What's New in Neurofeedback
A Monthly Summary of News and Events

Vol. 9 No. 11 - November 2006

This newsletter is sponsored by EEG Spectrum Intl Inc,
a leader in providing clinical service and training
professionals. Past issues available at
http://start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/
To subscribe or cancel, see newsletter's end.
Opinions related in this newsletter reflect
author's only. Copyright (C) 2007 by EEG Spectrum
Intl, Inc. or David Kaiser. All rights reserved.
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Announcements - News
In the Spotlight - Blinding the Brain
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - Heights of Rivers
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Announcements

* Time past, time future intricately connected in brain
* Sea Slug Offers Clues to Human Brain Disorders
* Poor lung function tied to higher stroke risk
* As Minds Age, What's Next? Brain Calisthenics
* Drink 'cuts brain injury damage'

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

Blinding the Brain

My three year old toddler likes to imitate Red
Skelton. He looks straight at you; then after a
moment he cuts his right eye inward until it seems
to almost vanish behind his nose, freaking you out.
Of course he doesn't have a clue who Red Skelton is,
nor do any of my 20-something students; he simply
has a lazy eye and it needs to be treated and this
is usually done by placing a patch over the good
eye, blinding it so that the weaker eye can
strengthen in its absence. As we all know, sometimes
you have to hold back the strong in order for the
weak to show their ability. In terms of brain
therapy, why not blind one of the brains on
occasion?

For more than a hundred years we've known that
certain brain functions are performed solely within
one hemisphere and not the other (e.g., Broca, 1865;
Coslett, 2007). Speech and metaphor, mathematical
calculation and visual imagery, perception of
phonemes and perception of emotions, are all
strongly lateralized. Facial recognition, for
instance, is localized to the right posterior
hemisphere in most individuals and damage to the
left posterior cortex has little effect on this
function. Left hemisphere structures alone appear to
mediate appetitive drives and positive emotions
whereas right brain structures underlie aversive
states and negative emotions such as disgust
(Davidson, 1998; Robinson & Downhill, 1995).
Occasionally the two modes of processing are
complementary, but often each hemisphere feud like
siblings, interfering with the other's behavior. In
split brain patient research it is not uncommon to
obtain a response from a hemisphere poorly equipped
for a task, even when the other hemisphere is better
organized to handle such stimuli such as phoneme
identification. The same is true for normal (brain
intact) individuals (e.g., Zaidel, 1995), which
means that competition is the rule inside the head
as well as out.

That brain function reflects incompatible modes of
ideation in constant competition with each other has
powerful implications for neurotherapy.
Neurofeedback may be used to restore balance to
hemispheric processing and initiate a reintegration
of the two sides of the brain, or it may be used to
differentiate hemispheric function when that is
called for. Periodically activating one hemisphere
and not the other can allocate attention to
underused faculties and even help establish
left-sided dominance when lacking. Unihemispheric
activation on its own, regardless of induction
technique, may prove to be effective for a wide
range of psychopathologies. In 1970 Eran Zaidel
developed the z-lens, contact lenses with darkened
visual fields, either the left or right half.
(Z-lens were recently featured on the CBS show "3
Lbs".) His research focused on split-brain patients
and hemispheric specialization, and not clinical
application directly, but Schiffer (1997) revived
z-lens for therapy. He placed masking tape over the
left (LVF) or right visual fields (RVF) of safety
glasses and he found that most patients reported
more anxiety while wearing the z-glasses (though he
did not call the apparatus by this name). Depressed
patients reported more anxiety with LVF glasses
(RVF-blocked/RH activating) and PTSD patients had
more anxiety wearing RVF glasses.

