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What's New in Neurofeedback
A Monthly Summary of News and Events
Vol. 11 No. 8 - August 2008
This newsletter is sponsored by EEG Spectrum International, Inc.,
the leader in providing neurotherapeutic services and training professionals.
Past issues are available at start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/
To subscribe via yahoogroups.com or cancel a subscription, see info at the bottom.
Opinions in this newsletter reflect those of the author only.
Copyright (c) 2008 by ESII or David Kaiser, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
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- Revealing The Regulating Mechanism Behind Signal Transduction In The Brain
- Mice Missing 'Fear' Gene Slow To Protect Offspring
- Protective Pathway In Stressed Cells Not So Helpful When It Comes To Prions
- Brain Protein Linked To Alzheimer's Disease
- Natural Childbirth Linked To Stronger Baby Bonding Than C-sections
- Inflammatory Response To Infection And Injury May Worsen Dementia
- Signals From Blood Of Mother Enhance Maturation Of Brain
16th Annual ISNR Conference
The 16th annual conference of the International Society for Neurofeedback and Research (ISNR) was held in San Antonio, TX Labor Day weekend, 2008. Some of the interesting talks included a peak performance study at Goldsmith's University of London (by Tomas Ros) in which 20 trainee ophthalmic microsurgeons were randomly assigned to either SMR or Alpha-Theta protocols and their skill development was compared to 8 wait-list controls. SMR neurofeedback enhanced surgical technique while considerably reducing time on task by a quarter. Experts ratings improved significantly for overall technique, suture task, task speed, while anxiety during the surgical task decreased. Another interesting talk was by Dirk De Ridder, M.D., Ph.D., titled "An Evolutionary Approach to Brain Rhythms and its Clinical Implications for Brain Modulation." Dirk takes a microgenetic approach to brain function. I love any talk that shows a monotreme, the non-placental egg-laying mammals still alive in Australia, close descendents of our transition from the reptilean-mammalian common ancestor, and Dirk's talk included a monotreme as he presented a model of how volutional aspects of information processing might have emerge evolutionarily, notably in the context of conditioning. He created a useful term, limbic dysrrhythmia, as an adjunct to the slightly better known term, thalamocortical dysrhythmia, to explain tinnitus, his specialty.
The conference opened the first night with three pioneers relating personal warstories of this field's emergence from psychology and medicine. Jay Gunkelman commented, to those of us hanging out in the lobby, it was so painful going through those times, why recount them. But the birth of any science, this being applied psychophysiology, has birth pangs and knowing how we got to the current position is always illuminating. We had a number of technical talks, including M. Barry Sterman, Ph.D., "The SMR Story: Sleep, Motor Regulation, and Memory " and Walter Freeman, M.D., Ph.D., "A Proposal for Combining Measures of Electric, Magnetic, and Chemical Gradients to Optimize Brain Imaging of Large-Scale Activity" in which Freeman argued for the variety of methods being complementary more than supportive, given the different forms of bioelectrical activity they could detect. Roberto Pascual-Marqui, Ph.D.'s talk was "Time-Frequency Components of Brain Connectivity" was a warning of coherence values being inflated by volume conduction and low spatial resolution. (I recommend use of the Laplacian montage for coherence analysis for this exact reason.)
Daniel Hoffman, M.D. reviewed recent research in predicting response to medication with QEEG, and Nicholas Dogris, Ph.D., presented his work on ADHD children and the Low Energy Neurofeedback System (LENS). Estato Sokhadze, Ph.D. presented his work with his colleagues on SMR treatment in cocaine addicts. Jack Johnstone, Ph.D. described his results in using Bispectral Analysis for monitoring dementia and the impact on consciousness. Adam Clarke, Ph.D. examines spectral power and coherence developmental Changes associated with ADHD. There were many other talks, including student presentations, and as a rule of thumb the best information comes from one-to-one discussion in the vendors room or the hotel bar. I will finish with my stuff, which I presented, the stuff I know best, of course:
I discussed how comodulation (spectral magnitude correlation) and coherence (akin to spectral phase correlation) differ conceptually and operationally (the math used), and showed empirical differences in terms of age effects. I also quietly introduced the Periodicity Table, a product of work that should outlive me, being a framework for organizing synchronization within and between signals. That no one recognized its value and (near) eternal nature is simply par for the course in science. As with any good idea ahead of its time, it's ahead of its time. And it's simple -- two strikes against it. And it can accomodate changes -- three strikes. The Periodic Table organizes periodicity into four forms -- temporal, spectral, bispectral, and trispectral. Bispectral refers to comparing two frequencies within the same signal, such as alpha activity vs theta activity in the same single EEG channel, such as what Jack Johnstone was examining. Trispectral is comparing three frequencies at once, like delta to alpha to theta, seeing when they swim together or apart in terms of phase and magnitude. "Trispectral" is also a placeholder term in the table as we need not stop at 3 but can compare any number of frequencies, although practically the number may be small. In other words, I count like some cultures do: 1 followed by 2 followed by many. Actually I count 0, 1, 2, many, and the temporal or 0 frequency stuff refers to aperiodic analyses, non-spectral anlaysis. (The term "spectral" might be called unispectral (one frequency per signal) for this table. The spectral-number is one axis of information, and the other axis of information are how many signals we are looking at, 1, 2, or many again. The "many-sites" analyses compare one channel's output or activity to many others, or all others. I invented what I call Rogue Site Analysis a few years back that does just that: it's a tally of which site is least like all others each moment in time. This was a unispectral/many-site analysis and Rogue Site Analysis is listed in one of the cells in the Periodicity Table as an example for this cell. Periodicity is also further divided by whether time is used in the comparsion (averaged across time vs it changes across time), and also phase and magnitude are delineated (making four axes of information, but I couldn't show a 4-dimensional cube that easier). For more information, the work is in press and can be found at http://www.skiltopo.com/period.htm
All in all, San Antonio was a great time. People who've attended science conferences for 40 years thought it was the best they had attended and they wanted the organizer Les Sherlin to be the permanent conferene organize. The ISNR group is growing larger every year, inflating like the universe, and last stood at over 700 members, which is a healthy number. About 400 attended the conference.
