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

Vol.  11 No. 2 - February 2008

This newsletter is sponsored by EEG Spectrum Intl Inc,
the leader in providing neurotherapeutic service and
training professionals. Past issues available at
http://start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/
To subscribe or cancel, see newsletter's end.
Opinions in this newsletter reflect author's only.
Copyright (C) 2008 by EEG SpectrumIntl, Inc.
or David Kaiser, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------

Announcements      - News
In the Spotlight   - Co-creation and conformity
News & Reviews     - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word          - Who's in Charge (revised)
--------------------------------------------------

Announcements 

    * Lightwave detection of Alzheimers
    * Yin/Yang of Mood Disorders
    * Brain cells adapt 2 changing images
    * paradoxical Alzheimer finding and memory loss
    * Caution On New Painkillers
    * Meditation Can Lower Blood Pressure, Study Shows
    * Emotional 'Bummer' Of Cocaine Addiction Mimicked In Animals

    Links at http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/
-------------------------------------------------

In the Spotlight

Co-Creation and conformity

[Data is theory that generalizes and replicates]

Catherine Genovese, or Kitty, as she was known by
friends, parked and got out of her car. It was very
late, getting cold, and the streets were empty at
this time of night. She had worked late again but
she's wasn't worried. Her apartment was a few steps
away.

"Oh my God! He stabbed me!" she screamed. "Please
help me! Please help me!... I'm dying! I'm dying"

Lights went on. A neighbor yelled down from a 7th
floor window, "Hey, let that girl alone!"

Kitty lost her keys in the attack and stumbled
around her apartment, blindly trying doorknobs. A
back doorway opened and she made her way in,
collapsing on the steps. Unknown to her, the man had
retreated at the shout. He waited in his car and
watched the windows. Light after light went dark.
When the very last window went dark, he ventured out
and found his way into the building through the same
open doorway.

"I heard a scream for help, three times," a neighbor
informed the court the summer of 1964, "I saw a girl
lying down on the pavement with a man bending down
over her, beating her."

Nearly 40 people heard or observed some part of the
fatal assault. It lasted 32 minutes but no one
called the police until after it was over. When
someone did call, he decided to call a cousin who
lived in a neighboring county to first ask for
advice.

"We thought it was a lover's quarrel!" said one tenant.

"Frankly, we were afraid," said another witness.

A man wanted to call the police, but his wife
thought otherwise. "I didn't let him. I told him
there must have been 30 calls already."

"I didn't want my husband to get involved."

"We went to the window to see what was happening,
but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to
see the street.

"I was tired."

The last response, the most human, could hardly have
been entered into the record without even a
stenographer passing judgement. The assault and its
observation was one of the worst forms of mob
behavior in recent times, an old filthy habit of
humans which this time was given a name, the
bystander effect. The bystander effect involves
three layers of mental behavior:

1-Ambiguity about the situation.

2-Pluralistic ignorance, which is that we look to
others to help disambiguate situations and when they
look to us, we stay in a state of ignorance.

3-Diffusion of responsibility, which is we look to
others to take responsibility.

The Bystander Effect reveals how we use perceptions
of others to fill holes in our own. We are molded by
others, we conform to their perceptions, we change
our behaviors, even our brain function, to be part
of the group. And sometimes this means we conform
ourselves into standstill, no one taking charge,
except for the murderer in the case of Kitty.

Solomon Asch studied the role of conformity in the
mid-1950s. His graduate students pretended to be
subjects in an experiment where only the behavior of
one person was free to change. There was a true
subject and seven or eight confederates, as they are
called. The group of fake subjects and one real
subject was shown a simple diagram of three lines of
varying heights and asked which line was of equal
height to a test stimulus. Initially the trials went
smoothly as each comparison was easy and everyone
gave the same answers. But this was prelude. After 8
or 9 trials, the actual experiment began: the
confederates now called out the wrong answer, again
and again, one after the other. The clear perceptual
answer was B but they called out C...
C... C....C...C...C...C... and then it was the true
subject's turn to answer. What would you do?

The subject went bonkers; he squirmed in his seat,
peered closer at the two cards, wondered if the
instructions had changed. Did he space out and miss
a change of instructions by the experimenter?

