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

Vol. 12 No. 1 - January 2009

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) 2009 by ESII or David Kaiser, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

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Announcements  - News
Spotlight      - Quantifying Behavior and the First Amendment
Reviews        - Books & journal papers
Events         - Conferences, Courses
Last Word      - 2008 Index

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Announcements

This newsletter is in its 12th year!

-Revolutionary New Model For Alzheimer's Disease
-Having A Parent With Dementia May Affect Memory In Midlife
-How We Think Before We Speak: Making Sense Of Sentences
-How We Maintain Visual Details In Short-term Memory
-Robotic Therapy May Reduce Stroke Physical Disability Years Later
-New 'Light' On Fascinating Rhythms Of Circadian Clock
-Blood Pressure Compound May Benefit Brain Tumor Patients
-'Neurological Work-arounds' Offer Hope For Conditions Ranging From Addiction To Schizophrenia
-Links at http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/mind_brain/
 
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Spotlight

Quantifying Behavior and the First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution)

My alma mater Cornell University recently took over housing of arXiv, http://arxiv.org/, a repository of reprints and preprints in physics, mathematics, and all things numerical, and the United States government has taken over the lives of my women (my wife works for Congress, my sister works for the Dept of Justice), and any day now I expect my mother to be recruited by the NSA and all my personal and professional freedom will then hang by a thread. With this in mind I came up with an exercise in freedom, representation freedom. Most of us know that the mind is the ultimate source of freedom, especially a linguistic mind, and our goal as neurotherapists is often to restore mental acuity and flexibility, mental freedom.

Consider the photograph of my son Jared at http://yahoojared.com/jared07.jpg. Looking at this image, you are actually looking at 1,440,054 bytes of information arranged into a two-dimensional array, 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall (compressed with the jpeg algorithm to 71,000 bytes). Each byte consists of 8 bits of information, either a zero or a one, and this allows 256 possible values. Each pixel of a bitmap uses three bytes, one byte each to represent shades of blue, green, and red. A pixel of pure red on my son's baseball cap is 0 blue,0 green, 255 red. With this simple 3-color scheme, we arrive at more than 16 million (256 x 256 x 256) gradations of color, all the colors in the rainbow.

Representations are powerful because any symbol can stand for many instances of a real-world category. The symbol "cap" refers to a plethora of instances, a variety of types and fashions. We can also take a readily understood symbol and obscure its meaning by encrypting it, by transforming it slightly so that a stranger looking at the symbol will no longer recognize what it refers to. The history of encryption is fascinating, especially its role in the Allies' success in WWII, but that is a rich story and what I want to focus on a very simple technique.

We can take the array of pixel information that represents my son's red baseball cap and convert it to a different string of information that will look nothing like a baseball cap unless one knows how to undo our conversion. What I pose here is to use the First Amendment in our encryption scheme. Take the digital information and subtract the First Amendment from the information and we're done! The First Amendment itself may be converted to numerical information any number of ways, but the simpliest for computers is to convert the letters into ASCII characters, which are like assigning 1 to A, 2 to B, and 3 to C, except for the fact that we start our count at 65 (65 = A, 66 = B, etc) and we represent capitals and lower case with different sets of numbers (65 = A, 97 = lower case a).

The ASCII representation of the opening clause of the First Amendment "Congress shall make no law" is "67 111 110 103 114 101 115 115 32 115 104 97 108 108 32 109 97 107 101 32 110 111 32 108 97 119". You might notice the repetition of "32" which is ASCII for the space key. 67 refers to capital C and all other numbers refer to lower case letters (e.g., 111 = "o" and 110 the letter before it, "n"). So we convert the entire First Amendment into ASCII and repeat it many, many times, laying them end to end, until we have a string of numbers 1,440,054 in length, the same length as our picture array. We now take my son's picture values and subtract the ASCII values one at a time in order. Say that the first pixel of the picture is represented as 100 blue, 150 green, 110 red (making a gray). We subtract the first three ASCII values of the First Amendment: 100 - C, 150 - o, 110 - n , which in ASCII is 100-67 150-111 110-110, which comes to 33 blue, 39 green, 0 red. (For any sum less than zero we add 256.) This new value becomes our new first pixel of a new picture, and we continue this process throughout our bitmap, pixel by pixel, until all pixels have had their respective First Amendment values removed from them. We now take this array of data (which is a picture in bitmap format) and post it publically for all the world to see. Depending on the complexity of our scheme, the picture we post may resemble a distorted photo of a boy or it may appear as a splotchy collage of random colors. We tell our friends what was used in our encryption so they can reverse the process and see the original photograph.

