptian he spoke his native tongue in their presence. That the first behavioral science experiment was marred by poor methodological implementation is relevant to the Terrace Effect.

The Forbidden Experiment was next attempted in 1211 by Frederick II of Prussia. Dozens of children were reared in linguistic isolation so the Emperor could hear the language of God. But he never did hear such music as his experiment failed when every children died. Feral children, infants or children abandoned to the elements who miraculously survive and are returned to civilization, are nature's attempt at the Forbidden Experiment. As it turns out prolonged social deprivation during childhood inevitably results in little language competence in the adult.

Apes and feral children have been studied closely for centuries. In 1916 a female orang-utan was taught to vocalize papa, and cup and the sound "th" but nothing more. Similar vocal limitation was found for the chimpanzee. Ape vocal production always encounters the same snag: the human throat evolved to produce about 60 articulated sounds, the simian throat but a handful. However all primates make well use of their hands so language production soon migrated from mouth to hand. Washoe, a wild-born female chimpanzee, acquired about 100 signs in American Sign Language during three years of training, but her combination into meaningful phrases was rare and it is the combination question which is critical. Here is where the line between man and beast has been drawn. Humans possess syntax, animals do not. Although many animals exhibit degrees of symbolic communication from bee waggle dance to vervet monkey warning cries, combining symbols in an orderly relationship, ahh, there's the rub… Although great apes demonstrate cognitive achievements of toddlers (symbolic subperiod of the preoperational phase), handling strict heirarchically-organized relational systems was beyond them.

Or was it?

Research is always concrete implementation of an abstraction, enactment of an idea, but how does one enact an idea in psychology without conflating it with half a dozen other possible mechanisms. Confounds drive data as well as predicted mechanism and we can be easily seduced by our own ingenuity, conceptual elegance, or approach, so it is necessary but not always easy to determine that what we intended to cause an effect caused it, and not something else. If we misunderstand what we actually do, we may fall prey to a Terrace Effect.

Terrace and his students trained a common chimpanzee named Nim in American Sign Language. After reviewing training videotapes Terrace concluded that Nim was merely mimicking trainer signs, with no evidence of syntactical competence. His conclusion raised serious questions about previous published research and funding dried up for all ape language experiments. The journals Science and Nature did not publish on the topic for another 20 years.

Most ape language researchers disagreed with his conclusions. Nim, they claimed, was not properly instructed. He was trained by too many teachers (70), many with limited sign language competence; instruction was by rote, monotonous, and centered around simple tasks or requests. Did Terrace ever attempt to understand anything more about what Nim had to say? The training was unidirection, trainer to chimp, but conversation is bidirectional, it requires rapport, appreciation for the mind you are attempting to communicate with. Nim failed to acquire a sophisticated communication system, Terrace's critics claimed, because no such system was offered. It would be like criticizing a child for failing to learn how to play the piano when only showed a photograph of the instrument. Nim's opinions and insights of his own were never explored; he was never allowed to play his own music. Later research using a conversational approach revealed that pygmy chimps, a close relative of the common chimp, possess syntactical abilities and surprisingly can understand spoken English.

So what is a Terrace Effect?

A Terrace Effect is drawing an incorrect conclusion from data, one based on intention and not fact. Terrace's research was important but he failed to know what he had researched. What did Herb Terrace do? Did he investigate syntactical competence in a great ape? No, not at all. Instead he had replicated the Forbidden Experiment: he socially deprived a hominoid and tested him for innate language ability. What did he find out? That the specifics of a language are to be learned, which we know; and if you ignore someone's potential you are not doing them any favors.

So what does ape language research hold for the field of neurotherapy? What is the lesson here? In neurofeedback we provide physical therapy for the brain. We exercise specific actions of the brain by attaching electrodes and setting reward parameters, but have we always accomplished what we set out to do? Before we presume success in implementation, and analyze results based on this assumption, we should evaluate what was learned by the client and how. Could sitting still for half an hour produce the same result? Could attention by the therapist, or participating in a technological advance or charismatic setting flavor the outcome? We must separate confound from mechanism, and determine how exactly a brain adjusts its behavior. Evaluate assumptions, implementations, and conclusions, else we may succumb to a Terrace Effect and not recognize what we have done.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Fatigue as a Window to the Brain (Issues in Clinical and Cognitive Neuropsychology)
by John DeLuca (Editor)
History, epidemiology, assessment and interpretation of fatigue --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262042274/eegspectrum

Acceptance and Mindfulness-Based Approaches to Anxiety
by Susan M. Orsillo, Lizabeth Roemer (Eds)
Definitions of acceptance and (Eastern tradition) mindfulness, placed in the context of more established therapies. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387259880/eegspectrum

Psychiatry For Neurologists
by Dilip V. Jeste, Joseph H. Friedman (Eds)
Most recent volume in Current Clinical Neurology series. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1588294838/eegspectrum

Framing ADHD Children: A Critical Examination of the History, Discourse...
by Adam Rafalovich
Examines the three social worlds of ADHD: home, classroom, and clinic. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/073910747X/eegspectrum

