Afternoon Workshops Details

Friday, Jan. 19  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1400 -- #290) Trauma and Recovery: The Integration of Neurofeedback and Psychotherapy by Fisher, Sebern
Trauma and Recovery: The Integration of Neurofeedback and Psychotherapy   Post-traumatic stress disorder is, at its foundation, a disorder of the brain, particularly of the brain's ability to regulate fear. The brain oscillates between high sympathetic arousal as manifest in nightmares,  startle responses and aggression and parasympathic under arousal, manifest, at its worst, in dissociation. PTSD is a brain in the grip of fear.  Neurofeedback can be used to regulate the fear circuitries in the brain. Regulation of fear may, in fact, be the single most important contribution that neurofeedback makes to the treatment of severe conditions such as PTSD, attachment disorder and personality disorders.  This workshop will focus on the integration of neurofeedback and psychotherapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, both acute and chronic.  Among the topics we will discuss will be:  Once neurofeedback is introduced, what is the role of the therapist? What role does neurofeedback play when integrated into psychotherapeutic treatments? Affect regulation as the corner stone of effective psychotherapy The role of neurofeedback in the regulation of affect Fear as the central affect of concern The circuitry of fear: an overview of the limbic brain and the "greater amygdaloid region" Recent findings of the effects of trauma on the brain- overview of Schore, Siegel, Perry and others State dependence and neurofeedback Repressed memory and neurofeedback training The discovery and use of FPO2: frequency and time considerations   We will also discuss the pragmatics of the integration of neurofeedback and psychotherapy. Among the issues we will discuss will be:   When and how to introduce neurofeedback   When to talk and when to train   Touch   The presence of the therapist   The length of sessions   How to set up your system to enhance relational aspects of this endeavor   When to introduce alpha/theta training    We will discuss, as well, the need for self training and its inherent limits.   Case studies will be used throughout

At 1400 -- #319) Neurofeedback with Young Children by Othmer, Sue

At 1400 -- #327) Neurofeedback to Sleep: Tools and Techniques to Recognize and Manage Insomnia to Enhance Neurofeedback Efficacy by O'Malley, Ed

At 1400 -- #348) The science of meditation by Lowan, John
The effectiveness of mediation as a health, mood and performance enhancer is no longer in doubt; studies from multiple disciplines point to its benefits. Yet very few of us have the luxury of being able to withdraw into a monastery, cave or mountaintop to realize the full benefits of deep state meditation.   NeuroWave combines the science of neurotherapy with the power of ancient and modern meditation techniques to create a meditation training that is fast, effective and achievable in a modern lifestyle.  We encourage the full integration of meditation into everyday life and our goal is to have people become more creative, productive, connected and happier.   Anyone with an interest in starting or extending a meditation practice, or in the integration of neuroscience and meditation will likely benefit from this talk and the Beta state relaxation mediation we will experience.  In our talk, we will present an overview of the field of neuromeditation, including:  • A brief description of the major contributions the fields of medicine and neuroscience has made to meditation over the past 35 years.  • We will review EEG basics, the mind-body connection and EEG patterns which indicate states of meditation.  A description of the major brainwave states available in meditation with subjective analysis of related experiences:  • Beta, the state we most experience day-to-day, has proven to be the most difficult area to master for most meditators, particularly those raised in our information overload age. We will present breakthrough techniques which have proven dramatically successful in providing the mastery of Beta necessary to entering the deeper realms of meditation.  • Alpha represents a pleasant, calm, positive resting state that appears to act as a bridge to awareness of the deeper states of consciousness. Alpha provides enhanced performance for athletes, golfers, singers, martial artists or anyone who requires speed and accuracy with their hands or body. We will demonstrate a technique that provides rapid access to alpha for virtually everyone.  • Theta is the brainwave frequency that we are producing in dreaming sleep. A very creative and intuitive state, Theta carries the potential for releasing powerful images and emotions. Based on our Neuro observations, we have developed an approach to access Theta safely and use its wonderful creativity.  • Delta can provide a profound calming and deep meditation experience and appears related to empathy and connection with matters beyond the self. Meditators who have a conscious experience of Delta report that the state is both profound and psychologically healing. However, very few meditation systems have been successful in training Delta in more than a very low percentage of dedicated people. Our approach to Delta meditation is designed to give participants the tools to access and explore this state for themselves.
Friday, Jan. 19  StoryCon
At 1400 -- #252) THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE by Smith, Pamela Jaye
This interactive workshop will explore how myth and story have always been reflective of the foibles and tragedies of human existence. We'll look at a number of consistent psychological problems, individual and societal, that appear throughout most times and cultures and note the stories that explain their origin and/or reveal how people have dealt with them.  Techniques such as soul retrieval, chop-up-and-re-join cauldron ceremonies, initiation rites, and death rituals will be examined, along with the stories that accompany them.  We'll discuss selected films, TV shows, and games that feature aspects of the Dark Side and the Shadow and how to deal with them in order to compare their efficacy with the mythic tools of the past.   In open discussion, therapists and healers who use story or media in their work will be asked to contribute examples and insights.   Based on what we know worked in the past, we'll brainstorm ideas for new media content and delivery systems to promote individual and societal well-being.
