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

Vol. 8 No. 5 - May 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 - Defensive Clinical Disorders
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - Imaginary and Real Time

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Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain
Words Sharpen Visual Memory, Study Finds
Experimental Drug Reverses Brain Injury in Rats
Autism linked to difficult births
Alcoholism-Linked Brain Damage Hits Women Sooner

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

Review the evolution of www.eegspectrum.com since 1999 using the
WayBack machine. Not all links work, but here are two early ones:
04/27/1999, 03/04/2000. EEG Spectrum, Inc., the
precursor of ESII, went online in December 1995, a mere year after
the web was born.

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In the Spotlight

Defensive Clinical Disorders

My daughter attends first grade at the school across the street.
Because there is no crossing guard or light, she takes a bus which
after picking her up strangely does not go directly to the school.
The bus meanders around the shops and side streets of our little
village, passes under the single traffic light of Churchville at
least twice in two directions. Our house sometimes seems the center
of Schoolville each morning as every few minutes school bus after
school bus rumbles down our street to pick up the next batch of
school children for the next batch of schools. We share schools with
a larger neighboring town, but still I cannot believe we need a
dozen or so buses to service a town of 2,000. But I'm not
complaining, I'm simply sharing my disbelief.

Well, about a month ago one of the regular bus driver was ill and a
substitute bus driver accidently stopped in front of our house.
Before we realized that it was the wrong bus, Madison had jumped on
board and the bus pulled away. My wife caught the number of the bus
and called the school to find out if this bus went to the elementary
school across the street, and sure enough it did, and with less
meandering, but just to be sure the transfer from strange bus to
school went smoothly, my wife walked over to the school's back
entrance and waited for my daughter to appear. After a moment my
little girl did, of course -- it's a very safe town, a bus nearly
for every child, something out of the 1950s, but what stayed with me
this day is what my daughter said when she hopped off the strange
vehicle.

"Mommy," she said, "there was a whole bunch of new friends on that
bus."

What a way to be. Dropped into a group of strangers my
seven-year-old daughter sees only friends, friends she simply
doesn't yet know.

The late Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton published a seminal work
on anxiety and fear that organizes the techniques and brain
structures employed by adults to defend themselves from the strange
people on our bus. It is a very clear and easy way of thinking about
"defensive" clinical disorders, as they call them, placing the most
common maladaptive defenses into a single hierarchy. Why this work
is not well known in our field (though perhaps it is to some) may be
partly on account of some bad titling. "The Neuropsychology of
Anxiety: An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal
System", Gray & McNaughton (2000). A good opening followed by a
rarely diagnosed form of publisher's introversion -- a subtitle
meant to scare potential buyers away, I think. "Septo-Hippocampal
Systems" sounds like a how-to plumber's guide more than a cogent and
well-organized tome about the neurophysiology of clinical disorders.

Here is their Functional Typology for Defense.

(A figure appears on the web version of this newsletter,
http://start.eegspectrum.com/Newsletter/may2005.htm). For those who
will not look at the image online, here is a verbal description of
the typology:

There are the two types of threat: potential and actual. Depending
upon the type of threat and whether it is detectable and avoidable,
different brain structures are involved and different responses
occur. I reordered the figure and the text below to mimic shrinking
defensive distance, as they discussed in their book. I also raise
detectability one level in the potential threat hierarchy, which
they didn't do, and added some animal perspective to clarify the
drama.

LEGEND: Type of Threat-- mental strategy; brain response; clinical
disorder; brain structure involved

Undetectable avoidable potential threat-- Anticipate; Obsess; OCD;
cingulate
Detectable avoidable potential threat-- Assess; anxiety; GAD;
septal-hippocampus
Detectable unavoidable potential threat-- Conserve resources;
depression; depression; NA/5HT neurotransmitters
Avoidable actual threat-- Flee; fear; phobia; amygdala
Avoidable or unavoidable actual-- Fight; anger; (rage and related
disorders); medial hypothalamus
Unavoidable actual threat-- Freeze; panic; panic disorder,
periaqueductal gray (PAG)

Another way is to convert generic terms to an animal perspective:

Animal senses danger (Undetectable avoidable threat)
Animal perceives distant strange object (Detectable avoidable
threat)
Strange object approaches (Detectable unavoidable)
Object closes until it's within the immediate environment (avoidable
threat)
Object closes to its likely striking range (avoidable or
unavoidable)
Object closes to within animal's striking range (unavoidable)