In terms of neurotherapy, preferential activation or
inhibition of a single hemisphere may augment the
therapeutic effect of EEG training. Unihemispheric
activation or inhibition could be readily attained
with unilateral (one-sided) photic stimulation by
simply instructing individuals to look far to the
right or left (even through closed eyelids), thereby
restricting stimulation to one visual field and one
hemisphere. Or EEG biofeedback could be lateralized
by wearing z-glasses during part of a session, or by
simply instructing a client to focus to the left or
right of the field of stimulation (i.e., left or
right edge of the PC monitor). I made my own pair of
z-glasses last year and watched a movie in a theatre
so adorned. Although my occluded right brain should
have been able to "watch the movie" via signals
through my intact corpus callosum (minimizing the
effect of stimulus lateralization), it didn't.
Wearing the unusual glasses changed the experience
(and not just socially!). It made the film's story
hollow, with little emotional traction, until I took
the glasses off and let my right brain share in the
content stream directly. Apparently the
200-million-fiber "ether cable" between my
hemispheres down-sampled the content so that my
right brain caught only a rendering of the
information and not the information itself. In other
words callosal transfer is no substitute for direct
input via the senses. So the z-glasses work.

I also wore an ear plug in my left ear while
watching the film. Unilateral acoustic stimulation
is another way to facilitate unihemispheric
activation. Unlike vision, our auditory system is
not perfectly crossed and each ear sends information
to each hemisphere. Fortunately, in this context,
the ipsilateral (same side) pathway is weak so
plugging the contralateral ear should greatly
diminish auditory contributions to this hemisphere.
Dichotic ear presentations using stereo headphones
with reward sent into the contralateral ear and
white noise or competing sounds in the other would
be the optimal approach to leverage the auditory
system for unihemispheric activation. So to activate
the left hemisphere, one may block the LVF and plug
the left ear (or send competing irrelevant sounds to
this ear). To activate the right hemisphere, block
and plug the right visual field and ear. Given
different widths between human eyes, z-glasses
should be tailored to the individual (i.e., each
client gets her own taped safety goggles). To adjust
z-glasses to an individual, the wearer looks
straight into a mirror and aligns the tape until
only half of his or her pupil of each eye can be
seen by the wearer. As for unihemispheric acoustic
stimulation, if different sounds cannot be channeled
separately into left and right stereo headphones,
two sets of headphones straddled over each other
like an X may be used, with one set running off the
feedback device and the other set of headphones
connected to an irrelevant tape recording or similar
non-feedback device.

Blinding the other hemisphere to reward may be
necessary for functional improvements of a deficit
system. Unihemispheric augmentation of neurotherapy
may add surprising and powerful results. If anyone
gives it a try, please let me know what you find.

References:

Broca, P. (1865), "Sur le siège de la faculté du
langage articulé", Bulletin de la Société
d'Anthropologie de Paris, 6, 377-393.

Coslett HB. (2007). Temporal processing deficits in
letter-by-letter reading by Ingles and Eskes. J Int
Neuropsychol Soc. 2007 Jan;13(1):108-9

Davidson RJ (1998). Anterior electrophysiological
asymmetries, emotion, and depression: Conceptual and
methodological conundrums. Psychophysiology, 35:
607-614.

Robinson, R. G. & Downhill, J. E. (1995).
Lateralization of psychopathology in response to
focal brain injury. In Brain asymmetry (eds R.J.
Davidson & K. Hugdahl), 693-711, London: MIT Press.

Schiffer F (1997). Affect changes observed with
right versus left lateral visual field stimulation
in psychotherapy patients: possible physiological,
psychological, and therapeutic implications.
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 38, 289-95.

Zaidel, E. (1995) Interhemispheric transfer in the
split brain: long term status following complete
cerebral commissurotomy. In Brain asymmetry (eds
R.J. Davidson & K. Hugdahl), 491-532, London: MIT
Press.