Asch reported that only 1 in 4 subjects held their
ground throughout the experimet. Most people caved
-- and often, conforming to the group 2 out of every
5 trials. The group exerted normative influence,
Asch explained, by instilling fear of appearing
deviant, which led to public conformity (surface
change) without private conformity (mental change).
Subjects, when debriefed, admitted that they went
against what they knew was true in going with the
group but did so because it seemed easier at the
time.

When a scientist is lucky enough to frame reality in
such a way that nearly everyone understands what he
or she is saying and some see actual value in his or
her pursuit, good scientists know to run all the
variants. Play all hands, in every conceivable
fashion. They don't stop at the first experiment but
after the 101st. Asch ran dozens of variants on his
Conformity experiment, nearly everything available
to him in the 1950s.

He tested the effect of having an ally. Having
beaten down the true subject with round after round
of the group seeing what is not there, another round
begins and the group begins in familiar chorus
C...C... C...C.. but then something remarkable
happens. The next confederate calls out B, like a
miracle, the correct answer! And then it is over,
conformity restored, C...C...C... Now it is your
turn? What do you do?

Nine out of 10 subjects, freed of normative
pressure, do what's right and give the correct
response. (I wonder if the 10th fellow remained with
the group and mocked the lone dissenter, get a load
of that guy...).

The ally effect is interesting but it conflates
conformity-breaking with support. How about breaking
conformity without support? Asch ran this variant as
well: the group responds C..C..C..C..C... until one
lunatic chimes in A, the shortest line on the card,
4 inches if that, compared to the 6 inch test item.
So C C C C C - A? huh?? C C C and now it's your turn
again?

Asch discovered that few need support, about 1 in
25. Most of us just need a break in group. 86% or 6
out of 7 people went on their own and gave the
correct response when in the presence of a wrong
dissenter.

Asch also examined the emotional toll of conforming.
People were found to be emotionally distressed when
they conformed to easier decisions (agreeing that a
4" line was equal to a 6" line) and less distressed
by harder ones (6.25" line said to equal to a 6"
test item). What I consider the most significant and
relatively unrecognized finding of Asch's work: how
many people are a group. How many people must mill
around together to constitute groupness. How many
others must there be for us to put on our public
face?

When a group consisted of you and one other, and
that person answered first and gave the wrong
answer, only 1 in 25 of us caved, a 4 % conformity
rate, which is 1/9th the power of full-grown group
conformity. Add another person to your group and
confirmity more than tripled to 14%. Then add a 3rd
person and voila, you are now a group forever. The
rate of conformity remained constant, between 32 to
36 percent, for groups from 4 to 14. The greatest
conformity (37%) was for a group of 6 others, which
is probably within the margin of error but it would
be of interest to know how many friends we need on
our side to bear our full force. Though as his data
suggested, two will do, you being a 3rd, and the 4th
being the person who you're trying to convince.

Likewise, we may be that unconvinced person and when
approached by three people, we turn on our public
mode of behavior and stay in it until a stranger or
two drops away. The real factor that directs
conformity, however, which he didn't examine, is our
strength of relationships. He kept relationship
strength constant, a zero, essentially, stranger.
Had he used a group of three associates, three
friends, or three lovers, or three children, three
officers of the law, or three sisters, he'd have
stumbled upon the algebra of interpersonal reality.

Other factors that influence conformity besides
group size are awareness of group norms ("if you are
not with us, you're against us", "we act as one"),
and age & experience. Those most vulnerable to
others are not young children but young teenagers.
Adults know which way the wind blows but also knows
when it cannot possibly blow that way. Older people
conform the least at a simple task. The nature of
the task was also held steady, at low significance
and low difficulty, and both aspects should be
examined. As to the difference between the birds and
the bees, in face-to-face encounters women tended to
conform more and men conform less when they thought
they are being observed but the difference evened
out when unobserved, and this was 50 years ago.

Social pressure ranges from negligible to extreme,
from who cares to who dies. Social conformity is
most tested by warfare and it was a student of Asch,
Stanley Milgram, who would go on to investigate
obedience to leaders in a series of classic
experiments taught to every psychology undergrad. In
his Experiment on Obedience, people off the street
were asked, in a series of small steps, to kill
another human being. (Increasing requests little by
little is the common "foot in the door" manipulation
technique.)

