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

Vol. 8 No. 9 - September 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 - Psychopathology by the Numbers
News & Reviews - Books & journal papers
Events & Locations - Conferences, Courses
Last Word - 13th Intl Society for Neuronal Regulation
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Announcements

Some Minds Appear Wired to Lie
Study Reveals How Your Brain Sleeps
Scientist: MRIs Can Serve As Lie Detectors
Science chips away at ALD
Brain development may be influenced by genetic parasites

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

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In the Spotlight

Psychopathology, by the Numbers

Shakespeare delves into madness, its nature, tone, and cause, in
King Lear, one of drama's greatest tragedies. Mistreated by two of
his three daughters King Lear in a fury of madness stumbles upon
another man who is also suffering the consequences of familial
betrayal, and says to the infinite: "What, have his daughters
brought him to this pass?" (Act III Scene iv)

The other man has no daughters, but to Lear everyone has cruel
"pelican daughters." It is a subtle but insightful reveal into
mental illness -- the obsessive self-absorption, delusion as
self-consideration without distraction.

Fast forward four centuries and although many Elizabethan ills have
since been cured or curbed, such as scurvy, smallpox, and syphilis,
mental illness like Lear in the storm (Act III) rages on. The
current lifetime prevalence rate for mental disorders is 1 in 2. The
one-year prevalence rate 1 in 4 -- a quarter of the population
suffering from mental illness, with women succumbing twice as often
to depression and anxiety, men twice as often to addiction.

Due to advances in diagnosis and therapy, half a million adults
institutionalized for psychological disorders 50 years ago has been
reduced to nearly a tenth of this number today, 65,000. Whereas the
institutionalized have dwindle, the number of diagnoses has not, but
in fact exploded. In 1952 the first edition of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of clinical
psychology and psychiatry, listed 60 conditions. In 1994 the 4th
edition weighed in with 410 conditions, a exponential increase. Are
we getting more mentally ill as time proceeds? No, but our powers of
perception are improving, leading to prognostic delineations --
subtyping, new classifications, with targeted treatments, which has
led to the drop in institutionalizations.

Mood disturbances go hand and hand with the arts and humanities,
cognitive disturbances with science and mathematics. A list of
bipolar or unipolar depressed composers might capture nearly every
name you know, except Bach. Of famous writers, John Milton of
Paradise Lost fame wrote: "The mind is its own place, and of itself/
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." Creativity seems to
flow from mood dysfunction. Perhaps it is the emotional reactivity
of the bipolar artist, the unfiltered life; or perhaps the
disinhibited or loose associations; or perhaps the grandiosity spurs
an absorption on a single topic longer than most would care to focus
and finally it cracks open and reveal some transpersonal plunder.
The intense creative episodes during hypomania are where many
bipolar composers and writers do their best (and sometimes only)
work. Here is a list of famous artists with bipolar disorder:

Hans Christian Anderson Ludwig von Beethoven
Lord Byron Charles Dickens
T. S. Eliot Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Faukner F. Scott Fitzgerald
Paul Gauguin Sylvia Plath
Ernest Hemingway Michelangelo
Edgar Allan Poe Gordon Sumner (Sting)
Peter Tchaikovsky Leo Tolstoy
Mark Twain Virginia Woolf
Tennessee Williams


Many of these artists took their own life, which is not uncommon in
bipolar disorder. A survey of writers at the University of Iowa's
famed Writers' Workshop in 1987 by Nancy Andreason found 80 % of the
faculty with mood disorders, 43% bipolar, 30 % addicted to drugs,,
and 12% eventually killed themselves.

Nobel Laureate Albert Camus opens "The Myth of Sisyphus" with the
surprising statement: "There is only one really serious
philosophical question, and that is suicide." Wittgenstein said it
was language, but I tend to agree with the less Aspergerish
philosopher Camus. How we communicate is less important than why we
would want to stop communicating with others forever. Unfortunately
nearly 30,000 Americans each year do so, taking their own lives,
nearly twice our homicide rate. Suicide is the 8th leading cause of
death in adults, 3rd leading cause for teenagers, and since 1950 the
rate for teens has tripled, a disturbing commentary on our culture.
Overall we are twice the world rate, with only Japan, a culture of
honor and suicide for centuries, coming in ahead of us, 16.7
suicides per 100 thousand compared to 11.9 for the US. In the US
females attempt three times more often than males, but males succeed
four times as often, probably because women tend to reach for pills,
men reach firearms, and firearms are more lethal, accounting for 60%
of success attempts.