Friday, Jan. 19  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1600 -- #284) Neurofeedback and Asthma:  Is asthma the undetected variable dragging out your cases? by Raaymakers, Molly
The domination of asthma in my Midwestern region plays a clear role in multiple Bi-polar, ADD/ADHD, Mood Disorder, Migraine and TMJ cases.  On average 66% of cases annually display amplitude variances correlated with allergies observable in their EEG's.  Of those cases, 45% have poorly managed/undiagnosed asthma perpetuating presenting mental health issues.  Molly Raaymakers with the wonderful assistance of Dr. Edward O’Malley present this workshop together.  The workshop will look at understanding how to detect and assist with respiratory management through the use of Neurofeedback to accelerate your outcomes.  Dr. Edward O’Malley will focus on how respiratory difficulties left unmanaged deteriorate sleep and undermine the effectiveness of neurofeedback training. Molly will discuss asthma detection with the assistance of EEG and how continuing neurofeedback allows follow-up EEG monitoring, provides clarity on mental health struggles, and offers resolution to clients who otherwise present as chronic and with limited responsiveness.  Cases presented involve both Neurofeedback in the office or with additional use of a home training system, offering opportunity for significant relief and personal monitoring for the asthmatic client.  Interlacing Neurofeedback to stabilize conditions and educate families; recognizing these respiratory cues verses emotional deficits has proven critical for many clients.  The percentage of allergy and asthma conditions is on the rise.  Beta (23-38) plays a key cuing role in the suspicion of asthma as a factor in client’s emotional and/or cognitive presentation.  EEG data in addition to standard allergy symptom awareness and peak flow monitoring substantiates referring clients for Pulmonary Function Testing and diagnostics.  In some cases the EEG may be the only primary cue for directing appropriate pulmonary evaluation.  Once confirmed, the EEG continues to provide a reliable tool in ensuring proper management of the condition.  Many times cases have not had obvious physical symptoms from which to cue effective respiratory management, yet the EEG data has effectively provided the information on the clients pulmonary circumstances. Even with cases that do have common symptoms such as persistent dry coughs, I see emotional and cognitive ‘slips’ within the EEG as well as on observation of client’s presentation occurring 3-6 weeks prior to the onset of the psychical cough.  With children in particular, these events concur with the start and end of the school year.  Early August and mid-March are key environmental periods where the pollen count in Michigan accelerates.  Allergy and asthmatic reactivity also accelerates, and not surprising so do referrals for neuropsychological evaluations, ADD/ADHD diagnosing, and prescribing of attention and mood managing medications.   Typically, these clients present with a history of mental health diagnostics and report little benefit to traditional management of their mental health symptoms.  Clients responsiveness to Neurofeedback is either slow/ less efficient, or after achieving great progress regresses quickly during particular seasonal changes.  This workshop will review, detail and discuss multiple facets involving allergy/asthma and how to accelerate progress with these cases through Neurofeedback.

At 1600 -- #337) What Makes Humans Humane by Pribram, Karl
WHAT MAKES HUMANITY HUMANE                                 Karl H. Pribram         Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets Washington DC 20057-1001 USA           Abstract:  Scientific and popular lore have promulgated a connection between emotion and the limbic forebrain.  However, there are a variety of structures that are considered limbic, and disagreement as to what is meant by “emotion”. This essay traces the initial studies upon which the connection between emotion and the limbic forebrain was based and how subsequent experimental evidence led to confusion both with regard to brain systems and to the behaviors examined.  In the process of sorting out the bases of the confusion the following rough outlines are sketched: 1) Motivation and emotion need to be distinguished. 2) Motivation and emotion are processed by the basal ganglia; motivation by the striatum and related structures, emotion by limbic basal ganglia: the amygdala and related structures.  3) The striatum processes activation of readiness, both behavioral and perceptual; the amygdala processes arousal, an intensive dimension that varies from interest to panic.  4) Activation of readiness deals with “what to do?” Arousal deals with novelty, with “what is it?” 5) Thus both motivation and emotion are the proactive aspects of representations, of memory: motivation, an activation of readiness; emotion, a processing of novelty, a departure from the familiar.  6) The hippocampal-cingulate circuit deals with efficiently relating emotion and motivation by establishing dispositions, attitudes.  7) The prefrontal cortex fine-tunes motivation, emotion and attitude when choices among complex or ambiguous circumstances are made.                               Introduction   Reviewing what I wrote more than three decades ago [1] makes me exclaim: It’s pretty damn good. Who wrote this? I’m sure many of you have had this feeling about something that you composed some time ago.   Almost everything I wrote back in 1970 I’ll vouch for today – and in some cases the earlier statements express my ideas better than I am doing currently.  A case in point, one that I am going to pursue in this essay, concerns the topic “coding”.  