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

Vol. 7 No. 5 - May 2004

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 the author's only. Copyright (C) 2004
by EEG Spectrum Intl, Inc. or David Kaiser. All rights reserved.
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Announcements - News
In the Spotlight - SABA 3, Annual Conference
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - Ideas from the Ferry

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Announcements - News

Mind Control Study Raises Hopes
Brain implants 'read' monkey minds
Brain Chemical Linked to Teen Suicides in Study
Mother-child bond identified
Brain reacts differently to beauty, displeasure, loneliness
Brain Lesions Appear After Temporary Amnesia
Yahoo Exec and Wife Give UCLA $25 Million
Bilingualism helps protect aging brains: study

All links at:
http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=science&cat=brain_research
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In the Spotlight

SABA 3, Society for the Advancement of Brain Analysis
(Annual Conference, June 6-11, 2004)

The Society for the Advancement of Brain Analysis, a nonprofit
membership group, held its 3rd annual conference on Catalina Island,
a few miles off the coast of Los Angeles. Catalina is an unusual
venue, located so close to Hollywood yet so far away. Wild buffalo
roam the island, the offspring of those shipped here eighty years
ago for the filming of a silent movie western. (The herd was
abandoned when it proved too costly to return to them to the
mainland.) Avalon, the only town on the island, is so small and the
roads so narrow that everyone except workmen drive golf carts. The
last afternoon there I saw six golf carts back out of parking spaces
in such synchrony, such operatic and comedic grace, that I felt I
was inside a Steve Martin film. With golf carts puttering along the
streets, open and friendly, and the beautiful Southwestern
architecture of the houses, I believe this is what the all of
civilization would look like if Bob Hope ruled the world.
The SABA conference is part training retreat, part scientific
conference. This latest foray included keynote speakers from the
larger conferences in this field. And unlike those conferences
(AAPB, ISNR), guest lecturers are given an entire evening - two
hours or so -- to present their data and develop their arguments.
The mornings are spent on training: daily tutorials on artifacting,
feedback strategies, acquisition and feedback software practicums.

M.B. Sterman, Ph.D. presented "EEG Oscillations, drive reduction,
and synaptic reorganization: How neurofeedback works." The thrust of
the talk is how SMR training facilitates learning, and gave me hope
that when confused about protocol selection, SMR training of central
sites should almost always be beneficial. Sterman discussed why this
is so physiologically, and to do this, phylogenetically. The
mammalian cortex evolved an architecture which produces the
oscillatory networks that allow learning, adjustment, flexibility,
providing new behaviors in the response to environmental challenges.
The reptilean brain, its predecessor, is hard-wired and reasonably
incapable of learning. Not only can we (primates) adapt, we can
learn to learn. Rats and squirrels can learn, but they do not learn
to learn. They take thousands of problems before they benefit from
such experiences, The rodent cortex, and its miniscule associative
cortex, does not allow for much positive transfer, the ability to
improve from similar but unidentical experiences of the past. Cats
fare better, but still it takes hundreds of trials before they get
the idea. Only in primates (and possibly cetaceans) do we witness
the full impact of positive transfer, how past learning facilitates
and speeds future learning.

David Kaiser, Ph.D. (myself) presented "Rogue-site Analysis: a new
metric for functional interpretation." I described this technique
last newsletter, last conference. One new element was the index
called global comodulation, the average of all comodulation
correlations across all site pairs, 19x18 pairs. This simple index
of brain connectivity, presumably, may reflect the overall maturity
of a brain. In particular ADHD children reveal less mature brains,
by their age, than their counterparts. Although this index is
computed using contributions of every electrode site, I suspect it
reflects specifically the frontal lobe's inability to orchestrate
the various posterior cortices. I also presented "Methodological
issues in QEEG" in which computational error is quantified for power
values (compared to magnitude), single tapering windows (compared to
overlapping tapering functions), seaming artifact rejection
techniques (compared to clipping, i.e., managing missing data during
averaging), and state transitions (i.e. activation trends in
baseline conditions). All of these comparisons should be in print
soon, and probably part of a standards paper when the opportunity
arises.

Simon Hanslmayr, from the University of Salzburg, Austria, presented
"Increasing cognitive performance in healthy subjects with
Neurofeedback." A student in Wolfgang Klimesch's lab, they are
investigating the roles of theta and alpha oscillations in cognition
and validating peak performance in neurotherapy.

Adam Clarke, Ph.D., University of Wollongong, Australia, who with
advisor RJ Barry has perhaps published more QEEG papers than anyone
in the last decade, reported on "Arousal, activation, or processing:
Which shell is the pea under in ADD?" Adam presented a series of
experiments that investigated what beta activity in ADHD means, and
in general what our EEG results for ADHD children mean. He found
that beta activity is largely incidental to the core symptoms of
ADHD. He also tackled the semantics of arousal/activation. Arousal
is poorly defined within psychophysiology literature and is often
interchanged with activation. Arousal he defines as the energetic
factor associated with amount of effort being employed to complete a
task. Activation is the actual processing of information by the CNS.
Arousal and activation can be dissociated, and he showed a study
where fatigued subjects (low arousal, generally) required high
activation to solve tasks. He concluded that alpha was a good index
of arousal, as have other researchers in the past (e.g., low alpha
7-9 Hz in particular reflecting arousal, high alpha 10-12 Hz,
activation.)