Depression, especially bipolar depression, has a cycle to it. In
bipolar it is normalcy, which rises toward manic peak, peak,
decline, normalcy (for the lucky ones), decline toward bottom,
bottoming out, rise from bottom (lucky again), and back to normalcy.
Unipolar depression does not have a manic component, but both have
higher suicide rates which coincide with the mood cycle. Suicide is
most often attempted during the rise out of the bottom and there are
two schools of thought as to why: (1) an individual wants to die
while at the lowest point but hasn't the energy or motivation to
complete any plans, and therefore only attempts suicide when energy
has returned, during the rise, and (2) more disturbingly, while in
the pit of despair an individual make plans to end his or her life,
and to finally exert some control over one's life (its end) improves
the mood, pulling them out of the pit.

From mood to cognition, we have perhaps the worse mental disorder on
the books, Schizophrenia, "split mind," a gross distortion of
thought and perception with eventual loss of contact with reality.
Schizophrenia is the disorder of science and math: Isaac Newton
suffered a psychotic break at age 41, Albert Einstein had a
schizophrenic son, and the recent Oscar winning film Beautiful Mind
chronicled the tragic life of Nobel Laureate mathematician John Nash
Jr, a chronic schizophrenia.

Three types of schizophrenia exist: Paranoid, with delusions or
hallucinations often include extreme suspiciousness and hostility;
Disorganized, with signs of illogical thinking and speech, and
Catatonic, with extremes in motor behavior. A fourth classification,
Undifferentiated, is reserved for those who fit the diagnosis but no
clear subtype. In schizophrenia we have positive and negative
symptoms. Positive symptoms are not good positive, but positive in
the sense of excessive, behaviors in addition to the normal ones.
Positive symptoms or excesses such as hallucinations, delusions,
thought disorders, and bizarre behaviors. Negative symptoms are
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral deficits, reductions of the
normal behavioral repertoire, such as apathy, flattened affect,
social withdrawal, inattention, and slowed speech or no speech.

Here is schizophrenia by the numbers:

- 1% across all cultures, despite few offspring
- Male = females, or slightly more males
- More in jails than psychiatric hospitals
- 50% never accept that they are ill
- 90% go off meds once+ (most if not all relapse)
- Nearly 100% smoke (nicotine self-stimulates)
- Higher prevalence in lower socioeconomic class
- 25% full remission, 50% recurrent relapses,
25% permanently hospitalized
- 40% attempt suicide, 10% succeed

Schizophrenics suffer from delusion, hallucinations, mood and motor
disturbances.

Delusions are incorrect conclusions about perceptions and include
peculiar beliefs such as alien abductions, secret lovers, paranoia,
grandiosity, thought insertion or broadcast, and erotomania
(everyone loves you), which strikes women four times more than men,
interestingly. Other delusions are ideas of reference, that events
has special personal meaning, and magical thinking such as
controlling events from afar. Most diehard Red Sox fans exhibit the
latter two symptoms, at least until the World Series is over.

Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions, and most are (perhaps
surprisingly) auditory -- commanding voice of authority or derision,
often a mother, dead or alive, riding her child. Speech changes are
often common, in polar extremes, mute or pressured; overall they are
insensitive to the informational needs of audience, failing to
provide enough consensual reference in their communications, to
close to the vest, thoughtwise. Schizophrenics' mood symptoms range
from blunted, inappropriate, to exaggerated, with chronic cases
often exhibiting flat affect, anhedonia, avolitional, to the point
of being vegetative.

As a 20 y old college student I traveled one summer to the mental
state hospital systems in New England for my job with Connecticut's
conservatorship office. Some of the schizophrenics I dealt with were
personable, some bitter, a few grandiose, a few still a bit scary to
deal with. One chopped up his mother and put her in the freezer, but
it was believed she died naturally and he was merely hiding her body
from social workers so he wouldn't be institutionalized. Well, I met
him at an institution in Massachusetts, and he was personable, even
knew the recent Yankee and Red Sox ball game scores. I couldn't make
out his gaze, though: his eyes looked off into the ether, one
pointing east, the other roughly west.