I had forgotten that, what today I have been subsuming under the rubrics “complexity”, “non-linear dynamics” and “chaos theory” is in fact what codes are all about.     In the original essay I failed to distinguish novelty from information.  Daniel Berlyne based a good deal of his career on the commonly held idea that novelty provides information in the arts and sciences.  Here I want to draw a distinction between these two concepts because I can discern different brain systems that are involved in one process that can be defined as “novelty” and another that can be defined as “information.”     I am going to use the term “novel” much as we use the term to describe a literary novel.  The essence of a novel is its complexity, its restructuring of the familiar.  In contrast, I will use the term “information” in the restricted fashion as it was defined by Shannon and Weaver: that is, as a measure of “reduction of uncertainty” -- which I will use as an alternative description to “information.”    For decades I was uncomfortable about equating novelty and uncertainty reduction, because “information processing” in the Shannon and Weaver sense entails the operation of the posterior convexity of the brain while the processing of “novelty and  familiarization” involves the brain’s fronto-limbic formations. Resolution of my discomfort came from an experiment performed in Belgium by G. Smets [2].  Smets constructed two different sets of displays: in one set, from trial to trial, he changed the number items displayed but kept the arrangement of items essentially the same.  In the other set he kept the number of items constant but changed the arrangement of the items.  Human subjects were asked to say which set of displays was the more aesthetically interesting.  During the testing, heart and respiratory rate, blood pressure and some simple brain electrical readings were recorded.    The results of the study were conclusive: changing the pattern, the arrangement of the items in the display was much more interesting and was accompanied by body and brain changes that are usually called “arousal” and “activation”.  Adding or subtracting items from the display proved to evoke little interest or body response.     Smets described his displays in information theoretic terms: Adding and subtracting items increased or decreased the amount of uncertainty, the amount of potential information, in the displays.  Changing the arrangement of the items in the display was a change from the familiar: the new arrangement was perceived as novel and interesting.                                 The Issue   The issue is not as abstract and dry as it sounds.  What is at stake is a specific kind of process that makes mankind all too human: feelings.  Feelings, emotional and motivational, were not covered in the original “What Makes Man Human” despite my having spent a good part of my research career exploring the brain processes involved in emotions and motivations.  Here I want to make up for this neglect by charting the far from straightforward course of the experiments on attention that lead to a realization of the import of those results for understanding emotional and motivational feelings.   My research, as had the research of many others, ran into a puzzle: Whenever an attempt was made to use body responses to measure an emotional process, the results told us little if anything about emotion but a great deal about attention.  Don Lindsley, on the basis of his work on the reticular activating core of the brain stem, had proposed an activation theory of emotion in which emotion was conceived as an overall undifferentiated attentive conscious process [3]. When the reticular core of the brain stem was destroyed animals and humans survived but in a vegetative state of “akinetic mutism”. The experimental results obtained by Smets on studying the reaction to changes in pattern had little in common with Lindsley’s activation process: Rather, these experiments targeted attention to specific aspects of experience once general activation had been achieved.     I was doing experiments on humans and non-human primates that paralleled those performed by Smets. My experiments were stimulated by the work of Eugene Sokolov who showed that such body and brain responses indicated that a representation, a “neuronal model,” of the pattern of stimulation was constructed during familiarization [4]. When monkeys or people were exposed to visual or auditory displays in which a change in pattern of the display was made, body responses identical to those measured by Smets (changes in heart and respiratory rate and blood pressure) were activated.  These responses waned with repetition; as the patterns became familiar the responses habituated.     Earlier, in an exploration of the idea that body responses are integral to feelings of emotion and motivation, my research had shown, in both human and non-human primates, that electrical stimulation of a stretch of cortex along the medial and basal surface of the brain cortex resulted in changes in blood pressure, heart and respiratory rate, gastrointestinal motility and some gross head and eye movements.  I labeled this cortex the mediobasal motor cortex to distinguish it from the classical motor cortex on the lateral surface of the brain. Today we would call it the limbic motor cortex.    The basal part of this limbic motor cortex is critically connected to the amygdala, a basal ganglion shaped like an almond, located at, and within, the tip of the temporal lobe of the brain.     The results of these earlier experiments that discovered the limbic motor cortex made me wonder whether the Sokolov responses to changes in patterns of stimuli depended on the occurrence of body responses.  