Allan Schore, Ph.D., UCLA, presented "The right brain, attachment
experiences, and the origin of self-regulation " where he discussed
how the right hemisphere's early development underlies our emotional
well-being and sense of self. Schore has two extensive books where
he acts as an "integrationist," as he calls himself, synthesizes
clinical and neuroscientific advances, notably developmental
affective neuroscience and neuropsychiatry. These books are Affect
Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, and Affect Regulation and
the Repair of the Self, the latter advocating neuropsychoanalysis.

Eran Zaidel, Ph.D., UCLA, presented "Hemispheric specialization and
cognitive performance: Effects on neurofeedback outcomes" in which
he discusses his approach to validate the effectiveness of
neurofeedback training. By preferentially training one hemisphere,
then testing the subject on tasks better performed by one or the
other hemisphere, the efficacy of specific neurofeedback protocols
can be quantified. All the interesting wrinkles available to
laterality researchers are being brought to bear on neurofeedback
research.

Denise Malkowicz, MD, Drexel University, provided a four-hour
tutorial on clinical EEG analysis, reviewing neurological methods
and principles in electroencephalography. Also, numerous clinical
findings were reported, including on autism/asperger, brain injury,
seizure, and depression. Presenters included Lynda Thompson, Ph.D. &
Michael Thompson, MD, Jolene Ross Ph.D. and Jim Caunt, Coralee
Thompson, MD, Henry Mann, MD, Al Collins, Ph.D, Merlyn Hurd, Ph.D.,
and Tamara Lorensen. Ricardo Weinstein Ph.D. reported on his work
with "The Criminal Brain" - how early brain injury and state-imposed
death penalties coincide.

Scott Makeig, Ph.D., USCD, presented "Mining event-related human
brain dynamics" where the consequences of independent component
analysis were discussed. This highly computational technique
attempts to discern cortical sources of activation by comparing and
decomposing signals received at each electrode. Concidentally the UC
system sent out a press release a few days after the conference
(http://www.ucnewswire.org/news_viewer.cfm?story_PK=3962)

Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, UCLA, presented "The mind and the brain:
Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Implications for
OCD". He is author of "The Mind and the Brain", "Brain Lock" and the
fascinating "Dear Patrick: Life is Tough - Here's Some Good Advice"
in which he reveals his correspondence to a New York City teenager
whose father left. Jeff argued how volition and instinct meet in the
human brain. Somewhere free will must interface with instinct,
conscious processes with automatic, nonconscious ones. In this
hybrid tissue there is a struggle, one that individuals with OCD and
other disorders occasionally lose. He suggested the striatum, and
localized the two properties of mental action to cell types located
there. (I imagine that randomness and order also have a physical
point of unification, where they sit down and divvy up the universe.
Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, would be my candidate for such a
place, where for a century now randomness has overwhelmed any sense
of order)

Wolfgang Keeser, Ph.D. closed the conference with a "State of the
Art" of EEG and neurofeedback technology. And this conference was
state of the art. Neurofeedback is as much about mammalian phylogeny
and technology as it is about volition.

-DK
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News & Reviews
NEW BOOKS

Developmental Neuropsychology: A Clinical Approach
by Vicki Anderson
Emphasis on assessment, treatment and management of pediatric
conditions. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/086377704X/top100

Neural Plasticity: Effects of Environment on the Development of the
Cerebral Cortex
by Peter R. Huttenlocher
Integrates recent research on plasticity in sensory systems, motor
cortex, higher cortical functions, and language development.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674007433/top100

Adolescence and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
by Naida Edgar Brotherston
Portrait of four young women with CFS.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789012081/top100

Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral
Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry
by Benjamin J. Sadock, Virginia A. Sadock
Integrates biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives.
Case histories. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0781731836/top100

Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their
Discoveries
by Stanley Finger
Neuroscience is steadily replacing psychology, philosophy, and even
religion as a model of self-understanding -- here are the pioneers,
from Cajal, Sperry, Galen, to Descartes.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019508571X/top100

An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage
by Malcolm Macmillan
Gage's family and personal background, including contemporary
medical and newspaper reports of the accident and its consequences,
and his treatment.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262133636/top100

Treating Epilepsy Naturally : A Guide to Alternative and Adjunct
Therapies
by Patricia A. Murphy, Russell L. Blaylock
Looks at treatment options, lifestyle choices, and ways of living
well. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0658013793/top100

Information in the Brain
by Ira B. Black
Describes how mental function, brain function and biological
information can be understood in molecular terms.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262521881/top100

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JOURNAL PAPERS

Brain plasticity following psychophysiological treatment in LD/ADHD
: Psychophysiological treatment impacts brain plasticity and
regulation, improving neurophysiology of frontal and posterior brain
regions along with school and neuropsychometric performance.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15050372

