QEEG-guided neurofeedback is based on normalizing dysregulated brain regions that relate to specific clinical presentation. With ASD, this means that the approach is specific to each individual’s QEEG subtype patterns and presentation. The goal of neurofeedback with ASD is to correct amplitude abnormalities and balance brain functioning, while coherence neurofeedback aims to improve the connectivity and plasticity between brain regions. This tailored approach has implications that should not be underestimated. . . . Clinicians, including the authors, have had amazing results with ASD, including significant speech and communication improvements, calmer and less aggressive behavior, increased attention, better eye contact, and improved socialization. Many of our patients have been able to reduce or eliminate their medications after completion of QEEG-guided neurofeedback.

Preface by By James Neubrander, MD

Parents of children with autism know me (JN) as a physician who uses various biomedical treatments to help children move toward recovery. Several years ago, I was introduced to the powerful modality of QEEG-guided neurofeedback. This treatment uses EEG biofeedback, also known as neurofeedback, guided by the QEEG, or quantitative electroencephalogram. Neurofeedback has since become an important addition to my practice because it offers therapeutic options that are not possible through biomedical treatments alone.

To date, I have obtained QEEGs on hundreds of children with autism and have watched the neurofeedback process help them take one or more steps forward on their roads to recovery. That is why it pleases me to have been asked by Autism Science Digest to write this article to introduce QEEG and QEEG-guided neurofeedback for children with autism as one more important treatment option for parents to consider.

Although I have prescribed many neurofeedback sessions for my clients, I cannot claim to be an expert in QEEG interpretation. In that regard, I defer to those who evaluate my patients’ EEg tracings and subsequently recommend appropriate neurofeedback protocols that my neurofeedback technicians then implement. My coauthors (Ml, Jg, and Ck), whose biographies speak for themselves, are some of the most respected names in the field of QEEG and QEEG-guided neurofeedback. In this paper, they provide an overview of the science behind the process, a theoretical platform, and an outline of the benefits this treatment can offer to the many children who have attention-deficit or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), Asperger’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

“I have obtained QEEGs on hundreds of children with autism and have watched the
neurofeedback process help them take one or more steps forward on their roads to recovery.”

Download or Read the full PDF here.

AUTISM SCIENCE DIGEST: THE JOURNAL OF AUTISMONE – ISSUE 03

By: James Neubrander MD, Michael Liden PhD, Jay Gunkleman QEEGD, and Cynthia Kerson PhD.

QEEG-guided neurofeedback is based on normalizing dysregulated brain regions that relate to specific clinical presentation. With ASD, this means that the approach is specific to each individual’s QEEG subtype patterns and presentation. The goal of  neurofeedback with ASD is to correct amplitude abnormalities and balance brain functioning, while coherence neurofeedback aims to improve the connectivity and plasticity between brain regions. This tailored approach has implications that should not be underestimated …. Clinicians, including the authors, hove had amazing results with ASD, including significant speech and communication improvements, calmer and less aggressive behavior, increased attention, better eye contact, and improved socialization. Many of our patients have been able to reduce or eliminate their medications after completion of QEEG-guided neurofeedback.

PREFACE

Parents of children with autism know me (JN) as a physician who uses various biomedical treatments to help children move toward recovery. Several years ago. I was introduced to the powerful modality of QEEG-guided neurofeedback. This treatment uses EEG biofeedback, also known as neurofeedback, guided by the QEEG, or quantitative electroencephalogram. Neurofeedback has since become an important addition to my practice because it offers therapeutic options that are not possible through biomedical treatments alone.

To date, I have obtained QEEGs on hundreds of children with autism and have watched the neurofeedback process help them take one or more steps forward on their roads co recovery. That is why it pleases me to have been asked by Autism Science Digest to write this article to introduce QEEG and QEEG-guided neurofeedback for children with autism as one more important treatment option for parents to consider.

Although I have prescribed many neurofeedback sessions for my clients. I cannot claim to be an expert in QEEG interpretation. In that regard, I defer to those who evaluate my patients’ EEG tracings and subsequently recommend appropriate neurofeedback protocols that my neurofeedback technicians then implement. My coauthors (ML, JG, and CK), whose biographies speak for themselves, are some of the most respected names in the field of QEEG and QEEG-guided neurofeedback. In this paper, they provide an overview of the science behind the process, a theoretical platform, and an outline of the benefits this treatment can offer to the many children who have attention-deficit or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), Asperger’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Read the rest of the article [PDF File]

HOUSTON – A Houston doctor is working on something that could help the many service members who return from the battle field suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder.

