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

Vol. 8 No. 4 - April 2005

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) 2005
by EEG Spectrum Intl, Inc. or David Kaiser. All rights reserved.
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Announcements - News
In the Spotlight - Physical Therapy for the Brain
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - Dividing by zero, draft #2

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Experimental Drug Reverses Brain Injury in Rats
Autism linked to difficult births
Alcoholism-Linked Brain Damage Hits Women Sooner
Move towards autism test at birth raises fears
Brain-Damaged Fireman's Recovery a Mystery
The Scent of a Man
Anatomy of Give and Take
Searching for the Why of Buy
Revenge of the Right Brain

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

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In the Spotlight

Physical Therapy for the Brain - CIC 2005

When one thinks of autism, schizophrenia, perhaps even Down's
syndrome and a myriad of other conditions, one might come to the
conclusion: "What's done cannot be undone. "

But not so fast... Shakespeare's own queen of obsessive compulsive
disorder Lady Macbeth who uttered the famous phrase might have
thought otherwise had she attended last week's EEG Spectrum Intl
Clinical Interchange Conference. The realities of mental illness and
neurological disorders may be undone, more imaginary then real.
Imaginary to the extent that they can be eliminated, fixed, the
brain returned to evolutionary eloquence.

Let's be Descartes for a moment and think of the brain and mind as
separate. The metaphor may be helpful. When the brain is not fully
inhabited by the mind, for whatever reason, be it due to early
trauma, recent trauma, genetic predisposition, environmental toxins,
etc., mental illness must follow, or when the brain runs too fast or
too slow for the mind to follow, then chaos emerges. Neurotherapy is
a means to ensure that this physical piece of hardware, the brain,
is kept in working order.

The conference opened with a panel on Learning Theory. Ed Hamlin
spoke about the need for neurotherapists to understand four things
(which I hope I get right, as I was on the panel and not taking
notes). A therapist needs to understand something about learning
theory, something about the EEG technology we are using, something
about the brain and how it works, and finally something about being
a good clinician. Mike O'Bannon highlighted the importance of
intrinsic rewards over extrinsic rewards. When we are motivated by
internal forces, instead of beeps and M & M's, our potential is
endless. David Kaiser (myself) spoke about the acquisition and
consolidation phases of learning, as well as the Skinnerian
reinforcement schedules and related issues. Most important, and
unknown to most learning theorists, is the role of habituation in
learning. Looking at the EEG we can track when an individual learns,
when they and the environment are one. The presence of PRS
(post-response synchronization) is the true reward, a momentary
shutting off of the sampling or perceptual processes, to consolidate
the information one has acquired. We shut off when we think our
universe is the only universe.

Eran Zaidel described his hemispheric neurofeedback research, which
elegantly addresses the three central aspects of attention --
conflict resolution, orienting, and alerting -- by modifying
Posner's task into a lateralized version. Jack Johnstone spoke about
the robustness of event potential and potential for training them,
and how all of us can look forward to slowing mentally 1.5
milliseconds a year in our P300s... unless, I interject,
neurotherapy keeps us at our peak.

David Kaiser (myself) opened his second talk by repeating a portion
of Lanford Wilson's play "The Fifth of July." In this play, a
schoolteacher is transcribing from a tape player a story that a
speech-impaired boy has created. It is a science fiction story that
goes something like this: When humankind eventually mastered all the
forces of nature, they set out to explore the universe in search of
life and intelligence, but finding nothing of note in all the
galaxies of all the universe, they were obliged to return to Earth
where it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined
they would find."

This is my definition of adulthood: Becoming what one imagined one
would find when we got here (I'm recently turned 40). As a child I
imagined adults would soon have a cure for autism, a cure for
schizophrenia, a cure for nearly every human ailment, and many are
gone, but of course many remain. (I still await my videophone
wristwatch and personal jet pack as well.) I also talked about
assessing whether a client's brain was organized normally or not in
terms of speech, emotional processing, and spatial functions. Some
simple tests can help determine whether an electrode on the left
hemisphere is over the dominant (speech-centered, expressive)
hemisphere or actually above the non-dominant (receptive)
hemisphere. I also explained the orthogonality of coherence and
comodulation and previewed my "Infinite Content" SKIL games.

The Keynote address was a UCLA school-mate of mine. We took the same
Narrative and Psychology course from Jerome Bruner in 1991 or so, I
a grad student, he a psychiatric resident. Daniel Siegel, author of
The Developing Mind, spoke about the emerging field of interpersonal
neurobiology. We are a social species, linked together not just by
our words and senses, but by biological functions. Attachment theory
may be the best known aspect of this paradigm, and EEG itself was
the invention of a man who sensed interpersonal neurobiology well
before we did. (Hans Berger suffered a near-death accident as a
young man, and his sister had a premonition of the accident. Hans
spent decades trying to find the signal transponder in our heads
that had at that critical moment broadcast out to his sister
hundreds of miles away.) Interpersonal reality is already a reality.
The day before the conference, I ran a joint EEG biofeedback with
two of my students at RIT. Joining one's brain activity with another
is an idea with all sorts of applications, some of them therapeutic,
others recreational.