In this example, subtraction was the mathematical operation of choice in encrypting our photograph, but we could use all sorts of mathematical operations, with the more complex being the more secure. We can take any photograph and encrypt it in this fashion. In fact we can take material offensive to some people (e.g., pornography, pictures of Mohammad, the TARP bailout plan) and subtract the First Amendment values from it and post the difference online. Now the material will be splotchy nonsense and it will only become offensive when we add the First Amendment. In other words, we have an inoffensive collage of colors, and if we add anything but the First Amendment, the material stays splotchy and nonsensical; but when we add the First Amendment, suddenly it becomes offensive.

This begs the question, what caused the offense? The First Amendment or the splotches? And we need not be restricted to the First Amendment for our encryption; we can use the Ten Commandments or Hamlet or the lyrics of "Let it Be" by the Beatles.

Hopefully this idea has given you pause: It means that anything we look at which is being symbolically represented (i.e., not in the real world) can have the First Amendment subtracted from it and re-represented.

Let's go a step further and relate two photos with the First Amendment. Take my son's photograph and one I find objectional, such as a photo of Saddam Hussein. We subtract one photo from the other at each pixel, and find the mathematical operation that converts the remainder into First Amendment ASCII. We use this remainder conversion and subtract it from my son's photo to generate an initial picture. So this results in an initial splotchy image and we add the First Amendment with adjustments to get a picture of my son. Then we take my son, add the First Amendment with its adjustments, and we get Saddam. In this way objectional material is generated not by merely adding the First Amendment but by adding the First Amendment too many times (twice).

Let's further move this idea into the realm of quantified behavior and we have a philosophical discussion. If we can quantify a healthy eyes resting EEG by a string of spectral coefficients and a seizure by another string of coefficients, what to stop us from moving back and forth between the strings of number with any set of information and its adjustment array. Any measurement of behavior can be equated to any other measurement of behavior via representational transformations.

I call this First Amendment encryption for obvious reasons, but we can use the Bible (e.g., John 3:16) or Stephen King's latest opus, or any form of digital information (e.g., a Google map of New York City or the picture of the Statue of Liberty). Symbols are our greatest source of freedom and we should realize how much freedom they actually provide us.

-DK
 
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Reviews

NEW BOOKS

Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism
by Paul Collins
A journey into the realm of permanent outsiders.

 Clinical Neuroembryology: Development and Developmental Disorders
by Hans J. ten Donkelaar, et al
Overviews development of CNS in the context of developmental disorders.

 Geriatric Neuropsychology: Practice Essentials
by Shane S. Bush, Thomas A. Martin (Eds)
Comprehensive guide to neuropsychological applications for older patients.

 Fundamental Neuroscience, 2nd Edition
Edited
Comprehensive textbook that both graduate and undergraduate students.

 Poly-behavioral Addiction And the Addictions Recovery Measurement System Arms
by James Slobodzien
Most addicts are polydrug users; this treatment approach is an ecological viable approach, unlike single drug interventions.
Links to books at http://start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/oct2008.htm#section2

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JOURNAL PAPERS

Neurological correlates of reward responding in adolescents : Externalizing behaviors reflect environmental contingencies difficult to extinguish when contingencies change. 

Electromyographic biofeedback in treatment of musculoskeletal pain. : Electromyographic biofeedback may motivate patients to be active in establishing and reaching goals in rehabilitation. 

Family aggregation of mental disorders in Danish three generation study. : There are different patterns of familial aggregation of major mental disorders. 

High on habits. : Endocannabinoid signaling is critical for habit formation. 

Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation: QEEG Biofeedback Treatment Protocols. : QEEG deviations from a healthy group are the basis for an intervention plan. 

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Events Upcoming Courses

4-Day Comprehensive Course on Neurotherapy (dates subject to change)
Las Vegas, NV Mar 5-8
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
CONFERENCE        LOCATION          DATES
AAPB - aapb.org   Albuquerque, NM    Apr 2-4 

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Last Word

2008 Index

Spotlight articles

-Co-creation and conformity
-Conversations between a Physicist and a Neuroscientist.
-Frontal Lobe Facts
-Dominant Hemisphere Identification
-Journal of Neurotherapy, 2002-2008
-Journal of Neurotherapy, 1995-2001
-Mindshare
-SABA 2008 Conference
-Start My Day with EEG Spectrum Intl
-16th Annual ISNR Conference
-Underdeveloped Social Intelligence
-Why Licensure?

Last Word

-2007 Index
-Bogen and Consciousness
-DK Games for EEGer
-EEG Spectrum affiliates per state
-Information wants to be free (2008)
-PTSD in US warfighters
-Still Waiting for V
-Spiritual Trainer
-Square roots are hard: Magnitude vs Power
-Task-QEEG Assessment
-Who's in Charge
-William James' words

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