Brain Science – Page 3 – qEEGsupport.com

AAPB 41st Annual Meeting : Personalized Medicine in the Age of Technology: Psychophysiology & Health

AAPB is traveling to San Diego, California for its 41st Annual Meeting. Mark your calendars for March 24-27, 2010 to attend this gathering of experts in biofeedback, neurofeedback, and applied psychophysiology. You won’t want to miss this educational event and the networking opportunities available!

We are honored to welcome several high-profile speakers, including:

Personalized Medicine in the Age of Technology – Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD; Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute

Regeneration and Stress at Work: Strategies for Improved Employee Health – Tores Theorell, MD, PhD; Professor Emeritus at the University of Stockholm, Sweden

An Overview of Mind Body Healing – C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD; founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, and past president of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine

Neurotherapy in the Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury: A Physiological Hypothesis – Paul Rapp, PhD; Professor in the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Canucks work on secret mind room where they can be programmed to think happy thoughts

Is the Mind Room Helping the Vancouver Canucks run to the Stanley Cup?

An excellent story regarding the use of Neurofeedback in sports. The Mind Room utilizes the Thought Technology Procomp Infiniti equipment. The follwing article from the Vancouver Sun gives us a bit of insight in to the 2011 Stanley Cup run of the Vancouver Canucks.

Canucks work on secret mind room where they can be programmed to think happy thoughts

In director Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, a violent criminal named Alex DeLarge undergoes experimental aversion therapy as authorities try to psychologically reprogram him.

DeLarge, brilliantly played by Malcolm McDowell, has his eyelids clamped open and is forced to watch graphic nasty bits of ultra-violence on film while suffering drug-induced nausea all to the music of Beethoven. DeLarge quickly associates his suffering with violence and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and is cured. Completely disarmed psychologically, he returns to the community stripped of any coping skills and soon tries to kill himself.

Dr. Hal Myers, president of Thought Technology Ltd. hooked up to ‘Mind Room’, a physiological-psychological instrument that prepares athletes mentally to deal with nail-biting experiences. -Montreal Gazette MindRoom technology worked for the Italian national team at soccer’s last World Cup and it could soon be working for the Vancouver Canucks.

Drug exposure and EEG/qEEG findings

A technical guide by Jay Gunkelman, QEEG-D

General comments:

There is a generally reciprocal effect between alpha and beta, as brain stem stimulation desynchronizes the alpha generators, beta is seen. During states of under-arousal, this relationship is not seen, as when the subject is alerted, when both alpha and beta increase.

The point is that the arousal level changes the EEG responses expected, as when a stimulant is given to an under-aroused subject, increasing alpha. In a normally aroused subject, stimulants decrease alpha, and in an anxious (low voltage fast EEG variant) subject alpha will not be seen as changed by a stimulant.

Though there is a response stereotype for each medication, there are also individual responses, which vary. Mixtures of medications become too complex to evaluate each individual medication’s contribution, not to speak of synergistic effects not seen with any single medication, which may be seen in polytherapy.

The following pages represent a summary of many articles, papers, reviews and books on medications and the CNS function, and finally nearly 30 years of experience in clinical and research EEG. The difficulty in this area is the definitions of bands varies, the methods of analysis range from visual inspection of the raw EEG to quantitative measures, not all of which are clearly defined… and thus the need for a brief summary which puts this into a concise form for reference.

Neurofeedback Demonstrated on “The Doctors”

On this episode of the Doctors Dr Michael Linden helps “Noah” with his ADD. Part 1 of this story give a bit of information about what Noahs parents have been dealing with and the struggle they face with deciding whether or not to medicate their young child.

In Part 2 you see how Noah parents learn there are alternatives to Ritalin and other drugs that may be given to their child. Learn about how Neurofeedback and EEG Brain Mapping may be able to help without the use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs.

Dr. Linden is a Clinical Psychologist and Nationally Certified in Neurofeedback and Biofeedback. He is the director of The Attention Learning Center, which has offices located in San Juan Capistrano, Irvine and Carlsbad, California.

Dr. Linden is a regular contributor to the Journal of Neurotherapy and has been a speaker in many seminars and conferences related to ADD/ADHD and neurotherapy.

Cerebotix Brainwave Control of Remote Objects

John Lemay and George Green Phd of Cerebotix introduced the world to their brainwave controlled blimp at the AAPB 2009 meeting in New Mexico.

Part 1

Part 2

BRAINnet – Innovative Integration Analysis Challenge

From BRAINnet – Brain Research And Integrative Neuroscience Network

The purpose of this challenge is to promote a more integrative and innovative approach to Brain (EEG) – Body (Heart Rate) analysis. Brain Resource is sponsoring the challenge with the winner to receive $5,000USD.

The Challenge

Take 20 EEG and Heart Rate recordings from children diagnosed with ADHD and 20 recordings from a control population, and develop an analysis method that demonstrates any new insight relevant to ADHD using the data. The insight may have a basic science or applied clinical perspective.

Each dataset was recorded during a Go/NoGo paradigm and contains EEG, Heart Rate, respiration and Sweat Rate (skin conductance) channels, as well as stimulus and response information. The data sets are sourced from the Brain Resource International Database via BRAINnet.