I therefore removed the amygdala on both sides of the monkeys’ brains to see what would happen to body responses [5, 6]. To my surprise there was no change in body responses: the body responses occurred just as they had before surgery – and, moreover, they persisted with repetition of the stimulus. After the amygdalectomy, the body responses did not habituate.     Habituation, familiarization was thus shown to be dependent on the presence of an intact amygdala, a system able to process body responses.  The amygdala was not involved in the production of those body responses, nor, in other experiments, was the threshold to pain altered.  Rather the amygdala was shown to be important to processing an experience.  An experience consisted of an exposure to a change in a pattern that had become familiar.  The experience may have been painful or potentially painful; or pleasant or potentially pleasant.    In some experiments we used Pavlovian classical conditioning techniques and showed that amygdalectomized monkeys failed to become conditioned [7]. This was due on the part of the amygdalectomized monkeys -- when compared to control monkeys-- to have a narrowed window of response to the unconditioned stimulus so that a conjunction with the conditional stimulus failed to occur.    The current emphasis on the role of the amygdala in the processing of fear is understandable but addresses only one facet of processing by the amygdala system. Fear is not an expression of an experience of pain but a memory based anticipation of pain that may be realistic or imagined.    Since William James, scientists and philosophers have suggested that  emotional experiences and expressions per se, are accompanied by – and even initiated by – body responses.  But the results of my experiments indicate that body responses help a person attain, via the amygdala, a certain kind of memory, and that emotion is due to a challenge to the pattern of that memory, not the body responses themselves.  When we experience a stomach ache we do not identify that experience to be an emotion.                      How it All Began: Origins of Confusion   My interest in the amygdala and emotions stemmed from the experimental finding reported by Heinrich Klüver and Paul Bucy of marked taming of monkeys produced by excision of their temporal lobes [8].  (I was Bucy’s first resident when he began his private practice of neurosurgery). I undertook a program of research to find out which structure of the temporal lobe was responsible for producing the taming. The program also sought to find out which of the other symptoms produced by the temporal lobectomy were produced by which part of the lobe.  I found that not only taming but also other “basic instincts” – the 4 Fs: fighting, fleeing, feeding and sex – were dramatically altered by removal of the amygdala, though not by removal of any other part of the temporal lobe.  A further series of experiments, some of which were reviewed above, showed that the changes in the expression of basic instincts were due to changes in an animals’ processing of familiarity.      Those experimental results were complemented by electrical stimulations.  Electrical stimulation of the amygdala of animals and people has produced, in ascending order of the amount of stimulation (applied randomly), reactions that range from momentary to prolonged interest; to approaching conspecifics as in sexual mounting or flirting; to retreating from the environment; to outbursts of attack, labeled “sham rage”.     In short, although processing the content of familiarity is highly specific, the response engendered varies along an intensive dimension reaching from interest to rage.  There are, of course, many more experimental results that flesh out the skeleton described in the above review.  But this is enough to provide a kernel to the popularly accepted idea that the limbic systems contain “centers” for regulating emotions such as fear – the “fleeing” of the 4 Fs.     But the popular view has built in some difficulties.  The amygdala is only one structure among those that are loosely thought of as the limbic forebrain.  In fact, originally the amygdala was not included at all in the limbic circuitry.  Rather, two sources converged to be baptized by Paul MacLean as the “limbic systems.”   One source was Paul Broca who discerned a rim of cortex around the internal edge of the cerebral hemisphere to be different from the rest of the cerebral mantle. This cortex appeared paler and was later shown to be composed of only three layers and labeled “allo (other) cortex” to distinguish it from the six layered “eu (true) cortex” that makes up most of the cerebral mantle.  Broca called this rim of cortex “Le Grand Lobe Limbique.”     The other source, described by J.W. Papez, consisted of the hippocampus, its downstream connections through the septal region to the mammillary bodies of the hypothalamus, thence to the anterior nuclei of the thalamus that project to the cortex of the cingulate gyrus which had been labeled the “limbic” cortex. The cingulate cortex in turn feeds back into the hippocampus.  Papez reasoned that emotions tend to go round and round and this anatomical circuit does just that [9].  MacLean’s limbic system encompassed Broca’s cortex and Papez’s circuitry and originally did not include the amygdala.  It was not until MacLean joined my project in John Fulton’s department at Yale that it became imperative on the basis of my results to include the amygdala in any circuitry that presumably organizes our emotions.   I had summarized my early experimental results in a paper written with one of my students, Larry Kruger, titled “Functions of the Olfactory Brain” for which we received more than 2000 reprint requests [10].  In this paper we noted that Broca’s limbic three-layered allocortex had, for anatomical reasons, to be expanded in primates to include adjacent new six layered cortex.  