I've been emailing Neil about an illogical aspect in this response
order, at the end of the typology. The last two defenses are fight,
followed by freeze. Why would we fight for a bit, and failing to
keep the predator at bay, suddenly freeze? Given that threats -- a
bigger fish, a larger crustracean, an unruly boss -- likely have
longer reach than us, a larger zone of attack than its potential
victim, why stop fighting when the enemy has finally drawn within
range of our teeth and claws? Why not freeze earlier, before we
started fighting? Maybe we freeze and the predator may pass us by.

But not everything is a predator. In fact few things are.

Neil's response to what I saw as a reversal of response logic has to
do with leaping past the attack, not exposing one's flank when nose
to nose, etc. My idea is that we freeze at the closest range because
another functional system kicks in. This large object didn't kill
you at the fight zone range... so maybe it isn't a predator at all
but a potential mate. Many species are dimorphic, males
significantly larger than females, so perhaps the last stage of
surrender is not defensive at all. A functional typology of mating
may ride side by side with defensive behaviors.

Neil summarized it all as follows:
Clinical symptoms such as phobia, fear, anxiety, panic, and OCD are
of maladaptive intensity due to either (1) excessive sensitivity to
specific eliciting stimuli -- excessive resources used in detection
or (2) excessive activation of relevant brain structure -- excessive
resources used in response. (PTSD is a special condition which
simply predisposes us to comorbidities.)

Defensive assessment and response systems have to be able to
override higher brain systems occasionally, but a clinical disorder
is when one or more of these systems have performed the obligatory
coup d'etat over conscious cortex but then has refused to step down
from power. (Not unlike Alexander Haig saying I'm in charge here
after Reagan's shooting.) Mental health is restoration of the
republic (cortex).

-DK
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News & Reviews

Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Complete Guide ...
by Chantal Sicile-Kira
Popular resource for parents and educators.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399530479

Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Proactive Intervention
by Jean L. Blosser, Roberta DePompei
Addresses unique needs of children with traumatic brain injury and the role of
speech- language pathologists in recovery of skills.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0769300553

Therapeutic Exercises for Children
by Robert D. Friedberg, Barbara A. Friedberg, Rebecca J. Friedberg
Cognitive-Behavioral exercises --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568870655

Clinical MR Neuroimaging: Diffusion, Perfusion and Spectroscopy
by Jonathan H. Gillard, et al
Discusses technology and applications of clinical MRI machines.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521824575

A Bird's-Eye View of Life with ADD and ADHD: Advice from Young Survivors
by Chris A. Zeigler Dendy, Alex Zeigler
Survival guide to help kids/teens with attention deficit cope with life.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967991137

The Traumatic Brain Injury Handbook
by Camilia Anne Czubaj
Discusses different classifications of concussions, and cognitive and affective
learning strategies and outcomes. -- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972123806

Psychic Trauma: Dynamics, Symptoms, and Treatment
by Ira Brenner
Clinical study of psychic trauma, focusing on two groups--early physical and
sexual abuse and Holocaust survivors. --
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765703653

Somatoform Dissociation: Phenomena, Measurement, and Theoretical Issues
by Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis
Describes how trauma, somatoform dissociation and defense may work together.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 0393704602

The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook
by Edmund J. Bourne "
Clearly written workbook for phobia and related problems.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157224223X

Cognitive Neuropsychology Of Alzheimer's Disease
by Robin Morris
Theoretical and clinical issues, how it progresses over time and the
characteristics of the prodromal phase. --
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198508301

Mapping Cognition in Time and Space
by Th. Muente, H.J. Heinze
Focuses on high temporal resolution neuroimaging techniques -- event-related
brain potentials, magnetoencephalography --
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9051994923

Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook
by Joyce H. Lowinson, et al
Textbook on biological, psychological, and social aspects of substance abuse.
For clinicians. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ ASIN/0781734746
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JOURNAL PAPERS
Methylphenidate-evoked changes in striatal dopamine : Correlational evidences
suggests that methylphenidate decreases dopamine neurotransmission in ADHD.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15808987