The conference also included numerous panels, breakfast discussions,
and a great atmosphere overall. Next month I'll provide the Defenses
Typology by Gray and MacNaughton that I talked about to some of the
attendees.

Here is what I took away from this year's CIC, my abstract for the
upcoming Tennet symposium on neurotherapy: Neurotherapy is physical
therapy for the brain. Using the tools and techniques of
neurotherapy an individual establishes or reestablishes adaptive
patterns of neurophysiological function: they learn their way to
better mental health. In the upcoming decade we will witness the
development of many new and exciting techniques that can
revolutionize the way people attain and maintain a sound mind and
body. It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future,
but here are a few: The number of electrodes or channels used in
training will increase, the complexity of analyses will increase,
and the training techniques and rewards will become more tailored to
client deficits. Coherence and comodulation training are realities,
as is LORETA training. Task-based neurofeedback will foster
appropriate brain responses to math, reading, and other executive
function challenges, and it is already a reality. Desensitization
training will become in part neurotherapeutic and allow us to
address the most intractable issues of childhood such as nonverbal
stage traumatization. Joint training sessions that involve dyadic
coupling are now practical and can address affect synchrony and
other parent-child and spousal neurobiological issues. Consciousness
itself may be trainable using bispectral and bicomodulation
techniques. As technology advances and session times cheapen,
coregistration training with fMRI should emerge to correct
dysrhythmia and discord between any two brain areas. The power for
good and the potential for harm will increase exponentially in the
next decade. To maximize the first and minimize the latter we must
not only refine our assessment and training capabilities and
increase our general knowledge of how the brain works, but we'll
need to better understand and be able to harness the most powerful
force in nature, and that is learning.

-DK

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News & Reviews

Neuronal Substrates of Sleep and Epilepsy
by Mircea Steriade
Examines neuronal mechanisms underlying sleep and paroxysmal
activities. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 0521817072/top100

Thalamocortical Assemblies: How ... Organize Sleep Oscillations
by Alain Destexhe, Terrence J. Sejnowski
Molecular and ionic mechanisms underlying sleep oscillations
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198524250/top100

Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond, 2nd Edition
by Theodore Millon
Description of 15 personality prototypes and 60 subtypes, in a
historical framework.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047101186X/top100

Fundamental Neuroscience, 2nd Edition
Edited
Comprehensive textbook that both graduate and undergraduate
students. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 0126603030/top100

Navigating the Social World: for Asperger's Syndrome...
by Jeannie McAfee, Dr. Tony Attwood
Exercises and guides for the student with AS.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885477821/top100

Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents
by John B. Reid, et al
Approaches to reduce antisocial behavior, from the earliest years in
childhood onward. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1557988978/top100

An Adult Child's Guide to What's Normal
by John C. Friel Ph.D., Linda D. Friel M.A.
Guide to begin dealing with pain and trauma of being raised in a
dysfunctional family. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558740902/top100

Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation: Children and Adolescents
by Mark Ylvisaker
Various perspectives on recovery, from everyone involved in TBI care
including the patient. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750699728/top100


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JOURNAL PAPERS

Evoked brain potentials in adolescents in normal conditions and in
attention deficit : Adolescents with ADD discriminated signal of
duration 11 msec significantly worse than normals during the oddball
paradigm.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15779327

Neuroimaging of emotion : Unwarranted use of proportional global
signal scaling (in fMRI) might contribute to conflicting results in
affective neuroscience.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15784431

Depression predicts drug abstinence in outpatient substance abuse
treatment. : Depression affects successful substance abuse treatment
outcomes.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15780549

Effects of mild traumatic brain injury cannot be differentiated from
substance abuse. : Patients with uncomplicated MTBIs and those with
substance abuse problems scored similarly on concentration, memory
and processing speed.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15762097

Neurobiologic processes in drug reward and addiction. : Compulsive
drive for drug use is complemented by deficits in impulse control
and decision making, mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex and
anterior cingulate.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15764467

Neural basis of eye gaze processing deficits in autism. : A
difference in the response of brain regions underlying eye gaze
processing was found for autism.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15758039

Amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex responses to fearful faces in
PTSD : PTSD group exhibited exaggerated amygdala responses and
diminished medial prefrontal cortex responses to fearful vs happy
facial expressions.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15753240