By its own admission, The Veterans Administration has had little success treating people who are suffering from both traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.

“They end up not having any cognitive strategies to manage the therapy, and they’ll either get out of therapy, or end their lives and that’s what’s happening,” said Dr. Ron Swatzyna, a psychotherapist, neuro-therapist, and biofeedback therapist for Houston’s Tarnow Center. “I’ve been working on this issue for about four years now.”

He said resetting the brain, lining it back up through stimulation, is the key.  And by mapping the brain, he believes he can tell when the patient is ready for therapy.

“Not at the beginning. If you push them too quick that’s a problem. If they are pushed into therapy too quick,” he said.

Swatzyna said the defense department and the VA both realize more research is needed, and if he can get funding, and cooperation from a group in the Texas Medical Center, he would like to open up a research center in Houston.

Vietnam veteran Billy Miller, who one of Swatzyna’s patients, is now helping him pull it off.

“Everyone I had been to before, all 25 doctors had never had military experience, they didn’t know what I was going through,” Miller said.

Swatzyna was a captain in the Air Force, and now many believe he is the best in the country at understanding veterans.

Army soldier Joel Brasier, who suffers from TBI and PTSD, believes Swatzyna is on the right track and is hoping research will lead to better, faster treatment.

“It’s an ongoing process, but eventually they are going to make a breakthrough and get us the help we need,” Brasier said.

Full story from khou.com

The reporter in this article likely had a TIA… a Transient Ischemic Attack… the temporary insufficiency of vascular flow dynamics to a cortical area providing insufficient local glucose and oxygen for function. This can happen from just flow dynamics due to vasoconstriction, such as seen in hyperventilation or gross over-arousal. This can also happen when blood consistency is not appropriate to allow flow, such as seen with hyperglycemia in diabetics when their blood sugar rises too high.

You may think “what does this have to do with EEG?”… well it is an important EEG area, and not without controversy.

The mid-temporal sharp-slow transients that are seen in EEG are considered neurologically non-specific, and many neurologists do not even comment on them. This is a mistake, as these nonspecific changes are a harbinger of vascular issues, including ischemia (as seen in migraine ischemia and the current discussion of TIAs), or vascular insufficiency, commonly in the vertebro-basillar artery and posterior vascular distributions supplying the hippo-campus (which has a huge metabolic demand load).

No less than Ernst Neidermayer chastises the neurologists doing EEG interpretations for under-reading of these findings. He clearly shows in his paper that these non-specific findings are important.

Recently I had a client who sent in the EEG of his wife, who had experience some word-finding and fluency issues, and it had these “nonspecific” temporal findings on the left… we suggested an MRA (magnetic resonance angiography), and though they had already done the MRI (which was normal), the MRA was done. The MRA showed a 9 millimeter AV malformation, and surgery was done to patch this area so it didn’t burst, saving her life.

These are the sort of waveform distortions that require an experienced EEG interpretation, and preferably an expert with Board qualification in EEG, not just someone licensed to read EEGs. These controversial findings make all the difference, and it is exactly these areas that provide the large difference between interpretation in studies looking at inter-reader visual EEG reliability.

Jay

In the early 1940s several studies already demonstrated that the human EEG could be classically conditioned (Jasper & Shagass, 1941a; Knott & Henry, 1941). These studies investigated in great detail the occipital alpha-blocking response and whether alpha blocking with visual stimulation could be conditioned to an auditory stimulus. In addition a range of classical conditioning principles have been successfully applied, and all of the Pavlovian types of conditioned  responses could be demonstrated (Jasper & Shagass, 1941a). In a follow-up study, Jasper and Shagass (1941b) investigated further whether participants could also exert voluntary control over this alpha-blocking response. In this study they had participants press a button, which would turn the lights on and off, and use subvocal verbal commands when pressing the button (e.g., ‘‘Block’’ when pressing the button and ‘‘Stop’’ when releasing the button).