Milgram called the experiment, the "Effect of
Punishment on Memory", a cover name to misinform his
subjects. He asked people to act as "teacher" and
shock a "learner," who they considered another
random subject but was in fact a confederate of the
experiment, in league with Milgram. Subjects were
asked to shock this man whenever he replied
incorrectly to test questions. Now the "learner," an
unlikely actor, a middle-aged man, tells the
experimenter in his labcoat and indirectly the
teacher, the true subject, that he suffers from a
mild heart condition and asked whether the shocks
are dangerous. The labcoat explains how they are
painful but not harmful, only providing momentary
discomfort. To prove his point, and to increase the
believability of the set-up, the "teacher" is given
a sample jolt of 45 volts. This is the only time
when Milgram's famous shocking device works as
advertised. Otherwise it is ominous in appearance
but an empty theatrical prop. But effective! 30
lights and 30 light switches labelled sequentially
from "15 volts (mild)" all the way out to "450 volts
(XXX)."

Once the teacher gets a taste of the device, the 45
volt shock, the learner is taken out of the room to
an adjacent room by the labcoat and attached to the
device, or so the teacher is lead to believe. The
memory tests are simple but over time they are
suppose to tax the mind. Here is an example:
"Remember this word, bird" says the teacher. "Now of
the following list, house, toy, bird, fly -- what
word did I ask you to remember?" Simple, and the
learner gave correct answers for some time,
paralleling Asch's initial trials. But here and
there he would give a wrong response and the teacher
was reminded by the labcoat to click the toggle of
the next level of shock, a buzzer would sound, and
then the jolt was supposedly given.

After a 120 volt shock, a script came into play: The
actor/learner gives his first shout about the pain.
He take sthe next shock stoically, but at 150 volts,
he demands for the experiment to end. After 180
volts the actor/learner screams "no more pain!" "no
more pain!" over and over and after each and every
shock until 300 volts is reached. At this point he
starts to pound on the wall which separated him from
the teacher; and finally at 330 volts, he lets out a
final cry. He is mum from this time forward and when
the teacher balks at shocking an assumingly
unconscious fellow in the next room, he is reminded
by the labcoat (another actor, of sorts) that no
response by the learner counts as a wrong response
and is to be treated as a wrong answer. The teacher
must also continue to increase the voltage at each
non-response. Silence is wrong and the shock will
test the effect of punishment on memory.

Prior to running the experiment, Milgram asked
psychiatrists and students to predict the most
voltage anyone would give the learner in this
situation. The general consensus was that nearly
everyone would stop around 150 volts and only
perhaps 1 in a 1000 might enjoy torturing another
human being and go all the way to the maximum (450
volts). But what Milgram discovered in the first run
of his obedience experiment, done at Yale University
with mostly unemployed men, is that 2 out of 3 men
went to the maximum (65%). Everyone, including
Milgram, failed to judge the power of the situation.
Situations drive behavior. Settings and persons
dictate more than our disposition.

When the results were published, people couldn't
believe that 2 in 3 people were so gullable, so
controllable, as to kill a stranger at the bequest
of another, outside of warfare. Critics argued that
this finding was absurd and tainted by a number of
coercive elements in Milgram's original design
including setting (Yale University) and awareness of
a worthy goal (pursuit of science). Others mentioned
how volunteering self-coerced subjects and how the
"learner"'s supposed volunteering granted freer
license to the teacher. There was also the money:
unemployed men were paid $4 to come to lab and
wouldn't want to disappoint and lose out of what
amounts to lunch-money in today's dollars. Also,
subjects didn't have time to think, the learner was
in another distant room, all kinds of reasons,
including gender. Women, some critics offered, would
not hurt another person so incautiously.

Milgram repeated the experiment off-grounds, using
women, labcoats removed, with even the experimenter
sometimes slipping out of the room to get coffee. In
each variant he ran a new group of 40 subjects and
here is the percent who went to the maximum.