Neurofeedback and the Brain

Neurofeedback is an emerging neuroscience based clinical application, and understanding the underlying principles of neurofeedback allows the therapist to provide referrals or treatment, and provides clients with a framework for understanding the process. The brain’s electrical patterns are a form of behavior, modifiable through “operant conditioning,” with the excessive brain frequencies reduced, and those with a deficit are increased. The learning curve for EEG has been described (Hardt, 1975).

Neurotherapy using slow cortical potentials also shows promise in the treatment of epilepsy (Kotchoubey et al., 2001; Birbaumer et al., 1981; Sterman, 2000). Neurotherapy has also been used for ADD/ADHD (Monastra, Monastra, & George, 2002) depression (Rosenfeld, 1997), anxiety (Vanathy, Sharma, & Kumar, 1998), fibromyalgia (Donaldson, 2002), and for cognitive enhancement (Budzynski, 2000; Klimesch, et al.). Commonly reported success rates of 60 to 90% are reported (Wright & Gunkelman, 1998).

Neurofeedback is an emerging neuroscience based clinical application based on the general principles of biofeedback or cybernetics. The Neurofeedback process involves training and learning self regulation of brain activity. Understanding the underlying principles of this process allows the therapist to provide referrals or treatment to their clients with some added understanding, and provides clients with a framework for understanding the neurofeedback process. The following short paper will provide a quick review of the brain’s function, and the underlying process involved in neurofeedback, a technique that will allow the client to better regulate and operate their brain.

The brain controls its own blood supply through the dilation and constriction of the blood vessels, and the blood flow is directed to areas that are more active through this self-regulation. The blood supply’s flow, along with the utilization of the oxygen and glucose the blood carries is measured as “perfusion,” a measure that is clearly seen in some of the modern imaging techniques, such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and SPECT technology. Though these techniques are invasive, requiring the injection of small amounts of very short half-life radioactive materials, they do give good resolution of the perfusion due to the emission of the positrons, which are emitted from where the brain utilizes the oxygen and burns the glucose carried by the blood flow.

Brain Power

This video was recently shown again on CBS 60 Minutes. It is a great video talking about using brain controlled interfaces.

Brain Power – Harnessing the Power of the Brain

August 9, 2009 4:35 PM

People who are completely paralyzed due to illness or trauma are getting help communicating with a new technology that connects their brains to a computer. Scott Pelley reports.

New research shows: Neurofeedback is an ‘Evidence-Based’ treatment for ADHD.

Nijmegen, July 16th 2009 – Neurofeedback – also called EEG Biofeedback – is a method used to train brain activity in order to normalize Brain function and treat psychiatric disorders. This treatment method has gained interest over the last 10 years, however the question whether this treatment should be regarded as an Evidence-Based treatment was unanswered until now. Tomorrow a study will be published in the scientific journal ‘EEG and Clinical Neuroscience’ demonstrating that Neurofeedback can indeed be regarded as an evidence-based treatment for Attention Deficit- / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Neurofeedback is a treatment where real-time feedback is provided for specific brain activity (most often EEG) in order to learn the brain to suppress or produce specific brain activity. This method was initially discovered for the treatment of Epilepsy and from 1976 investigated further for the treatment of ADHD. This technique has become more popular by clinicians worldwide, and is currently provided for the treatment of several disorders. Critics have often questioned the efficacy of Neurofeedback and whether it can be considered an Evidence Based treatment or not.

In collaboration with researchers from Tübingen University (Germany), Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), Brainclinics and EEG Resource Institute a so-called meta-analysis was conducted on all published research about Neurofeedback treatment in ADHD. This meta-analysis included 15 studies and 1194 ADHD patients. Based on this study – which will be published in the July issue of EEG and Clinical Neuroscience – it could be concluded that Neurofeedback can indeed be considered an Evidence-Based treatment for ADHD. The results show that neurofeedback treatment has large and clinically significant effects on Impulsivity and Inattention and a modest improvement of Hyperactivity.

Thalamic Involvement in the Generation of the Alpha Rhythms

Alpha… it’s not a simple idling rhythm… let’s look at alpha generators:

The thalamic involvement in the generation of the alpha rhythm is being under-valued when looking at the LORETA images of alpha current source generators. The alpha power may come from the sources that LORETA identifies, but the thalamus is intimately involved in alpha rhythm generation, and this is not part of the LORETA image of the sources.

The polarization within the thalamus sets the base frequency of the alpha, but the cortical rhythm requires a complex multi-layer feedback loop from the thalamus to the cortex, and back to the thalamus. Without the cortex, there is a total disruption of the normal spatio-temporal distribution of the alpha wave’s spike trains within the thalamus, and cortical damage often disturbs coherence due to this mechanism.

The thalamus distributes the alpha posteriorly via specific sensory relays, which have a simple return circuit. Like the white matter relay from the lateral geniculate of the thalamus to the occipital lobe’s primary visual areas, and directly back. This thalamo-cortical-thalamic loop is relatively faster than the loop seen frontally. The frontal return circuitry is not simple, but the descending routes are complex and somewhat circuitous, taking more time, and thus it is common for the frontal lobe’s alpha to be at the slower end of the individual’s alpha frequency range. The frontal lobe has a return path through the striatum.