Filimonov, a Russian neuroanatomist whom I went to visit in Moscow, had labeled these new six layered accretions “juxtallocortex” (next to the allocortex) .  My electrical and chemical stimulations as well as the results of my behavioral experiments supported the unity in function of these old and new primate cortical zones.  The most clear-cut of these zones surrounded the amygdala which had, therefore, to be included in Broca’s, if not in Papez Limbic brain.     The stage was set for the confusion that has occurred between actual experimental results and the popular and much of the scientific understanding of the relation between emotion and the limbic systems.  Experiments and anatomical analyses showed the limbic brain to be not just an old brain but in primates to contain neocortical zones. Furthermore, the functions of the amygdala system proved to have more to do with attention and the formation of memory than with emotion. This confusion is multiplied by the ambiguity of the use of the term “feeling” in English.  Most often “feeling” and “emotion” are used synonymously.  At other times, especially by scientists, feeling is used as the subjective aspect of emotion and motivation.                                   Stop and Go   The confusion can be resolved and in the resolution new insights are gained.  We have already noted that stimulations and damage to the amygdala entail familiarization of an experience.  Familiarization leads to a memory that is challenged by a novel, a change in a familiar, pattern. The challenge elicits a response that varies in intensity according to the properties of the novel stimulus.   Challenge of the familiar interrupts ongoing behavior.  The interruption has been described as a “What is it?” reaction. This initial response to novelty is most often followed by a “What to do?” reaction.  “What to do?” engages basal ganglia other than the amygdala: the corpus striatum composed of the caudate nucleus and the putamen.  Nico Spinelli and I found that electrical stimulation of the caudate nucleus and of the putamen changes recovery cycles of event related potentials and inhibitory surrounds of receptive fields in the visual system [11]. These basal ganglia are thus engaged not only in regulating postural set as is well known, but also in changing “settings” of sensory inputs in processing “what to do”.    William James contrasted emotions that “stop at the skin” with instinct, that is motivations, that “get into practical relations with the environment”.  Getting into practical relations entails readiness and behavioral involvement, the operations regulated by the striatum, the non-limbic basal ganglia.   Thus when we talk of feelings in the sense that they encompass both emotions and motivations, we need to keep in mind that basal ganglia other than limbic are of concern. Were we to do this, one area of confusion would become clarified.   The experimental results reviewed above can be encapsulated by stating that the amygdala is part of a stop system that processes interruptions of ongoing behavior and experience; that the basal ganglia of the corpus striatum are part of a go system that readies the organism to effectively initiate or continue involvement in behaving and experiencing. The conclusions with respect to go processing are borne out by patients with Parkinson’s disease who have difficulty in starting and maintaining their interests and their behavior.     With regard to stop processing, experimental results show that persons, monkeys and dogs whose amygdala have been removed fail to establish bounds on their ongoing behavior.  Amygdalectomized animals fail to respect ordinary familiar territorial boundaries on their sexual behavior and treat every social encounter as novel, failing to heed interactions that had become familiar.     We obtained the most detailed evidence of how failure to heed bounds on behavior in experiments and observations of eating.  Amygdalized dogs, monkeys and people do not eat more vigorously than controls after being deprived of food, or when given greater incentive to eat, but whenever food is available they fail to curtail eating and persist longer in feeding.    Anatomically the amygdala is heavily connected by way of two large pathways with the ventromedial “nucleus” of the hypothalamus, a region that has been identified as regulating satiety.  When the ventromedial nucleus is destroyed animals eat and eat and eat.  Their “stop” process has been removed.  Interestingly, the same sequence of responses as is observed for the amygdala is observed with electrical stimulation of this hypothalamic nucleus.  Thus an intensive dimension, regulated by the brain, ranges from satiety (boredom?), through interest, approach, avoidance, and to explosive attack. This dimension is truly what we can identify as emotion.     At the hypothalamic level a “go” process has also been identified in what is called its far lateral region.  Lesions of this region produce animals that won’t eat at all – and will starve.  In this location there is no hypothalamic nucleus, but there are tracts leading from the substantia nigra to the striatal basal ganglia.  These tracts are dopaminergic and are involved in the production of Parkinson’s disease.     Microelectrode experiments have shown that activity in the ventromedial and far lateral hypothalamic regions is reciprocal.     A patient who had sustained an amygdalectomy illustrates this syndrome.  She had gained some 50 lbs. in the six months since surgery.  Her nursing records showed that she chewed and ate whatever was before her including paper and pencils.  I was examining her shortly before noon and asked her why she put things in her mouth—whether she remained inordinately hungry.  She answered a definite no.  I then asked if she had any specific appetites such as steak or chocolate.  Again a definite no.  