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

Vol. 8 No. 8 - August 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 - Dolphin Consciousness
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - none
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Announcements

FDA gives firm OK for 2d test of brain sensor
Poor Hearing Can Impair Memory
Is the affinity for music innate?
Brain Protein Influences Weight Gain
Researchers find stem cells for brain cancer

All links at: news.yahoo.com/fc/Science/Brain_Research

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In the Spotlight

Dolphin Consciousness

Last Saturday I was an invited call-in guest on a radio show on
dolphin consciousness. Dolphins and schizophrenia were my initial
excursions into psychology. They seem unrelated, unless one finds
the common link: two films based on the life of John Lilly from my
childhood. Altered States (1980) and Day of the Dolphin (1971?).
Lilly invented the isolation tank to determine what happens mentally
when a brain is deprived of all sensory information -- sound,
temperature differences, sight. As it turns out, the brain when
deprived of sensation will make some of its own - it will generally
hallucinate. Fortunately most times most animal brain remain under
sensory constraints, but perhaps with the larger brain creatures
this is decidedly less so, and that is our strength.

In 1989, besides occasionally hanging out at Lilly's house in
Malibu, I flew out to Hawaii to work with the other (and current)
giant in the field of dolphin cognition, Lou Herman. I eventually
switched back to humans, as you know (EEG), but there are a lot of
advantages to dolphin cognition research that I miss. Albeit the pay
is not good, but everyone is in bikinis and the tanks are at the
beach. Herman's was adjacent to Waikiki Beach. Not a bad place to
spend a lifetime.

So what does dolphin consciousness has to do with neurotherapy?
Nothing directly, though Aquathought and other companies have
disabled kids swim with dolphins for treatment. Some believe the
dolphin's high-frequency pulses in the water improves the kids, a
sonic-driven frequency entrainment perhaps. I think it's the
realization that something (someone) far more powerful than you is
not only not dangerous, but wants to play with you. It's our
century's version of wrestling with angels.

This is August, the month of vacation, and vacating the normal path
is what we do this month, so let me vacate the normal path in this
newsletter. It's all part of the creative process, so instead of
thinking what it is to be you, think what it is not to be you. What
if you spent your entire life bathed in sound and water, like our
large-brained aquatic brethren? What would your mental life be like?
Would you, like a few on the radio show I was on (Virato live! -
http://www.newfrontier.com/asheville/the- revolution.htm) claim that
you were in telepathic communication with people? I wonder, or would
you be smarter than that....

(The) belief that mental experiences are a unique attribute of a
single species is not only unparsimonious; it is conceited. it seems
more likely than not that mental experiences, like many other
characters, are widespread, at least among multicellular animals,
but differ greatly in nature and complexity. -- D.R. Griffin, 1981.

The largest brain ever to evolve belongs to the Cetacean order, home
of dolphins, killer whales, and the largest dolphin of them all, the
sperm whale (Physeter catodon) whose brain can weigh up to 9.2 kg
Ridgway, 1986). Lilly (1967) argued that such a brain must produce
consciousness exceeding our own, but most scientists note the very
low brain-to-body weight ratio of the sperm whale, below that of a
cow, and are left wanting. But if there is anything I know about the
brain it's that the relationship between brain and mind is not an
obvious one, and consciousness is no exception. Our form of
consciousness -- representation of one's own mentation -- probably
emerged during historic times (Jaynes, 1976; Snell, 1953), but
features of self-awareness may be prevalent in other mammals,
especially those with the extra neural hardware such as apes,
carnivores, elephants, and whales.

Cetaceans are secondary aquatic mammals who, with the sirenians
(manatees), are the only terrestrial mammals that have made a
complete transition back to living in the sea. Dolphins evolved from
a species that foraged in coastal waters until finally adapting to a
complete life in the sea 50 or so million years ago. Once in the
sea, they hit an ecological jackpot -- encephalization (large
braininess) developed rapidly, surpassing all others as early as 15
to 25 million years ago. That is, until we came along. Much of what
we know about cetacean neuroanatomy and neurophysiology comes from
research performed on the Atlantic bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops
truncatus). Tursiops demonstrates great flexibility in vocal and
physical behavior, and is believed by many to be the most
intelligent cetacean. The resemblance of the dolphin brain to the
human brain is unsettling at first sight (see Figure 1 and 2,
online). Its great size and convolutions were noted centuries ago
(John Ray, 1671). Tursiops has an average brain size of 1587 g while
Home sapiens average below 1400 g (Ridgway, 1986a). Encephalization
quotients (EQ) which takes into account an animal body size --, a
neuroanatomical IQ of sorts -- are nearly double that of apes, and
are higher than any other mammal, except one