Experimenter absent = 23%
Maximum Proximity (touch) = 30%
Proximity (same room) = 40%
Sleazy office building = 48%
Women subjects = 65%
Group of two where other subject quits = 10%
Group where your job is only to read test items = 93%

Singer Peter Gabriel subtitled his song "We Do What
We're Told" "Milgram's 37" in honor of the last
finding. Thirty-seven out of 40 can conscience being
a cog for the powers of darkness as long as the
devil doesn't make us pull the actual trigger.

The lowest compliance occurred not when a group
broke apart, but when authority broke apart. In one
version, Milgram had two men in labcoats running the
experiment and they began to bicker about going
forward and this killed compliance. The 2nd lowest
compliance rate was, ironically, for when the
learner demands to be shocked. Less than 1 in 20
comply to a crazy man's request,which shows that
we're okay in hurting you but not if you wants us to.

Obedience varied as a function of authority
legitimacy and other factors. Clothes made a
difference (labcoats trump blue jeans), as did
distance from the victim (touching compared to same
room or a different room), degree of supervision
(absent, present, remindful authority figure),
presence of others who modeled obedience, and lack
of dissent in group tasks. Personality had little
impact on behavior, nor did gender, age, or
education.

Here is an example transcript Milgram provided,
Subject is a 50y unemployed man. After delivering
180-volt shock, he pivots around in chair and
addresses experimenter:

Subject (agitated): I can't stand it I'm not going
to kill that man in there. You hear him hollering?
Experimenter: As I told you before, the shocks may
be painful, but . . .
S: But he's hollering. He can't stand it. What's
going to happen to him?
E: The experiment requires that you continue

(...A lame justification, but enough, apparently!)

S: I refuse to take the responsibility. He's in
there hollering
E: It's absolutely essential that you continue.
S: All right. (He continues experiment. Learner is
"shocked.")

Learner (screaming): Let me out of here! You have no
right to keep me here! Let me out of here, my hearts
bothering me, let me out!
S: You see he's hollering. Hear that?
E: The experiment requires . . .
S: I know it does sir, but I mean -- he doesn't know
what he's getting in for. He's up to 195 volts!

(Experiment continues, through 210 volts, 225 volts,
240 volts, 255 volts, 270 volts, at which point
subject, with evident relief, runs out of word-pair
questions.)

E: You'll have to go back to the beginning of the
page and go through them again until he's learned
them all correctly.

(Experiment continues with no responses by learner.

At 375 volts, subject stands up.)

S: I think something's happened to that fellow in
there. I don't get no answer. He was hollering at
less voltage. Can't you check in and see if he's all
right, please?
E: Not once we've started. Please continue, Teacher.
S (sits down, sighs deeply): "Cool day, shade,
water, paint." Answer please. Are you all right in
there? Are you all right,
E: Please continue, Teacher. Continue, please.
(Subject pushes lever. Zzumph!)

S: You accept all responsibility?
E: The responsibility is mine. Please go on.
Subject returns to list, runs through all the test
items as rapidly as he can read them, working quicly
to the end, 450 volts.
S: That's that.
E: Continue using the 450 switch for each wrong answer.
S: But I don't get anything!
E: Please continue....

We are taught to obey authority from an early age.
Neurons are also taught to obey. When neural
authority breaks down, we have disease,
forgetfulness, and numerous disorders. In EEG rhythm
training we often train towards normalcy in terms of
rhythm incidence, partly because we know so little
about brain function and assume group norms are
reasonably good for any individual. Normalcy is a
start, and as we advance in our understanding of
brain synchrony, we'll know better when to seek
rhythmic conformity and when rhythmic conformity is
an individual's complaint.