Neuroimaging studies of aggressive and violent behavior : Reviews 17
neuroimaging studies: compromise in prefrontal cortex and medial
temporal regions are implicated in aggressive or violent histories.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15753199

Effects of Methylphenidate on Quantitative EEG for ADHD during a CPT
: Methylphenidate increased alpha activities and decreased theta in
numerous areas during the CPT task but not during rest.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15744803


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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


Alexandria, VA Jun 23-26
Charlotte NC Jul 21-24

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 - http://www.skiltopo.com Anchorage AK Jun 6-12
ISNR - http://www.isnr.org Denver CO Sep 8-11
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Last Word

Dividing by zero, Draft #2 (Pinocchio draft)

I know this will be meaningless to many, but my newsletter, like the
universe, is self-published with no peer review to contain it, so if
it's not to your liking, I apologize for the inconvenience. Next
month I'll write about Ralph Waldo Emerson's favorite topic here,
which is also my favorite topic, Beauty.

Now let's get mathematical: Let's divide by zero. Well, that's hard,
my calculator freaks out. So let's start by multiplying by zero.

0 times infinity should approximate 1. But if I had a number larger
than infinity I know for sure I could merge it with nothing to make
something. Kind of like the universe.

Well, if you want to have a number larger than infinity, that's
simple. Just stack another at a right angle to it (orthogonal axis).
So infinity in the real and infinity in the imaginary create a
vector of the square root of two infinite. Multiply this by zero --
she also demands fairness so she has both real and imaginary axes,
leading to square root of 2 zero. Multiply the sq(2) zero by sq(2)
infinity and we get two. And two is all we have here, yin and yang,
the infinite and the infinitesimal, male and female. (0ir)(INFir)=2
We cannot live with them, and we cannot live without them.

Let's set infinity to C so that we can stay within our light cone.
This means (0ir)(Cir)=2, which means we can divide by zero more
easily, given a nicer algebraic term than INF. So 1/0ir=Cir.
Actually it looks like zero can mess with anything thrown at it,
much like my two sisters, so perhaps the equation that started it
all is best to be described as a flowing spectrum: 0 < C0 < C . But
going back to unity, 1/0=C and therefore 0=1/C meaning the smallest
something can be in the physical domain is never empty of content,
not in this light cone, but it is Planck's constant, which makes C
the reciprocal of Planck, around 1.5 times 10^33 or whatever, our
creation ratio. Relativity and quantum mechanics in a single
equation, 1/0=C, the infinite and infinitesmal, male and the female,
wave and particle, no spare parts.

This also unites math and science. Math cannot act freely,
abstractly, but must have a real referent on one axis, a
representation of something. Using an Einsteinian thought
experiment, take the ratio of temperatures in a room as it
approaches freezing with three thermometers, one Fahrenheit, one
Celsius, and one Kelvin, and now compare the F/C behavior to the F/K
behavior. The math in one ratio freaks near water freezing while the
other behaves, while the physical reality is unaffected. Note how
three elements are needed to create two different ratios, like men
and women requiring a third, the third being obvious perhaps.

Ok, now let's fix the most famous equation.

For E=mc(squared) the two Cs are not the same, one is real, the
other imaginary. Now, 1/0ir=Cir which suspiciously resembles
E/m=c(squared)... perhaps mass is so heavy because it weighs nothing
in two directions and it's hard to lift that much nothing. Instead
of Ci and Cr lets keep the imaginary speed of light constant as C
and the real one as D, the next letter in the alphabet. So this
breaks the terrible symmetry of Einstein's equation E=mc^2 to make
it E=mcd. This movement from imaginary to real is how Creation
continues to this day and how we progress towards more understanding
of ourselves and the world.

So a real short history of time is: Nothing gets reorganized as
singularity which divides into symmetry which breaks into infinity
which evoles into Mind/Body (relativity on one side, QM on the
other) which is regulated by the next dimension, brain, a perfect 5d
sphere, which gets pressure from ...

Oops, interrupted by my 7-year old autistic son. He just awoke (5
am) needing to use the bathroom. To get him out of the hypermale
mode of processing, invariant, left brain extraordinaire, will
require more neurotherapy, and perhaps a little estrogen. We'll see.
The battle for Jared is far from over. I've made a system of
feedback games, Infinite Content, that can evaporate even the
darkest of black holes, or so I hope, and bring them back to this
world. Hey, I've come out of holes nearly as deep and dark as the
one my son is in now, so it's very doable. But speaking of doable,
it's 6 am and I got to go defend my teaching job at 1 pm, so I have
to go back to sleep. I wish I could elaborate all this, but with
four kids to raise and play with, I rarely have a moment to myself.
Which is good...

-DK

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