I had so hoped that this talking primate could tell me what my non-talking monkeys could not.     I opened the door of the examining room that fortunately for my inquiry led to the common room where lunch was being served.  The patient slowly made her way to the table, but when she got there she pushed other patients aside, and grabbed food with both hands and began to stuff herself.  I brought her back to the examining room and asked why she had behaved the way she did.  She could not tell me.  As a behaviorist, I learned an important lesson which most ordinary people already know: Human behavior is not necessarily a reliable guide to human subjective experience.  In the epilogue of our 1960 book Plans and the Structure of Behavior [12], George Miller, Eugene Galanter and I called ourselves “Subjective Behaviorists”, an oxymoron at the time.     The experimental results that I have reviewed show that certain brain systems, centered on the amygdala, regulate an intensive dimension of responses to external or body stimulation, a dimension of response that we can identify as emotion. These responses are bounded by what has become familiar. Another set of responses involving the caudate and putamen, process motivated behaviors that bring the animal or person into practical relations with the environment.   Both emotional and motivational systems of the brain have been shown to influence sensory processes. This influence accounts for their subjective, feeling aspects.                               The Hippocampal Circuit   The experimental results reviewed should resolve much of the current confusion that is glossed over by simply relating “emotions” to “the limbic system”.  But what about the Papez hippocampal-cingulate circuit?  Just as in the case of research on the amygdala, almost all research on damage to the hippocampus has devolved on the finding of a very specific type of memory loss: the memory of what is happening to the patient personally fails to become familiar.  Again it is memory, and familiarity, not the processing of information, or for that matter of emotion, that is involved.     However, the processing of what is familiar is different for the hippocampal system than for the amygdala system.  A series of experiments in my laboratory demonstrated that while the amygdala is processing what is novel during habituation, the hippocampus is processing the context within which habituation is happening: the hippocampus is processing what is already familiar.  In a learning task, when a monkey is choosing between a “plus” and a “zero” and choosing the “plus” is always rewarded irrespective of where it is placed, the amygdala is processing choosing the “plus”, the hippocampus is processing not-choosing the “minus”, the non-rewarded cue.  This was a surprising result for our group until we realized that in order to walk through a door we must process the walls so as to not bump into them. Our experience with familiar walls has become, for the moment, irrelevant, no longer “elevated” in attention. We no longer are interested in walls unless there occurs an earthquake in which instance our experience of the walls promptly dis-habituates and re-elevates into attention.  The memory of walls and of the minus cue does not disappear during habituation and learning.     From all these results we could almost be ready to dismiss the hippocampal-cingulate circuit from the “limbic systems process emotions” idea.  Almost but not quite:  In one experiment I reversed what had been the rewarded cue after criterion performance had been reached – the reward was switched from “plus” to “minus.” Monkeys with hippocampal removals had no problem in reversing their performance but once they reached a 50% level of reward they were stuck at that level for weeks [13]. It seemed that they were insufficiently motivated to try for a more substantial level of reward.  After such a period of 50% performance, the monkeys took off and completed the task to a 90% performance level.  The slopes of achieving 50% and 90% were normal; only that long period in the middle was different.  My interpretation was that at the 50% level of reward the new build-up of “not-choosing” had not proceeded sufficiently to counter the context of “not-choosing” from the pre-reversal stage of the experiment to kick the monkey into a more productive motivational phase. Support for this interpretation came from the finding that over progressive reversals the mid-plateau of 50% performance became progressively shorter.    In another experiment, monkeys whose cingulate cortex I had removed showed a dramatic shortening of the duration of their frustration to a sudden cessation of expected rewards [14].  Frustration occurs when an always-rewarded situation becomes suddenly an always unrewarded one.  The “unrewarded” context is suddenly overwhelmed with a new pattern. This is more like a change in the intensive dimension that characterizes emotion than in a change in motivation.      But there is more. The hippocampus processes hormones that organize the pituitary regulation of adrenal cortical hormones which in turn are processed by the hippocampus. Thus the anatomy and physiology of the adrenal gland is reflected in the anatomy and physiology of the amygdala circuit and the hippocampal circuit:  Adrenalin (epinephrine) secreted by the adrenal core is processed by the amygdala system; cortisone secreted by adrenal cortex is processed by the hippocampal system.     Adrenal cortical hormones have a great deal to do with motivation. Treatment with these hormones, which are closely related to sex hormones, produces a feeling of euphoria, of gung-ho to do things.  However, prolonged excretion of adrenal cortical hormones that occurs as a result of undue stress produces ennui and depression.  