Traumatic Brain Injury: Associated Speech, Language, and Swallowing Disorders
by Kim Lourinia
Case studies illustrate assessment and treatment of communicative and swallowing disorders in adults and children. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0769300170/eegspectrum

21st Century Complete Medical Guide to Panic Disorder..
by PM Medical Health News
CD-ROM with the a collection of government information and documents on the subject of panic disorder and anxiety. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592488692/eegspectrum

Electroencephalography: Basic Principles, Clinical Applications, and Related Fields
by Ernst Niedermeyer, Fernando Lopes Da Silva
The one and only classic textbook on EEG. An incredible resource. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0781751268/eegspectrum

Clinical Neurophysiology at the Beginning of the 21st Century
by Intl Congress
Global view of the role of clinical neurophysiology. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444504990/eegspectrum

The Neurology of Autism
by Mary Coleman
Neurological indicators of autism are reviewed including abnormal cranial circumference, epilepsy, muscle tone, and mutism. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195182227/eegspectrum

EEG biofeedback training on-children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. : Reports an effectiveness for EEG biofeedback training above 90% after 40 sessions of EEG biofeedback training for ADHD children (6 years or older). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16201300

Nonstimulant therapies for ADHD in children and adults. : Nonstimulant therapies for ADHD include psychosocial therapies such as behavioral mod, cognitive behavioral therapy, atomoxetine (Strattera), Wellbutrin, the alpha-2 agonists guanfacine (Tenex) and clonidine as well as tricylics. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16222911

Lower frequency variability in alpha activity among patients with epilepsy. : Peak alpha frequency variability is lower in epilepsy, perhaps due in part to antiepileptic drugs. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16221562

Transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression in neurologic disorders. : Depression is not adequately treated in many neurologic patients, but rTMS treatment for depression in Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease is promising. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16216159

Can EEG asymmetry patterns predict future development of anxiety and depression? : Greater relative EEG activity in right anterior sites report greater trait anxiety one year later. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16223557

Event-Related Oscillations in Offspring of Alcoholics : Decreased response in delta, theta, and alpha1 oscillations suggests cognitive and neural disinhibition and may mark development of alcoholism or other disinhibitory disorders. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16213472

Is the hypodopaminergic hypothesis plausible as neural bases of ADHD? : The heterogeneity of the ADHD does not appear to be consistent with a hypofunctioning dopamine model. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16209763

Dynamics of the EEG slow-wave synchronization during sleep. : Different roles for each sleep stage and REM/NREM cycle were observed in terms of EEG synchronization. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16253553

Cognitive restructuring and EEG in major depression. : Initial use of EEG frontal asymmetry as an indicator for mood improvement following cognitive restructuring. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16242533

Therapeutic Effects of Individualized Alpha TMS. : Alpha TMS produced a 30 % reduction in negative symptoms in schizophrenics, better than other TMS techniques; and clinical improvements correlated with increases in frontal alpha amplitude. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16254067

Breakdown of cortical effective connectivity during sleep. : Evalautes the lost of cortical functional connectivity during sleep, and presumes this reflects the loss of consciousness of sleep. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16195466

rTMS as add-on antidepressant treatment. : A pilot study failed to confirm antidepressant effects of left frontal high-frequency rTMS. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16195088

In the March 23, 2005 issue of San Antonio Express-News, a prominent professor of neurology is quoted as saying: "At this point, there's no evidence to show that neurofeedback retrains someone's brain to do something better," said

A neurology professor ignores 300 published papers, and many of the first papers answered the issue in question. Overly skeptical, or sloppy scholarship. Sterman's research addressed the placebo effect by using an ABA design and by measuring change in sleep spindle density, a physiological index not influenced by placebo (using anyone's model); and in his earliest study the subjects who improved were cats, and it was a double-blind unlike any other as neither scientist nor mammal expected SMR training to be an anticonvulsant. How will this learned professor respond when it is eventually shown that SMR training increases GABAergic synapse density in the motor nuclei of the thalamus and elsewhere? A scientist has only his or her reputation for truth.

Another prominent neurology professor, this one from Harvard, is quoted in Clinical EEG in 2000 as saying that "EBT (EEG biofeedback therapy) should play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy it would be universally accepted and widely used."

Two neurology professors with opposite opinions. If experts cannot agree, by definition can both really be experts? This difference of highly educated minds begs the question: Why hasn't NIH and other government agencies funded the appropriate studies? Because pharmaceuticals are easy to study, learning not so easy. It's as simple as that. Learning is the most powerful force in the universe, and the brain is the most complex mystery in nature, so it stands to reason that understanding its behavior will take time and money and patience, but we shouldn't be stubbornly critical of the first people making this attempt, and of the first few effective paths for change. Eventually much of therapy will be brain-behavior based, as learning is far more specific that drugs, nonspecific agents of change currently in power.

To help your learning, the best place for free media articles is http://www.findarticles.com and the best for free abstracts (and occasionally papers) is still PubMed (or Medline) Here are two links for neurotherapy: http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?qt=EEG+biofeedback http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Search&term=EEG+biofeedback -end