A dolphin's is most convoluted brain we know of, having more surface
area per volume than even our own brains, nearly twice our surface
area (Ridgway, 1986). But their cortex is relatively thin, about
half of ours (1.3 compared to 2.9 mm at its thickest) so despite
greater mass, the dolphin cerebral cortex is 560 cc compared to
human's 660 cc. Not bad, considering that no other species comes so
close.

Evolution, like good film directing, is about slowing events down,
letting development proceed over time, retarding progress until a
new fruition is had. Prolonged youth is not only the goal of many
Americans, it is the goal of the evolution of intelligence. Time is
needed for brain expansion, time to learn. Most mammals are born
with up to 80 % of the full adult brain weight, but our neonates
possess only a quarter of the final product and take two decades of
growth before reaching the final weight. Tursiops is born with 43%
of its final goal and takes a decade to reach adult levels, a pace
that places them above most apes.

As I said in the radio show, not to put a downer on our dreams, but
humans are probably the most intelligent species on the planet. Sad,
but true. I didn't always think this, and would love if some
pan-dimensional creature could take over terrestrial governance once
in a while, maybe drive down the deficit and get us out of Iraq, but
the other radio show guests didn't take a shine to any denigration
of cetacean intelligence, least of all coming from a primate. One of
the guests had experienced telepathic communication with a pod of
dolphins in the past so she knew I was wrong....Well, some
investigators argue, downingly, that the increased neocortex in
marine mammals IS something to sneeze at. Large swimming brains do
not imply the same thing (higher intelligence) as do large brain
ashore. Deep diving (prolonged hypoxia) could require more cortical
wiring (Wilson, 1933, cited in Ridgway, 1986a), or the neural wiring
could be metabolically less active (probably not true) or the lack
of REM sleep makes the wiring less efficient, such as with the
echidnas (probably true). Or echolocation needs more wiring for the
same bang-to-buck ratio of sight or smell. This argument might fly,
but if the billions of echolocating small-brained bats didn't.

Size is not everything. When it comes to brains and most everything
having to do with energy, organization beats out. The cetacean brain
resembles the layout of the earliest mammalian (insectivore) brains,
partly because that is when these creatures split from the
terrestrial genome, and this suggests some gross primitiveness, but
they boast more neocortex than us, 97.9% to 95.9% (Glezer, Jacobs, &
Morgane, 1988). Yet still the cytoarchitecture appears conservative,
relatively agranular or dysgranular, lacking laminar layer IV except
for the presence of an incipient layer here and there. Tursiops
neocortex is dominated by phylogenetically older layers I and VI,
with an accentuated layer II due to layer I inputs with no true
"Betz" cells present. The largest neurons tend to be in the
pyramidal cell layers, III and V, and these neurons do not show the
wide variations in size compared to terrestrial mammals - okay,
okay, enough of the neuroscientific speak... so... overall their
brains are white bread and mayo -- monotonous....
paleo-archicortextual. For instance the columnar organization in
visual areas are larger and fewer than half the number of homologous
structures in humans. Cytoarchitectonic analysis reveals only
"prokoniocortex" (rudimentary layer IV), with no signs of
koniocortex or parakoniocortex.... hey, it's hard to stop the
sci-talk once one starts.

According to Morgane, Jacobs, and Galaburda (1985), cetacean
neuroevolution arrested at a paralimbic/parinsular stage. In other
words they returned to the sea before the latest upgrades in sensory
and motor processors. So they are running DOS while we are running
Windows (which would explain our problems... more of us need to run
Macs). Neuroevolution progressed via replication, more and more of
the same modules, instead of differentiation. But one should keep in
mind that the rules governing neocortical organization are obviously
different in Cetaceans than in most mammals. Idioadaptations --
specific changes in reaction to unique environmental pressures (an
aquatic existence, for instance) -- have occurred.

