What's New in Neurofeedback
A monthly summary of news & events

Vol. 10 No. 3 - March 2007

This newsletter is sponsored by
EEG Spectrum International Intl, Inc.,
a leader in providing clinical service and
training professionals.

Past issues are available at
start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/
Information on how to subscribe or cancel a
subscription appear at the end.
Opinions related in this newsletter reflect
those of the author only. Copyright (C) 2007
by David Kaiser or ESII. All rights reserved.

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Announcements - News
Spotlight - Principles of Learning: Refresher
Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - Surrounded by the Brain
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Announcements

-Brain creates 'new' nerve cells
-Brain 'cannabis' Parkinson's hope
-New brain cells love to learn
-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?

Links at: news.yahoo.com/fc/Science/Brain_Research
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Spotlight

Principles of Learning: A quick refresher

Behaviorism was promoted by John B. Watson
in order to transform the field of
Psychology into an objective science. To do
so required that scientists studied
behaviors, not mental processes, and with a
focus on learning. There are three forms of
learning: habituation (simple, 1 stimulus),
associative learning (simple, passive,
external), and cognitive Learning (complex,
strategic, internal). Learning is an
adaptive1 permanent change2 in behavior3
that is produced as a result of prior
experience4

(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
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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

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JOURNAL PAPERS

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
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Events

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)

Glendale CA May 17-20
NYC NY May 31-Jun 1
Washington DC Jun 21-24
Denver CO Jul 12-15
Atlanta GA Jul 26-29


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, Brown University Medical School,
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

SABA - www.skiltopo.com Catalina, CA Jun 2006
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Last Word

Surrounded by the Brain

Our minds emerge in the world surrounded,
surrounded not only by the world itself but
by a structure we call the brain, an
intricate device coupled to the mind in
ways not fully understood. Most of us find
this mate a friend, and thoroughly explore
it, but many fear becoming fully intimate
with this stranger. A creature organizes
itself by modulating its relationship with
the world and this includes its
relationship to the brain.

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

Olds, J. (1955). "Reward" from brain stimulation in the rat. Science, 122, 878.

Scott WC, Kaiser D, Othmer S, & Sideroff SI. (2005). Effects of an EEG
biofeedback protocol on a mixed substance abusing population. American Journal
of Drug & Alcohol Abuse, 31, 455-69.

Sari Y, Bell RL, & Zhou FC. (2006). Effects of chronic alcohol and repeated
deprivations on dopamine D1 and D2 receptor levels in the extended amygdala of
inbred alcohol-preferring rats. Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research,
30, 46-56.

-DK
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