Another older schizophrenic responded well to the question how he
was doing. "Fine, fine, fine... " he said, then went silent. After a
few minutes of trying to get another response from him, asking about
the hospital, nursing staff, weather, he showed his annoyance with
me by choking the air with his fists. He wanted me, the young kid,
to leave his plane of existence I gathered. But then I spoke up
again, "How are you doing?" .... Oh fine, fine, fine, he chirped,
then withdrew into his head again. We could have done this for hours
-- he had the time -- but I didn't, and it was a sad little game.

The saddest story from this summer now 20 years gone belonged to a
young schizophrenic girl who ran through the ward every morning
singing the Rolling Stones tune "You can't always get what you
want." True, she didn't get what she wanted. Last I heard she was
still institutionalized.

Scientist TJ Crow believes schizophrenia is an overreliance on the
diffuse representational system of the right hemisphere. Perhaps,
but I also believe schizophrenia, like autism, is first and foremost
an attention disorder, an individual addicted more to his thought
processes more than the world's sensory extravaganza. From such
concentration on inward processes may derive loose associations,
eventual memory impairment, and finally poor management of mental
content, i.e., executive dysfunction, but it is the inward addiction
that leads to the latter. Schizophrenics, like autistics, also
exhibit impaired theory of mind, a failure to monitor what different
people can know and even one's own intentional actions.

Failure to develop dominant hand early (by age 7, say) is a sign of
eventual schizophrenia (and very common in autism as well). Future
adult schizophrenics at 8 to 12 years of age begin to show
interpersonal problems, poor emotional control, sometimes a high IQ,
but by early teen years we often see cognitive problems emerging,
underachievement, disorganized thoughts, poor emotional rapport, few
friends, and finally withdrawal, decreased grooming, delusions, and
commonly hallucinogens abuse (like marijuana or LSD). One of my
closest friends during the summer in Connecticut was a schizophrenic
who would take his Haldol as the doctor prescribed, then take a hit
(of marijuana) to keep the inward kaleidoscope flowing.

This ends my "Psychopathology by the numbers" lecture, given to
introductory Psychology students. The lecture comes with fancy
powerpoint pictures to entertain the kids, which they need, because
if you haven't notice, attentional disorders in this culture are on
the rise.

-DK
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News & Reviews

NEW BOOKS

Delivered from Distraction : Getting the Most out of Life with Attention
Deficit Disorder
by Edward M. Hallowell M.D.
Very readable overview of latest in ADHD research.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034544230X/eegspectrum

Atlas of Ambulatory EEG
by Schacter, et al
Reference describing EEG patterns in normal and abnormal individuals.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0126213453/ eegspectrum

Children and Behavioural Problems: Anxiety, Aggression, Depression ADHD
by Martine F. Delfos
A biopsychological model of children mental health, focused on diagnosis and
treatment --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ ASIN/1843101963/eegspectrum

Epidemiology of Sleep: Age, Gender, and Ethnicity
by Kenneth L. Lichstein, et al
Sleep of normal individuals is reviewed by age and gender.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805840796/eegspectrum

Essentials of Clinical Neurophysiology
by Thomas C. Head
Outlines the theory and practice of such neurodiagnostic techniques as
electroencephalography, electromyography with nerve conductions, evoked
potentials, and polysomnography.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750674415/eegspectrum

Learning the Language of Addiction Counseling
by Geri Miller
Review of addiction counseling basics for clinicians and grad students.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471696129/ eegspectrum

Assessment of the Human Stress Response: Neurological... Psychological
Foundations
by George S. Everly, Steven A. Sobelman
Soon to be released book in the Stress in Modern Society series, a timely topic.
--www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 0404632548/eegspectrum
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JOURNAL PAPERS

Substance abuse in patients with ADHD : A third of adults with ADHD either have
a history of substance abuse or currently suffer from it, so pharmaceutical
treatments need to be tailored to lower the risk of abuse potential.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16097847

Sources of cortical rhythms during physiological aging : Age and occipital
delta magnitude correlated. This study highlights an analysis to predict
dementia in mild cognitive impairment.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16108018

Antidepressants may protect against frontal gray matter decline in geriatric
depression. : Larger orbitofrontal cortex was seen in depressed patients
exposed to antidepressants than drug-naive depressed geriatric patients.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16086609