The effect of hippocampal processing on motivation thus provides the context of specific patterns that are currently “irrelevant” but expresses the motivation along an intensive dimension, much as does the processing of emotions by the amygdala.    Two different patterns of electrical activity have been recorded from the hippocampus.  One patterns occurs when the animal alerts to a stimulus, when “what is it”? is being processed. The other pattern is present when an animal is exploring its environment, when “what to” do might be or might become of concern [15].   Taken together these experiments indicate that the hippocampal circuit brings together emotion: the processing of familiarity; and motivation: the processing of readiness to engage the world in a practical manner.                                   Attitude   There is a final step in this hegira regarding the limbic systems and emotions.  I had been attracted to Sigmund Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology in part because in the Project Freud developed a theory of motivation based on memory rather than on drives.  Freud noted that motivations are the prospective aspects of memories. As described in Chapter 2 of Freud’s Project Reassessed, Freud located motivation in the basal ganglia and drew a diagram of what today we would call a neural network [16].     In writing up my comments on the functions of the amygdala, their role in familiarization, a memory process, I suddenly realized that we could conceive of emotions as the prospective aspects of familiarization much as Freud had conceived of motivation as the prospective aspects of memories.    Attitudes are prospective feelings.  Motivational attitudes entail striatal processing; emotional attitudes entail amygdala processes and efficiently combining motivational and emotional attitudes entails processing by the hippocampal circuit.    Attitudes are dispositional states that embody the experience of the individual (in compressed form).  Attitudes are formed and reformed (reset) by structuring redundancy:  each level of repetition is re-presented at the next level by a single symbol – and this process continues until all repetitions have been accounted for. In short, attitudes embody complexity, attitudes embody codes.  In chapter 9 of Brain and Perception I have reviewed preliminary evidence of how the hippocampal circuit is involved in the construction of codes [17].  More recently, J. McClelland has created a model that shows how isocortical input becomes processed by the hippocampus, is then forwarded back to the isocortex to be interleaved into ongoing processing.  In an interchange (1988) between McClelland and myself I indicated that the return to the isocortex needs to proceed via the basal ganglia [18].     In the presence of ambiguity, when choices are less than straightforward, attitudes come under the control of divisions of the frontal cortex, one division monitoring amygdala, another monitoring striatal and still another, hippocampal circuits.    Recently much attention has been paid to the involvement of emotional processes in cognitive functions [e.g., 19].  An excellent example is a recent report in Science [20] that describes the selective activation of the amygdala, shown by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), in what Kahneman and Tversky have called a “framing effect” [21].  The frame is, of course, the context of “what isn’t” that I have described in this essay.  The Science report therefore supports what I described earlier, on the basis of my experimental results, as “placing bounds, boundaries” on experience and behavior.  The report also supports the conclusion that divisions of the frontal cortex become activated in modulating the framing effect.    As my brief review indicates, when brain processes are considered, the involvement of feelings with reasoning and choice is much more intimate and intricate than we had suspected: “What Makes Man Human” is the humane-ness of his brain.                             Suggested Readings:    I have chosen references 22-29 as seminal to the themes covered in this essay. References 22-26 are early studies that have become almost totally lost to current thinking about emotion and motivation.  References 27-29 are papers that have contributed and are contributing important insights to our understanding of What Makes Humanity Humane.                                        REFERENCES   1. Pribram KH: What Makes Man Human. James Arthur lecture on the evolution of the human brain. New York, The American Museum of Natural History; 1970. Published in J Biomed Discovery Collab 2006, 1:**.    2. Smets G: Aesthetic judgment and arousal. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press; 1973.      3. Lindsley DB: Emotion. In Handbook of Experimental Psychology. Edited by Stevens SS. New York: John Wiley; 1951:473-516.    4. Sokolov EN: Perception and the Conditioned Reflex. New York: Macmillan; 1963.   5.Pribram KH, Lim H, Poppen R, Bagshaw MH: Limbic lesions and the temporal structure of redundancy. J Comp Physiol Psychol 1966, 61:365-373.   6. Spevack AA, Pribram KH: A decisional analysis of the effects of limbic lesions on learning in monkeys.  J Comp Physiol Psychol 1973, 82:211-226.   7. Pribram KH, Reitz S, McNeil M, Spevack AA: The effect of amygdalectomy on orienting and classical conditioning.  Pavlovian J Biol Sci 1979, 14:203-217.   8. Kluver H, Bucy PC: “Psychic blindness” and other symptoms following bilateral temporal lobectomy in Rhesus monkeys. Am J Physiol 1937, 119:352-353.   9. Papez J: The Papez mechanism of emotion. In The Attitude Theory of Emotion. Edited by Bull N. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation; 1951/1968.    10. Pribram KH, Kruger L: Functions of the "olfactory brain. Ann NY Acad Sci 1954, 58:109-138.   