-DK
--------------------------------------------------

News & Reviews

NEW BOOKS

Mood Disorders: A Practical Guide
by S. Nassir Ghaemi
For clinicians - assists in diagnosing mood disorders.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0781727839/eegspectrum

The Neurology Of Autism
by Mary Coleman (Editor)
Medical/educational therapies and a detailed evaluation of alternative
therapies. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 0195182227/eegspectrum

Trends In Epilepsy Research
by Shawn M. Benjamin (Editor)
Newest research on detecting and treating seizures.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594542376/eegspectrum

Dealing with Depression: A Commonsense Guide to Mood Disorders
by Gordon Parker
Traditional and alternative approaches for treating depression are reviewed.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 1741142148/eegspectrum

Neurobiology of Human Values
by Jean-Pierre P. Changeux (Editor), et al
Neuroscience enters the fray of ontological discussions including morality.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 3540262539/eegspectrum

Neurobiology for Clinical Social Work: Theory and Practice
by JS Applegate, JR Shapiro
Current brain research on attachment and neurobiology, including plasticity,
early trauma, adolescent mothers, assessment and intervention strategies.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393704203/eegspectrum
 
-----

JOURNAL PAPERS

Models of EEG rhythms and connectivity. : A single population can exhibit
different simultaneous rhythms. 
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18181270
 

Disorganized attachment and atypical parenting in externalizing disorder. :
Pervasive disorganization was associated with very high maternal expressed
emotion. 
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18058430
 

Spirituality and Religion in Epilepsy. : Postictal religious experiences occur
in few epilepsy patients (2%). Changes in beliefs and convictions are
associated with right frontal lobe epilepsy and ecstatic religious experience with right TLE. 
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18171635
 
Brain activation in pediatric OCD during inhibitory control tasks. : Task
switching and interference inhibition were associated with attenuated
activation in frontal, temporoparietal and cerebellar regions. 
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18174505
 

Recognition of 'Fortune of Others' Emotions in Asperger Syndrome : Individuals
with Asperger have trouble identifying envy and gloating.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18161015
 

Neurofeedback in fibromyalgia syndrome. : Three patients with Fibromyalgia
Syndrome were treated successfully with neurofeedback.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=18095199
  ----------

Events & Locations

Upcoming Courses

4-Day Comprehensive Course on Neurotherapy (dates subject to change)

    * Chicago IL, Apr 10-13
    * Boston MA, May 1-4
    * San Antonio TX, May 15-18
    * Arlington VA, Jun 19-22
    * Albuquerque NM, Jul 10-13
    * Glendale CA, Aug 7-10

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.

------------------------------------------------------------
Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers

CONFERENCE                     LOCATION           DATES

SABA - www.skiltopo.com/saba   Sarasota FL     Apr 30-May 3
ISNR - www.isnr.org            San Antonio TX Aug 28-Sep 1

------------------------------------------------------------

 Last Word

Churchville Elementary is just across the street but
there is no stoplight or crossing guard so my child
rides a bus to school. After picking her up the bus
meanders around our little village and passes under
the single traffic light once, sometimes twice, on
its way to school. Our house sits on Main and School
Street, or so it seems, as bus after school bus
rumble by every few minutes in the early morning
light.

A few years ago, before my son joined her on the
bus, one of the drivers fell ill and his substitute
stopped in front of our door. It was an obvious
mistake and I waved him off. As I watched him turn
the corner, another bus pulled up. I turned to say
goodbye to my five year old -- but she wasn't there.
She had gotten on the first bus.

We panicked and called the school. The voice over
the phone assured us that the first bus also stopped
at Churchville Elementary and our bundle of joy
would be fine. We needed to see for ourselves so we
hurried to the back entrance and waited for our
intrepid kindergartener to appear. Well, she did in
a matter of moments, without incident, as could be
expected in a town with one stoplight and a bus for
nearly every school child. What stayed with me to
this day was not the overwhelming relief at seeing
her spill out of the bus or fear, unfathomable as it
was, which we swallowed as best we could, but what
my five- year-old said as she bounded off the bus
and into her mother's arms.

"Mommy," she said, "There were a whole lot of new
friends on the bus!"

What a way to be! Dropped into a pool of strangers
my five-year-old envisions friends, friends she
simply doesn't yet know.

The late Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton (2000)
published a seminal work on anxiety and fear that
describes how adult brains respond to strangers on
the bus. They conceive clinical disorders as
overactive responses of specific structures or
networks. This book is rarely cited in clinical
neuroscience, which may be due to its title, a
mouthful, "The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An
Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal
System." "Septo-Hippocampal Systems" sounds like a
how- to guide for plumbers.