-DK
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News & Reviews

NEW BOOKS

First Class: Autism In The Classroom
by Fran Hunnisett
Attacks the common notion of savantism in this
developmental disorder, among other things.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1843103087/eegspectrum

Sleep Disorders Medicine: Basic Science, Technical
Considerations, and Clinical Aspects
by Sudhansu Chokroverty (Ed)
Resource for professionals.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/075069954X/eegspectrum

Treating Bipolar Disorder: Social Rhythm Therapy
by Ellen Frank
Role of psychotherapy for a biological disorder.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593852045/eegspectrum

The Brain (Inside the Human Body)
by Adolpho Cassan, A. Cassan
With school starting again, a short book for high
schoolers.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791090140/eegspectrum

Everything Parent's Guide To Children With
Asperger's Syndrome
by William Stillman
Parental resource to this baffling condition.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593371535/eegspectrum

Drugs Across the Spectrum
by Raymond Goldberg
Comprehensive drug text, 5th edition.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0495013455/eegspectrum

Handbook of Bipolar Disorder: Diagnosis And
Therapeutic Approaches
by Siegfried Kasper, Robert M. A. Hirschfeld (Eds)
Neurobiology, symptoms, and treatment of bipolar
disorder.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0824729358/ eegspectrum

Focus on Neuropsychology Research
by Joshua R. Dupri
Newest publication from Nova Science.
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594547793/eegspectrum

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JOURNAL PAPERS

Initial fMRI data modeling on connectivity reported between brain
areas. :
Initial attempts to correlate blood flow between regions.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16963281

MEG and TMS combined with EEG for mapping alcohol effects. : Alcohol
changes
the functional connectivity between motor and prefrontal cortices and
alcohol
is associated with decreased prefrontal cortical excitability.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16713500

Long-Term Treatment of Children with ADHD : A fraction of ADHD
children are
treated for this condition and few persist for any length of time.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16968623

Evaluating brain activity in obsessive-compulsive disorder : Abnormal
corticostriatal activity in OCD patients was observed using a network-
analysis
approach.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16949800

Brain neuroimaging in cannabis use: a review. : Structural and
functional
neuroimaging studies of cannabis use.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16963581

Cortical Thinning of Attention and Executive Function Networks in
ADHD :
Adults with ADHD show thinning of cerebral cortex in attentional and
executive
networks, especially in the right hemisphere.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16920883

Intra-personal EEG variability of multiple personality disorder. :
EEG
variability between alters was mostly observed in frontal and
temporal beta
activity.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16929711

EEG correlates of WAIS : Temporal theta correlated with working
memory
ability.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16923691
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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

4-Day Comprehensive Course Dates (subject to change)

* Dallas TX Jan 11-14
* San Diego CA Jan 25-28
* Oakland CA Feb 22-25
* Jacksonville FL Mar 8-11
* Houston TX Mar 22-25
* St Louis MO Apr 12-15
* Boston MA May 3-6

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 of Brown University Medical School, a
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.

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Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers

CONFERENCE LOCATION DATES

AAPB www.aapb.org Monterey CA Feb 2006

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Last Word

Heights of rivers, lengths of mountains

After a recent conference talk on comodulation, a
measure of magnitude consistency between two EEG
signals, I was asked whether my measure was superior
to coherence. Both indexed functional connectivity
(or coordination) between brain sites, but which was
better?

I answered that comodulation was as superior to
coherence as length is superior to height.

I was being fictitious and explained myself, though
who knows what ever comes across at these meetings.
I tried to convey the idea that a measure's
superiority depends entirely upon what is being
measured and why. Cartographers care about the
length of a river, for instance, for their maps but
those caught in its flood plain during a storm care
little about its length and only about its height. I
recently read that the Amazon is the shortest major
river in the world -- in height! In width and
length, of course, it is one of the largest.

So the real question with comodulation versus
coherence is not one of intrinsic value but one's
goal in making a measurement. What do you want to
know? For certain brain functions magnitude
consistency between brain areas may be more
important; for other functions, phase consistency
is. And ironically, due to the organization of
cortical networks, each measure often overlaps the
other, so in many cases there is no clear
preference.