The thalamus in patients with refractory medial temporal lobe epilepsy. :
Anterior thalamic atrophy was found with medial temporal lobe epilepsy, with
greater ipsilateral atrophy.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15809001


Affect-modulated startle in adults with childhood-onset depression :
Participants with numerous depressive episodes display a blunted startle
response across affective conditions.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15808286


Disturbance of dorsolateral prefrontal-hippocampal functional connectivity in
schizophrenia. : During working memory, patients showed reduced activation of
the right DLPFC and left cerebellum.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15809405


Left prefrontal rTMS impairs performance in affective go/no-go task. : A
picture-based affective go/ no-go task was impaired by left prefrontal
repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation compared with right prefrontal or
occipital stimulation.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15812319


Examining the diagnostic utility of EEG power measures in ADHD : Classification
results support an independent diagnostic test for ADHD based on EEG power at
rest.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15826843


Functional connectivity of dissociative responses in PTSD : Greater activation
of neural networks involved in bodily state representation was seen in
dissociated PTSD subjects than in controls.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15820708


Frontal lobes and the regulation of mental activity. : Discusses the
implications of possibly specific or modular frontal lobe mechanisms compared
to general regulatory mechanisms.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15831406


Neuropsychological correlates of EEGs in children with epilepsy. : Conclusions
drawn from adult surgical studies cannot be generalized to pediatric patients.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15847849


Functional neuroanatomy of spatial attention in autism spectrum disorder. :
Autism spectrum disorders exhibit a dysfunctional cerebello-frontal spatial
attention system .
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15843105


EEG spectral changes in treatment-naive, actively drinking alcoholics. :
Increased EEG power across theta to high beta bands distinguishes
treatment-naive alcoholics from controls.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15834218

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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

Imaginary and Real Time

Sometimes it is enough just to remember
There was once a time before we knew about time
When the self and the world fit snugly together.
-- Edward Hirsch

Frank Conroy, Director of the Writers' Workshop at the University of
Iowa, died recently at the age of 69, the same age as my father,
also named Frank, when he died on Christmas Eve 2000. Before his
death Conroy was interviewed about his life in Iowa City as director
of the world's oldest and most prestiguous writing program. The
Workshop has been around for 70 years and it has been a revolving
door for famed literati since its inception. Writers such as John
Irving, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, have taught or studied here,
to namedrop a few. Frank came in to take the job during my final
year of the program and he occasionally hung out with us at the
Foxhead, playing pool and drinking beer or martinis or whatever the
night's poison happened to be. He was closer to my poet friends than
he was to me because, frankly, I was a kid. He was famous in
literary circles for as long as I had been alive, having authored
the most well-received bildungsroman (coming of age novel) since
Catcher in the Rye. His novel was Stop-Time and it would eventually
land him a cushy job at Iowa. We chatted occasionally but never
man-to-man. In his eyes I was a boy and I could see that. Most of
the writers had already lived before trekking out to the wilds of
Iowa. They had spent time in Morocco or South Africa or South Texas,
or were emerging from with their first divorce or second child or a
Hollywood contract that went sour. Everyone was deep into their 30s
or 40s and I was a boy, 22 years of age, writing well beyond my age
and ability.

I tried to read Conroy's novel once but I couldn't get into it. "My
father stopped living with us when I was three or four," it begins.
I didn't want to approach that kind of grief. Perhaps I'll never
read it, but I did come away with the title: Stop-Time. As a command
or even a faint whisper of adolescent power, it's beautiful. Time
should be stopped. Stop the world now, I want to get off. Time is
our enemy and our only friend and one thing for sure, she is more
beautiful than we deserve and not the same beauty we knew in our
youth.

Okay, leaving beauty aside and getting back to reality, I had two
career options when I left Iowa in 1988: Enter a doctoral program,
or park cars at Comiskey Park. I never cared for the Chicago White
Sox and I hoped to keep my mind alive for another year or two so I
sought out the intellectual sanctuary of more graduate school.
Graduate school is where you gradually realize you don't want to go
to school any more, to quote a workshop alum (Irving). I applied to
seven Psychology programs and was turned down by nearly all, which
didn't surprise me as my sole preparation for a Ph.D. in Cognitive
Psychology was an MFA in fiction writing, a BA in English, and a
handful of classes in the discipline I planned to take on as my
career. Worse still, my research statement was a discourse on
beauty, a topic few scientists (save physicists and mathematicians)
ever admit they are studying until their last decade of life and
here I was tackling taboo on page one of my application. Fortunately
UCLA didn't balk and gave me a home for six years, for which I will
forever be grateful.