-DK
News Reviews
NEW BOOKS
Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation
by Douglas Darnall
Assistance to parents so that they recognize subtle causes of alienation and are able to minimize damaging effects before divorce permanently impacts a child's mental health.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0878332081/eegspectrum
Fibromyalgia Advocate: Getting the Support You Need to Cope ...
by Devin J. Starlanyl
Dr. Starlanyl, a physician, offers readers a wealth of practical suggestions for dealing with an often skeptical medical establishment and getting the help and
support they need for fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1572241217/eegspectrum
The Learning Differences Sourcebook
by Nancy S. Boyles, MD, Darlene Contandino
This book identifies and evaluates learning differences and various methods of providing the best home and school environment for a child with a learning difference.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0737300248/eegspectrum
Help Me, I'm Sad: Recognizing, Treating, Preventing Childhood Depression
by David Fassler, Lynne S. Dumas
Authors discuss how to tell if a child is at risk and discusses teen suicide, finding
the right diagnosis, therapist, and treatment.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670865478/eegspectrum
Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention: A Developmental Perspective
by John E. Richards
Investigation of how attentional processes emerge in children.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080582409X/eegspectrum
Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual Sexual Wholeness
by Michael Picucci
After someone begins recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, just when they believe the world would be theirs again, many of
them feel an emptiness within themselves. Dr. Picucci provides a roadmap to guide the way along the steps to recovery,
helping them recognize the way to emotional and spiritual awakening.
--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556432860/eegspectrum
JOURNAL PAPERS
Delay and Inhibition as Early Predictors of ADHD Symptoms in 3rd Grade.
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Resistance to temptation, delay of gratification, response inhibition, were among those behaviors from 3-6 years of age that predicted latter classification of ADHD.
Emotional distress and awareness following acquired brain injury: An exploratory analysis.
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Emotional distress, associated impaired awareness, associated with brain injury may play a protective role.
The dynamic brain: from spiking neurons to neural masses and cortical fields.
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A review unifying computational models of brain dynamics across micro- to macro-levels of neuronal interactions (cell to EEG).
Cortical inhibition, working memory and gamma band activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
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In the DLPFC, no direct relationship between GABA(B) receptor activity and gamma band activity were found.
Long-term anterior thalamus stimulation for intractable epilepsy.
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Stimulation of the anterior thalamic nucleus cut seizure frequency in half in 21 cases.
Upcoming Courses
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. |
Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians Researchers | ||
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| CONFERENCE | LOCATION | DATES |
| AAPB - aapb.org | Albuquerque, NM | Apr 2-4 |
DK Games for EEGer
I created my feedback games to address the needs of my son, who was diagnosed with autism in 2000, who needed to focus outward more appropriately. The games themselves are simple picture completion tasks, of images with or without accompanying words. Most of the games are geared to right brain development, which is sorely lacking in autism and largely ignored in educational curricula. The goal is to reward holistic processing, social processing, and coordination between the two cerebral hemispheres. In grad school I was fortunate enough to fall into the laps of the leading experts of right hemisphere function, Eran Zaidel and Joseph Bogen, and this is a continuation of their work in a way.
My son has had an amazing range of therapies, including EEG operant conditioning, but after 20 or so sessions of EEG rhythm training in 2001, he grew bored with the few feedback games available at the time so I created what I called "Infinite Content for the Autistic Mind," of which a subset are now available for EEGer. Also included in each game set is social auditory feedback, mother, father, and young children vocalizing social reinforcement, such as saying "Good job" in a sweet voice or my daughter saying "That's cheating!" which my autistic son loved to hear the most.
DK Games currently consists of six sets, with each set consisting of 4-6 games. It's focus is right brain development.
- Emotional Development: Emotional and nonverbal communication through faces, nonthreatening animals, peaceful scenes, and signs of intergenerational synchrony in both humans and animals.
- Right Brain Exercise: Visual perception and arbitrary semantic divisions.
- Perception Exercise: Role of color, resolution, novelty, and form stability in perception.
- Serenity: The extremely vast, the infinitesimal, and the verbal freedom in between.
- Games for Adult: Math problems, Stroop task, visual and verbal perception
- Games for Kids Animals, bugs, and household items.
Further descriptions are online at http://www.neurocybernetics.com/support/Download/NEWdkgames.html and example images, http://start.eegspectrum.com/dkgames/ but here are a few
Name that Emotion
Whatzit? Guess what you are looking at before all six panels are shown
Where's Wanda (the butterfly) in the Animal Kingdom - find her!
More info, see https://secure.eegspectrum.com/Secure/Catalog/
-David A Kaiser, MFA, PhD
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