According to the model whenever our neural plumbing
encounters a threat, potential or actual, and
whether these threats are detectable, avoidable, or
not, different brain structures govern our response.
There is an order to our defenses.

Threat type, Detectable, Avoidable:
  Strategy, Response, Associated disorder, Brain system in control

potential, undetectable, avoidable: anticipate, obsession, OCD, cingulate
---------, detectable, avoidable: assess, anxiety, GAD, septal-hippocampus
---------, ----------, unavoidable: conserve resources, depression, MDD, NA/5HT

actual, detectable, avoidable: flee, fear, phobia, amygdala
------, ----------, unknown: fight, anger, rage, medial hypothalamus
------, ----------, unavoidable: freeze, panic, panic disorder, periaqueductal gray

The entire hierarchy could come into play in a
single encounter. For instance, imagine ourselves an
animal milling about the woods at night:

1. We sense danger (undetectable avoidable potential threat)
2. We see or smell or hear a distant and shadowy figure
     (detectable avoidable potential threat)
3. As the shadow approaches, we seek clues to its
     form and intention (detectable unavoidable potential threat)
4. It draws near (possibly avoidable threat)
5. It closes to just outside of our ability to strike, but
     we could be within its range (unknown avoidability)
6. It now closes to within our range (unavoidable)

According to Gray and McNaughton, the last two
defenses are fight followed by freeze (bottom two
rows of the table). I asked Neil about this peculiar
sequence in his behavioral typology: Why would we
fight for a bit, and failing to keep a predator at
bay, reeze? Only a few creatures succeed at playing
possum, and fewer still after a good predatory
tussle, and given that most threats -- bigger fish,
larger crustraceans, unruly bosses -- have a longer
reach than us, a larger zone of attack, why stop
fighting once darkness has drawn within reach of our
teeth, claws, tentacles? Why not freeze before we
start to fight and be passed over.

Neil responded in his emails to what I saw as an
apparent misordering of last resorts by arguing that
a final freeze enables a victim to leap past an
attacker without exposing its flank. But if we could
outrun it in close quarters, how did it close in on
us in the first place? So thinking this over I had
to believe that this model, while extensive, was not
the whole story. A major subplot, but incomplete in
explaining what is going on behaviorally. And I was
reminded of another form of behavioral freezing.
Perhaps a freeze occurs at the very end because if
the larger entity didn't incapacitate us already,
maybe its intention never was attack.

But a date.

Many species are dimorphic, with males physically
larger than females, sometimes even a magnitude
larger. Perhaps the last stage of threat response is
not defensive but reproductive. Risking death for
sex is what most animals do for a living.

So mating may be a form of defense. Lordosis
(reproductive behavioral freezing) is not triggered
by periaqueductal gray nuclei as fear freezing is,
yet a second behavioral hierarchy competing with
defense makes sense. Approach works with avoidance,
a brake next to the accelerator. I can imagine a
similar organization for mating behaviors, using the
same terminology but with mating in mind: potential
and actual, detectable and undetectable, avoidable
and unavoidable... actually those terms generate
more humor than insight, something along the line of
high school and my Senior ball and all of them,
avoidable, unavoidable, and potential mates, sitting
at my table, making it a very awkward evening, a
night I cannot get out of my head.

As for clinical disorders, symptoms such as phobia,
fear, anxiety, panic, and OCD are of maladaptive
intensity due to either (1) excessive sensitivity to
eliciting stimuli or (2) excessive activation of a
brain structure or network, according to Neil. In
other words, too many resources are being used in
defense. It is of course healthy for defensive
systems to override higher reasoning during
emergencies, but emergencies are rare and when
primitive systems coup d'etat at the drop of a hat,
and refuse to step down once a crisis is over, it's
time to let reason step in. 'I'm in charge here,'
proclaimed Alexander Haig to the press corps in
1981, after President Reagan was shot. The subcortex
claims the same in a brain disorder -- "I'm in
charge here"    and therapy can restore cortical
leadership to a traumatized brain. If you remember
correctly that Monday afternoon in March, 1981, Haig
never was in charge. He only thought he was. And the
subcortex is under similar delusion, when it feigns
control of the human mind.

-DK 
----end--