Despite any apparent structural primitiveness, cetaceans demonstrate
hemispheric specialization and hemispheric independence. Dolphins
typically have a "viewing eye", usually a right eye preference for
viewing strangers and novel stimuli. The optic chiasma is completely
crossed in cetaceans so that such viewing indicates an initial
left-hemisphere (LH) inspection during encounters, and each eye can
act independently (disconjugatedly). Morrell-Samuels, Herman, and
Bever (1988) demonstrated cognitive lateralization in
sign-language-trained Tursiops, a LH advantage for processing
complex signs and a RH advantage for simple gestural commands (not
unlike the human pattern). Initial presentations of gestural
commands result in a right-hemisphere advantage in reaction time
which is slowly replaced by a LH advantage with subsequent
presentations. Again, paralleling human findings. Cetaceans also
demonstrate the greatest example of hemispheric independence,
unihemispheric sleep: when one hemisphere is asleep (in stages 1-3)
the other hemisphere is always awake, displaying desynchronized EEG
patterns, often with one or both open eyes, (Mukhametov, Supin, and
Polyakova, 1977). Cetaceans are voluntary breathers and
bihemispheric sleep, which can occur in dolphins only under
anesthesia, if prolonged, results in drowning. Most dolphin species
show only short bursts of REM sleep, so our aquatic angels (or
fallen angels) do not dream... hmmmm. Another unusual property is
their relatively small corpus callosum, smaller in proportion than
nearly every other mammals', about a fifth of our own.

Primate intelligence evolved to solve social problems (Cheney and
Seyfarth, 1990) and was only later extended to nonsocial problems.
The evolutionary significance of consciousness, or reflective
introspection, or internal awareness, lies in the insight it
provides the possessor about the (predicted future) behaviors of
others. All mammals may be conscious of different aspects of their
world, from proprioceptive body awareness to awareness of social
agency (Crook, 1983), however the extent of consciousness in humans
may be an idioadaptation to a hyper-complex social environment. The
social behavior of Tursiops may not be as developed as that of
higher primates (J. Mann, pers. comm.), but we are both social
predators and interspecial conflict is common in dolphins so they
may have developed similar representations of mentation to survive.

Dolphins do show some signs of self-awareness. For instance,
punishable behaviors are often performed only when a dolphin
believes no one is around (e.g., Savage-Rumbaugh and Hopkins, 1986).
When a dolphin squirts water at a human to show annoyance, he often
raises his head out of the water to curiously observe the effect his
behavior had on the unsuspecting victim (personal observation).
Dolphins also have voluntary penile erections, which may suggest
that they are conscious of things of which humans are not.

But anthropocentric definitions of consciousness (e.g., self-nonself
and public versus private distinctions) may not be entirely useful
for understanding the mental life of a cetacean. Tursiops are
specialized for acoustical processing and probably structure the
world acoustically more than visually. Objects are most real when
based on auditory data. Whereas dogs and cats are smell brains,
humans mostly sight brains, dolphins are mostly sound brains.
Tursiops have echolocation and four other vocalizations and this
co-occurrence of communicative and perceptual processing in the same
modality may be their strength and weakness. Dolphins may be unable
to distinguish between their sonar and another's communications
(Lilly, 1967). The public nature of echolocation broadcasts and
echoes may also result in shared perceptual information to such an
extent that self-nonself boundaries are functionally meainginless. A
perceptual world constructed of shared raw data might permit an
intensity of group cohesion unimagineable to humans, or any primate
for that matter. A dolphin may include others as part of his or her
"decision- making unit" or self (a "group mind", Jerison, 1986).
This could help explain widespread observations of reciprocal and
inter- species altruism, a phenomenon once believed by many to
belong to humans alone. Whatever cases are made for or against
dolphin consciousness, it is interesting to remember that they as a
species have had this ability perhaps a hundred times longer than we
have (200 K years compared to 25 million).