The comparison of comodulation to coherence has
already yielded some fruit, however. It underlines
the two-dimensionality of spectral analysis. A
stationary rhythm requires at least two bits of
information to be reproduced, its magnitude and its
phase. When two similar rhythms are compared, they
too can be similar on magnitude or phase, or both.
Comodulation and coherence are consistency measures
of magnitude and phase, and "phase" as it is called,
and unity, my name for magnitude difference, are the
combined differences between sites divided by time.
These four indices capture all of the information
shared between two stationary signals for each
frequency band. However, what is we are interested
in the relationship between frequency bands. Then
instead of examining shared information between TWO
SITES in a SINGLE FREQUENCY range, we examine shared
information between TWO FREQUENCIES at a SINGLE
SITE. Same frequency different sites, or same site
different frequencies. This more than doubles the
possible information domain we might examine.

Two frequencies-one site also can be quantified by
four indices for stationary signals: bimodulation
(magnitude consistency) and band ratio (magnitude or
power differences) in the energy domain; dual
frequency coherence (phase consistency) and dual
frequency phase (difference) in the phase domain. If
the theta and alpha bands bimodulate, for instance,
at site Pz, it may mean that the individual's
dominant frequency straddles these bands. If theta
and alpha do not bimodulate, it means each rhythm
waxes and wanes independently of the other, which
has psychophysiological significance. Bimodulation
as well as band ratio may quantify the extent of the
dominant frequency, its integrity, or other
functional aspects of the thalamocortical network.
Rhythm independence could denote health or pathology
-- we have to figure this out. Dual frequency
coherence also addresses the same issues, albeit in
the phase domain. (I prefer the term "bicoherence"
to "dual frequency" but, alas, bicoherence was
already taken as a measure of mutual information
between two frequencies that involves computation of
a 3rd joint frequency).

And if we lift up our pivot foot, to use a
basketball metaphor, and walk around the
site-frequency plane, we create entirely new
spectral parameter, psychophysiologically meaningful
or not, we do not yet know. Where before we had two
sites-one frequency (e.g., coherence, comodulation),
or two frequencies-one site (e.g., band ratio), we
can also look at any 2x2, two frequencies and two
sites, if we don't mind stepping into quicksand. I
call it quicksand, this near-infinite problemspace,
because we have to much permutational freedom to
find anything relevant. In a 2x2 approach we can
examine phase or magnitude consistency between 7 Hz
at P3 and 5 Hz at P4, i.e., cross-dual-frequency
coherence or cross-bimodulation, respectively, or
between any of the 18 factorial site pairs for the
10-20 electrode position system multiplied by,
conservatively, 40 factorial frequencies pairs. This
is a haystack in search of a needle. And let's not
jump into using the 10-10 electrode system until 31
factorial gets smaller.... And as long as we're
moving up to 2x2, why limit our permutations there,
when 3x1s (triherence and trimodulation, phase
consistency between three sites for one band) and
3x2s (cross-triherence) are waiting in the wings.
Any NxN. It took 10 years for comodulation to gain
some acceptance -- who has the years necessary to
identify a reliable correspondence between even a
2x2 and psychophysiology? Does frontal theta phase
lose coherence with the posterior alpha phase? That
is the only easy picking I see in the 2x2 problem
space, along with homologous comparisons. Well,
maybe there will be some fruit from those
comparisons, but mostly our connectivity measures
are tethered to one tentpole and "cross" topography
or frequency but never both simultaneously.

That said, we should keep in mind that comodulation,
coherence, and any feasible assortment of spectral
indices are but a few of the parameters that may
relate brain function to mental function.
Non-spectral measures, or medians and other
derivatives such as slope or variability, mobility
or complexity may prove useful in mapping brain to
mind. Quantitative EEG needs to incorporate some of
the promising new approaches to shed more light on
the informational vortex that envelopes brain
behavior. To date, it has barely scratched the
surface.

-DK

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