As we all realize, the laws of beauty are not subtle, just hard to
pin down. Like obscenity, we may not be able to define it, but we
can recognize it when we see it. For every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction. That is beauty, push is pull. Physics is
nothing but beautiful ideas, one of the better ones being imaginary
time. Stephen Hawking uses imaginary time to keep the Big Bang at
bay, and I could use it to avoid loneliness (zero) at any scale, but
the imaginary time metaphor I want to talk about is the one we all
share, our sense of self, our real and imaginary senses of self.

We are born a fawn, a dove, a cloud. We fit into a universe more
perfectly than we can ever imagine. Beauty is the normal state of
life in this world; we know this because of "the perpetual effort of
Nature to attain it" (Emerson). Beauty is alignment, attention,
devotion to that which is more beautiful. This is rule one in a
universe of very few rules. (Another rule seems to be 0 plus 0 is 2
for very large or unstable values of 0.) So the mind is real, the
body imaginary, but like the hands of a clock we need each one to
tell time. Beauty reveals the secret laws of Nature (Goethe). Beauty
is the moment of transition, (Emerson). Beauty is when reality and
the imaginary are interchangeable (Kaiser).

We are born real and slowly realize that we live in an imaginary
world that we depend upon. Imaginary in the sense that it came
before us, is not us, and yet is us and affects us and we affect it,
if we so endeavor. We often lose balance between ourselves and
others, our mind and body, the imaginary and the real, the
consensual world and our private one. These can be times of learning
or times of crisis -- it is your choice. Choice may be the third
rule of life, and hopefully the last. Perhaps our brain is too big
for us, too large for a primitive species. As a child this endless
expanse can come easily or painfully or not at all. For some,
infinities are granted, and freely; to others there is constant fear
and doubt. Two worlds seem to collide in the same schoolyard: Seek
and we shall find, for some, and seek and you will be lost, for
others. This parrots RD Laing -- a person secure in her sense of
self gratifies herself whereas an "ontologically insecure person is
preoccupied with preserving (herself)."

Most of my life I've experience the former, but not always, and I've
never skated through any part of life. Let me give you example of
the latter. In 5th grade science class we had to complete a team
project and two boys on the brink of becoming the class bullies
grabbed me for their team. I already had a reputation of taming
teachers so they thought it would be a breeze. Unfortunately my
imaginary world was not as powerful as theirs.

I happily joined them and we set out to work on learning everything
about the bathysphere, a small submersible submarine for one,
collecting various facts of interest for a brief class presentation.
But minutes before our talk, the teacher launched into a lecture and
it was, strangely, all about the bathysphere. Here it was, all the
work we had found on our own in the books and materials in class,
and it was being spooled out of head by the only adult in the
classroom. When it came time to give our talk, we sounded like
simpletons, repeating everything he had just said. Instead of
recognizing his error, the teacher leaned into us, criticized our
laziness, our lack of diligence, and gave us all a D for our (lack
of) work. I stood there dumbfounded as I listened to him, focused on
his crossed and agressive body language. I could sense the scolding,
but was also above it as it happened. This was not meant for me,
this was not my imaginary world. This was a glimpse into the world
of the two boys beside me, a world I would never make for myself.
School to my chums was a place without rules, or worst, a place
where effort mattered not, rules were fixed, outcomes predetermined,
and the dice were always rigged against you.

Their imaginary world was dead set on killing those boys. Who would
create such a monster, except a child. It taught me that not
everyone is living in my imaginary world and how we should all tread
gently when we accidently step into an imaginary world someone else
has drawn. As Ethel Thayer, the matriach in the 1980 film "On Golden
Pond" explains it, "Sometimes Billy you have to look hard, you have
to look really hard at a person to realize he's doing the best he
can; he is just trying to find his way." Perhaps some of us create
imaginary worlds that have no way, no exit, no freedom. Some are so
much a trap they kill even the kindest souls who draw near them. So
my last thought on beauty is a bittersweet one, when the imaginary
overcame the real last century.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
-Anne Frank (1929-1945), Diary of a Young Girl


-DK
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