Self-regulation of slow cortical potentials. : Brain-computer communication
based on auditory stimulation only is possible.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16093411

Transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment for epilepsy : Reviews findings for
depression and epilepsy as to whether they can be simultaneously treated with
TMS.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16054872

Resting anterior cingulate activity and abnormal responses to errors : Abnormal
responses to errors may arise from reduced affective and/or motivational
responses to salient cues.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16035102

Thalamic mechanisms of EEG alpha rhythms and their pathological implications. :
According to the authors, the neurocellular components underlying thalamic
alpha rhythms is also responsible for (2-7 Hz) activity, when these cells are
less depolarized.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16061522

Biophysical modeling of tonic cortical electrical activity in ADHD : According
to a biophysical model, EEG abnormalities of ADHD are accounted for by
increased dendritic response times, increased thalamic reticular nucleus
activity, and increased intracortical activity.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16048806

Clinical application of single-pulse TMS for the treatment of depression. :
Single-pulse TMS has antidepressive effects without inducing adverse reactions.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16048448

Region-specific changes in prefrontal function with age: : Normal ageing is
concluded to produce differentiation of cortical function in bilateral ventral
PFC and deficits in right dorsal and anterior PFC.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16049041
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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)

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

AAPB - http://www.aapb.org Portland OR Apr 6-10
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Last Word

13th Annual International Society for Neuronal Regulation

Earlier this month 400 people met in downtown Denver to talk about
neurofeedback and QEEG for a weekend. Except for buses Denver has
eliminated street traffic in this section of the city and pushed
buildings closer together so stepping out of the hotel was like
stepping into a movie lot. Two hops and a skip across cobblestone
takes you to the Starbucks across the street, and a hop takes you
back again. Roger deBeus and Noland White, along with numerous
volunteers, organized a successful conference, with keynote speakers
from around the world including Niels Birbaumer (Germany), Mario
Beauregard (Canada), Adam Clarke (Australia), and Vince Monastra
(New York). A healthy mix of the usual suspects, students, and new
faces showed up. I played professor as one of my undergraduates
attended and I introduced him to numerous names and eventually got
him lined up for grad school.

Knowledge is a political process and science is no exception.
Funding and voicing one's interpretations are socially controlled
and while the Web attempts to level the playing field, the cacophony
of information online still means that money and culture matter and
direct opinion. Useful knowledge is a tool, a way to leverage one
domain of nature against another, and neuroscience is the newest and
strongest tool in our arsenal -- from clinical treatment to
self-understanding. But it is a costly tool, politically controlled,
and slow to take effect, but not it is finally taking wide effect
(see Announcement, above, for instance).

I don't go to conferences for lectures but to talk. If I hear two
new and interesting lectures over the weekend, well, that's a bonus.
My conference, the real conference, happens in coffee shops, hotel
lounges, and over dinner menus. Meeting people one on one, talking
about the newest work with a speaker three feet away is how
knowledge is best exchanged. Conversation creates knowledge,
lectures only transmit it. That's also why I rarely attend early
morning sessions -- up too late the night before talking one on one.

Here are the lectures I can recall best: Robert Coben's work on
autism, Barry Sterman's mechanism behind SMR training, and Mario
Beauregard's fMRI validation of neurotherapy. All of these people
are doing interesting work. Mario and his colleagues in Montreal are
working on Spiritual Neuroscience, where they study fMRI and EEG
correlates of mystical experiences (remembrances from cloistered
nuns). As it so happened, I went to the conference with my latest
set of games, and one was a Serenity Set which uses quotes from
various sources to facilitate oneness, calmness, perhaps even a
mystic sense. For the first version of this set, with more to come,
I relied on the Gospel of John (the most metaphoric of the gospels),
Ecclesiastes (where earliest consciousness had just emerged
historically -- "all is vanity, vanity" lines, etc), and the Tao.
Feeling in touch with a higher power or recognizing that one can
organize into a union that serves the interests of individuals
better than going alone is important to mental health and
neurotherapy. As I said during my lecture at the conference, there
is an "infiltration of a supraorganizational force into the action
of individual .... neuron" . Oh well, until the word "neuron" it
sounded like I was talking about religion instead of the
thalamocortical network.

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