Addendum: I ended my radio appearance with a brief mention of the
Aquatic Ape hypothesis of human evolution. We Homo sapiens sapiens,
the remaining branch or twig in the bushy hominid line that began in
Africa and which we eventually outslugged or outreproduced or
outweathered until all but us remained alive on this planet, we
likely went through an aquatic phase of our own, not unlike
dolphins. We are voluntary breathers, a trait shared by only marine
mammals and no terrestrial ones. Our relative hairlessness, the
distribution of the hair that remains, and our fat distribution
under the skin (blubber to keep us warm) all suggest a semi-aquatic
stage in our evolutionary past. A hundred thousand years ago or so a
village or two of humans took to coastal waters like dolphins had
done millions of years before and eventually a few of the neighbors'
kids learned to control their breathing and swim longer and
underwater, thereby opening a once unlimited and untapped resource.
This new ecological niche, and the fish oils that came with it, may
have fed the hungry growing brain, allowing all this new behavioral
flexibility in the first place. Perhaps it was in water where a few
of us refined our sound production techniques, and then brought
these skills back to the home fires at night. Perhaps coastal living
is in our genes. That would certaintly explain our penchant, and the
high prices, associated with living at the shore.

-DK
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News & Reviews

NEW BOOKS

Mind, Stress, and Emotions: The New Science of Mood
by Gene Wallenstein
Genetic, biological, psychological, and environmental bases of
emotions, with novel treatment strategies for mood and anxiety
disorders. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972060731/eegspectrum

Sleep And Sleep Disorders: A Neuropsychopharmacological Approach
by Malcolm Lader
New book on the neuropsychopharmacological of sleep.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587062542/eegspectrum

Executive Function In Children, Adolescents, And Adults With ADHD
by Weyandt
Executive deficits in ADHD are not gender-specific, persist, and
often are not accounted for by intelligence or comorbidities. --
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805895035/eegspectrum

Handbook of Disruptive Behavior Disorders
by Herbert C. Quay, Anne E. Hogan
Three quarters of all psychopathological disorders of childhood and
adolescence are disruptive behaviors (ADHD, ODD, CD). Reviews
various issues of this disorders including assessment.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306459744/ eegspectrum

Cognitive Electrophysiology of Mind and Brain
by Alberto Zani, Alice Proverbio
Reviews developments in recording of bioelectric and magnetic
responses of the brain.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0127754210/eegspectrum

Neurotransmitters, Drugs and Brain Function
by Roy Webster
Textbook for students of pharmacology, psychology, neuroscience, and
related disciplines.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471978191/eegspectrum

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: From Genes to Patients
by David Gozal
Discusses the genetics and recent research in clinical neuroscience
on ADHD --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 1588293122/eegspectrum


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JOURNAL PAPERS

EEG biofeedback in the treatment of ADHD : Clinical improvement was reported in
three-quarters of ADHD patients, but more controlled group studies are needed.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16013783


Personality traits and its association with resting regional brain activity. :
Some associations are found between delta and theta activity across cortex with
Extraversion and Conscientiousness but few associations were found for alpha
and beta activity.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16019096


EEG evidence for mirror neuron dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders. :
Following the idea that mu activity (8-13 Hz) over sensorimotor cortex reflects
mirror neuron activity, high-functioning autistics showed mu suppression to
self- performed hand movements but not to observed hand movements.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15993757


Long-term stability of frontal EEG asymmetry in depression : Alpha asymmetry
was moderately stable in depressed and normals individuals (intraclass
correlations between 0.39 and 0.61).
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16002168


EEG mapping and LORETA in diagnosis of psychiatric disorders : Low-resolution
brain electromagnetic tomography identifies brain regions affected by
psychiatric disorders and psychopharmacological substances.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15999906


rTMS in treating OCD and Tourette's syndrome : Normalization of right
hemisphere hyperexcitability was observed after just the first week of rTMS
treatments.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15982444


Influence of Age, Gender, Health Status, and Depression on Quantitative EEG. :
Prefrontal cordance in theta activity, independent of demographic variables,
was associated with pathophysiology of depression and response to treatment.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15990459

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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 (subject to change)

Hasbrouck Heights, NJ Sep 22-25
Atlanta, GA Oct 20-23
Portland, OR Nov 10-13
Woodland Hills, CA Dec 8-11
San Antonio, TX Jan 19-22, 2006
Orlando, FL Feb 23-26
Phoenix, AZ Mar 23-26
Boston, MA Apr 20-23
Washington DC Jun 22-25

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.

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Conferences for Neurofeedback Clinicians & Researchers

CONFERENCE LOCATION DATES

ISNR - http://www.isnr.org Denver CO Sep 8-11
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Last Word

None - Enjoy your summer!

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