See Figure 1 demonstrating these effects. In the bottom tracing one can see that after five sessions the participant was able to voluntary suppress the alpha rhythm when the light was off. This is the first study that demonstrated ‘‘voluntary control’’ of the EEG activity and was investigated almost 70 years ago! In 1943 Shagass and Johnson replicated this finding demonstrating that participants also could achieve voluntary control over the alpha-blocking response by clenching their fist. Even though these studies demonstrated ‘‘voluntary control’’ they still relied on classical conditioning principles, and it would take another 20 years before operant conditioning of the EEG would be demonstrated.
In 1962 classical conditioning of brain activity was taken one step further when Wyrwicka, Sterman, and Clemente published their study in Science. It demonstrated that pairing a neutral auditory stimulus with electrical stimulation of the basal forebrain resulted in this auditory stimulus inducing sleep preparatory behavior. Not much later, in 1968, Wyrwicka and Sterman laid the foundation of neurofeedback as we know it today: operant conditioning of EEG activity.
Most of us are aware of what happened after this initial report on conditioning of SMR activity in the cat. However, the original report describing ‘‘Sterman’s cats,’’  which were resistant to monomethylhydrazine (rocket fuel), was never published publically given it was part of an assignment with the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory and deemed confidential for the past 40 years. Therefore, we are hereby now publishing the original study for the public. We hope that in this way interested readers can gain firsthand knowledge of the original findings that laid the foundation of the clinical use of operant conditioning of the EEG. This is an excellent reference of the foundation of operant conditioning of the EEG and the beginning of neurofeedback.

Figure 1. - Shows the voluntary control of the alpha blocking response over sessions. The alpha blocking is classically conditioned to pressing or releasing a button. The bottom trace shows the voluntary control with lights off (alpha is present). Note the short blocking of alpha under voluntary control. Also note that in the top graph that the voluntary signal initially has no effect on the alpha activity. This is the first report of voluntary control of EEG activity based on classical conditioning principles. Graph from Jasper and Shagass (1941b).

Martijn Arns, MSc
Senior Editor – Journal or Neurotherapy

REFERENCES
Jasper, H., & Shagass, C. (1941a). Conditioning the
occipital alpha rhythm in man. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 28, 373–387.

Jasper, H., & Shagass, C. (1941b). Conscious time
judgments related to conditioned time intervals
and voluntary control of the alpha rhythm. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 28, 503–508.

Knott, J. R., & Henry, C. E. (1941). The conditioning
of the blocking of the alpha rhythm of the human
electroencephalogram. Experimental Psychology,
28, 134–144.

Shagass, C., & Johnson, E. P. (1943). The course of
acquisition of a conditioned response of the occipital
alpha rhythm. Experimental Psychology, 33,
201–209.

Wyrwicka, W., & Sterman, M. B. (1968). Instrumental
conditioning of sensorimotor cortex EEG spindles
in the waking cat. Physiology & Behavior, 3,
703–707.

Wyrwicka, W., Sterman, M. B., & Clemente, C. D.
(1962). Conditioning of induced electroencephalographic
sleep patterns in the cat. Science, 137,
616–618.

From: Arns Senior Editior, Martijn(2010) ‘Historical Archives: The Beginning…’, Journal of Neurotherapy, 14:
4, 291 — 292

ISNR invites you to their 18th Annual Conference for Health Professionals, Education Professionals, Researchers & Students. This conference offers workshops by the leading clinicians and researchers in the field of neuroscience. There will be many workshops and keynote talks on clinical as well as theoretical applications in the neuroscience field.

Letter from the Conference Chair:

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to an ISNR conference for the third year as the conference chair. For this 18th Annual International Conference of the International Society for Neurofeedback and Research I am delighted to host you in Denver, Colorado, one of the few cities in history that was not built on a road, railroad, lake, navigable river or body of water when it was founded. It just happened to be where the first few flakes of gold were found in 1858. ISNR, like Denver, has grown from golden ideas and holds a bright and rich future.  With this spirit I invite you to join in a collective reflection on what our field has accomplished during these past 18 years, and on the scholarly challenges before us.

In addition to the parallel oral presentations, panel sessions, and workshops, here are a few highlights of the plenary sessions:

• Keynote Speaker- Norman Doidge, MD, NY Times best-selling author, will present “The Brain That Changes Itself: The Neuroplasticity Revolution and Film Clips of People Undergoing Plastic Change”
• Keynote Speaker- Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD- “Multimodal Brain Imaging: Combining Brain Stimulation and Functional Neuroimaging to Understand A Changing Brain”
• Keynote Speaker- Jonathan Marks, MA, BCL- “Beyond Neurotherapy: The Ethics of National Security Neuroscience”

Invited Speakers:

• Dirk DeRidder, MD, PhD – “Alcohol Addiction: A Clinical Pathophysiological Approach”
• Matthew Nock, PhD – “Single-Case Experimental Design: A Valuable Method for Evaluating Neurofeedback in Clinical Practice”
• Hartmut Heinrich, PhD – “Theta / Beta and SCP Training in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial”
• Michael Schmidt, PhD – “Nutrient Modifiers of Neuroplasticity and Performance and the Exploration of Novel QEEG Assessment Metrics”
• Donald Cooper, PhD – “Single Cell Memory: How individual Neurons Route and Store Temporary Information to Maintain Attention”
• Paul Rapp, PhD – “Could Neurofeedback Reconstruct Synchronous Networks Lost Following Traumatic Brain Injury?”
• Jason Soss, MD- ” Neural Network Mapping”

As in our previous conferences, you can expect the opportunities to network with a diversity of colleagues from a variety of institutions. On Wednesday, there will the ISNR golf tournament with a portion of the proceeds going to the INSR Research Foundation. The tournament and Wednesday pre-conference workshops will be followed by an evening reception and our now traditional special panel Neurofeedback: The Past, Present and Future from the “Pioneering Women’s Perspective” featuring Genie Bodenhamer-Davis, PhD, Judith Lubar, MSW, and Lynda Thompson, PhD.

On Thursday evening, there will be a reception during the poster presentations and a first time evening plenary session. Our conference wouldn’t be complete without a Saturday evening presentation of honors, dinner and entertainment this year by Swing Essence, where attendees will enjoy conversation and dining with live jazz that you would expect in the finest clubs, featuring a jazz-inspired rhythm section, and accomplished instrumentalists.

During the past few years, the ISNR conference has achieved steady growth as evident from the support received from professionals, academia and industry. I would like to express sincere thanks to all the presenters and the members of the conference committee that has made this event a success. Also I would like to thank Deymed Diagnostic (Platinum), BrainMaster (Gold) and Nova Tech EEG, Thought Technology and Stens Corporation (Silver) for their sponsorship of the conference. Because of all of your efforts, the conference program is very rich with exciting papers and events.

Finally, I hope that you will find the presentations and discussions to be a valuable resource in your professional, research, and educational activities whether you are a student, academic, researcher, or a practicing professional. I encourage you to take part in this international conference, and I very much look forward to welcoming you personally to Denver in September!

Leslie Sherlin, PhD
2010 Conference Chair

A model of consciousness will be illustrated with physiological data from EEG and Event related potentials. Using millisecond level time resolution, a working model of the interaction between the mind and the brain will be constructed.

The Slow Cortical Potentials generated by Glial activity and the faster gamma activity reflecting activity of bound neural networks will be used to illustrate this model. The physiological correlates of concepts like intention, attention, memory, perception, awareness, sensory differentiation and conscious awareness will all be discussed within the framework of this model. Advanced concepts like neural network binding, nested rhythms, cross-spectral correlation, and the bispectrum will be discussed.

The DC potentials cause an instantaneous phase resetting and binding of a neural network, which can initiate synchronous activity within these neural networks. Current work using this model in clinical work on severe disorders of consciousness, including work by the International Brain Research Foundation on recovery of consciousness in coma cases will be reviewed. The simplest expression of the model: when the DC potentials reflecting activity of the mind interact with gamma activity reflecting neural activity in the brain, the emergent property of this interaction is consciousness.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From The Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE)

The two images below show the referential and sequential montage display of an active right temporal-parietal spike and slow wave focus, seen in a child clinically diagnosed with an attachment disorder. There was no history of convulsion, nor any suspicion of the actual underlying pathophysiological basis for the behavioral presentation.

The focus cortical area is normally involved in comprehension of facial expression and body language, as well as the prosodic (emotive) aspects of language. Any disturbance in that cortical area’s function generally has social contextual implications for behavior due to “prosodic blindness”. (see: Van Bloem, L. QEEG in Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder,

Journal of Neurotherapy, 4(4), 2001.

The implications for treatment option with this pathophysiological source for the behavioral presentation which could really only be discovered through the EEG are enormous. The use of an anticonvulsant or an approach with one of the proven efficacious applications of Neurofeedback in treating epilepsy can be used to target the underlying cause, rather than trying to effect some symptomatic control with antipsychotic or antidepressant medications so commonly used in these situations of severe attachment disorder. (see a review of SMR applied to epilepsy by Dr. M. Barry Sterman, Professor Emeritus, UCLA, from 2000 in Clinical Electroencephalography’s special edition on Neurofeedback)

In these images the referential focus is seen associated with the largest waveform, though in the sequential data the 180 degree phase reversal points to the focus.

EEG & Epilepsy - Referential Montage Display

EEG & Epilepsy - Sequential Montage Display