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder and changes in frontal alpha
asymmetry. : Alpha asymmetry scores for the PMDD group fell into the
negative range during the Luteal period while control subjects
remained stable.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15050374

Prognostic value of frontal functional neuroimaging in late-onset
severe major depression. : Specific frontal functioning (left
anterior fronto-cerebellar perfusion ratio) may predict the acute
antidepressant response in late-onset severe major depression.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15056574

Is there a sex difference in the course following traumatic brain
injury? : Females age 30 years or older had poorer outcome than
either males or younger females.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15068659

Cognitive tasks for driving a brain-computer interfacing system: a
pilot study. : Authors discuss nonlinear method in the attempt to
establish appropriate methods to operate BCI systems, particularly
for disabled people who experience difficulty with motor imagery.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15068187

Peculiarity of the right-hemisphere function in depression: solving
the paradoxes. : Depression is characterized by functional
insufficiency of the right hemisphere combined with its
physiological overactivation. Author argues
monosemantic/polysemantic issues.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14687851

Stability of resting frontal electroencephalographic asymmetry in
depression. : Test-retest stability of resting EEG alpha asymmetry
in 30 depressed women at 4-wk intervals exhibited modest stability
over 8- and 16-week intervals. However changes in asymmetry scores
were not related to changes in clinical state, severity.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15032992

Sex differences in adult ADHD: brain activity and autonomic arousal.
: Adult ADHD males (but not females) showed increased EEG theta
activity; adult ADHD females (but not males) were autonomically
hypo-aroused (decreased skin conductance level).
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15099695

Regional cerebral blood flow with subtypes of major depression. :
rCBF of right frontal lobe suggests two distinct types of
depression, atypical and melancholic.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15093962

Synchronized Oscillations at alpha and theta Frequencies in Lateral
Geniculate Nucleus. : Activation of the metabotropic glutamate
receptor may be the potential mechanism whereby the thalamus
promotes EEG alpha and theta rhythms in the intact brain.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15091341
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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

Los Angeles CA Aug 12-15
Portland OR Sep 18-21
Boston MA Oct 14-17
Raleigh NC Nov 11-14
Los Angeles CA Dec 9-12

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.

CONFERENCE LOCATION DATES
iSNR Ft Lauderdale Aug 26-29
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Last Word

Ideas from the Ferry

On the ferry home from the conference, I discussed a few of the
ideas I had rattling about, some I've written up in past
newsletters, some I haven't. Here are the top three:
(From March 2002 newsletter) In 1970 Eran Zaidel developed the
z-lens, contact lenses that darkened half of the visual field,
either the left or right sides. Schiffer (1997) placed masking tape
over the left (LVF) or right visual fields (RVF) of safety glasses
and he found that 42 of 70 patients reported more anxiety while
wearing his glasses. Depressed patients reported more anxiety with
LVF glasses (RVF-blocked/RH activating) and PTSD patients had more
anxiety waering RVF glasses. Unihemispheric activation may also
improve attention and functioning in patient populations such as
autism and schizophrenia. And we can also employ unihemispheric
training, by wearing z-glasses during neurofeedback sessions.

Continuing with eyeglass-taping, metaphorically, neurofeedback
practices might employ the optometrist's trick of improving a bad
eye by blocking the good. We've all seen the eyepatch look which
forces a young child to develop his or her bad eye. Well, the same
approach should work for cortex. We might improve function of
cortical modules that are underrelied upon by knocking out their
overachieving homologues. Ninety-nine percent of callosal fibers
connect homotopic regions of the brain. This means that frontal lobe
fibers in the left hemisphere connect to similarly located frontal
lobe areas on the right. Left inferior temporal lobe connects to
right inferior temporal lobe, F3 to F4, O1 to O2, etc. Callosal
fibers are both excitatory and inhibitory, and I suspect that when,
say, Broca's area fails to mature in an autistic, when it remains a
98-lb weakling, it is a victim of repression, of an inhibitory bully
in right frontal cortex kicking sand in its face whenever it apts to
act. Uptraining low frequency (1-6 Hz) over the homologue in
question should reduce its function temporarily. (I wouldn't
recommend this approach on clients until others have reviewed it, of
course.)

Finally, a reliable sham training technique eludes this field. The
problem with training any frequency band is, what if it actually
helps, and what if it actually hurts (like uptraining theta in
seizure disorder). If you want to prove that SMR training treats
ADHD, downtraining SMR is often offered as the control condition, or
uptraining what should be ineffective, like a low band like delta,
which would probably simply increase blinking. Perhaps the solution
lies outside of the spectral domain. Use the temporal domain for a
control. I suggest operant conditioning of moderate amplitudes,
amplitudes unassociated with any single band but all bands. As long
as the amplitudes are moderate and not too high (high amplitudes
require low frequencies), the frequency correspondence should be
nil. Most neurofeedback equipment can effectively train raw
(temporal domain) activity by setting reward or inhibit frequency
band to maximal width, say from .5 Hz to 60 Hz. Set amplitude
threshold to some middle range (e.g., 5-10 uV or whatever
empirically works).

-DK

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