11. Spinelli N, Pribram KH: Changes in visual recovery function and in unit activity produced by frontal cortex stimulation. Electroencephal Clin Neurophysiol 1967, 22:143-149.   12. Miller GA, Galanter EH, Pribram KH:  Plans and the structure of behavior. New York: Henry Holt and Co.; 1960/1979.  13. Pribram KH, Douglas RJ, Pribram BJ: The nature of non-limbic learning. J Comp Physiol Psychol 1969, 69:765-772.  14. Pribram KH, Fulton JF: An experimental critique of the effects of anterior cingulate ablations in monkey.  Brain 1954, 77:34-44.   15. Pribram KH, Isaacson RL eds: The Hippocampus: Volume 2, Neurophysiology and Behavior. New York: Plenum Press; 1975.   16. Pribram KH, Gill MM: Freud’s Project Reassessed. New York: Basic Books; 1976.     17. Pribram KH: Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1991.      18. McClelland JL: Role of the Hippopcampus in Learning and Memory. Pribram KH: Commentary on J.L. McClelland. McClelland JL: Reactions to Pribram’s commentary. In Brain and Values: Is a Biological Science of Values Possible. Edited by Pribram KH. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1998.   19. Damasio AR: Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: HarperCollins; 1994.   20. De Martino B, Kumaran D, Seymore B, Dolan RJ: The framing effect – in which the way a question is posed alters the answer – is a result of biases arising in the amygdala, a brain region involved with emotion. Science 2006, 313:684-687.     21. Kahneman D, Tversky A: Choice, Values and Frames. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2000.    22. Kaada BR, Pribram KH, Epstein JA:  Respiratory and vascular responses in monkeys from temporal pole, insula, orbital surface and cingulate gyrus.  J  Neurophysiol 1949, 12:347-356.  23. Pribram KH, Lennox MA, Dunsmore RH: Some connections of the orbito-fronto-temporal limbic and hippocampal areas of Macaca Mulatta.  J Neurophysiol 1950, 13:127-135.     24. Pribram KH, MacLean PD: Neuronographic analysis of medial and basal cerebral cortex.  II. Monkey.  J Neurophysiol 1953, 16:324-340.   25. Pribram KH: Comparative neurology and the evolution of behavior.  In Behavior and evolution.  Edited by Roe A, Simpson GG. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1958:140-164.   26. Pribram KH: Limbic System.  In Electrical stimulation of the brain.  Edited by Sheer DE. Austin: University of Texas Press; 1961:311-320.     27. Pribram KH, McGuinness D: Arousal, activation, and effort in the control of attention.  Psychol Rev 1975, 82:116-149.   28. PRIBRAM, K. H. The orienting reaction:  Key to brain representational mechanisms.  In The orienting reflex in humans.  Edited by Kimmel HD. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1980:3-20.  29. Pribram KH: On Brain and Value: Utility, Preference, Play and Creativity.  In Brain and Values: Is a Biological Science of Values Possible. Edited by Pribram KH.  Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1998:43-54.
Saturday, Jan. 20  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1400 -- #297) Important variables for successful Biofeedback and Neurofeedback applications in Rehabilition by Brucker, Bernard

At 1400 -- #321) THE MODULAR COHERENCE APPROACH TO NEUROFEEDBACK TRAINING by Walker, Jonathan

At 1400 -- #352) How the Brain works; Designing Neurofeedback Interventions by Gunkelman, Jay
Behaviorally based diagnosis is the clinical standard for the DSM approach to therapy... "diagnosis, therefore treatment".  This approach has not shown efficacy, with the treatments neither being specifically selected, not outcomes predicted.  This workshop will provide a review of brain structure and function, and the phenotype model will be reviewed in more depth than would be allowed in a plenary talk.  The ability of the behavior to predict the EEG and the EEG to predict behavior, as well as the lack of reversibility of this relationship will be reviewed and commented upon.
Saturday, Jan. 20  StoryCon
At 1400 -- #286) The Essential Elements of Great Stories and the Secrets of Great Characters  (Workshop) by Bonnet, James

Saturday, Jan. 20  Optimal Functioning & Positive Psychology
At 1400 -- #301) Waking Up The Automatic Self by Soutar, Richard
This workshop will present a comprehensive psycho-social theory concerning human behavior that integrates a large number of major psychological and sociological theories.  The main postulates underlying this theory revolve around the concepts of routinization of information in the CNS, the automatic nature of human behavior,  the unanticipated social consequences of automatic behavior, the requirement of social accuracy for an organism to thrive, and the drive for maturation through social interaction that all humans share.  The theory hypothesizes that we are automatic in our behavior and consequently are generally limited in growth options and development by past conditioning that directs that automatic behavior.  Through self-awareness training we can become aware of our automatic responses and develop a conscious plan and method to alter it.  If our alterations increase our social accuracy, then we can acquire the social resources we need to thrive.  Once we thrive we begin to develop in social maturity through insights emerging from efficient interactions toward our perceived goals.  This transformative process leads toward transcendence.  Attendees will be provided with means to objectively measures dimensions of behavior and transform them through methods of self-awareness training (Neurofeedback), emotional intelligence training, visualization training, concentration training, and deep states training.
Saturday, Jan. 20  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1600 -- #372) Self-Regulation & Biofeedback Treatment of Borderline Personality by Wesch, Jerry
Borderline personality patients are commonly encountered in healthcare settings due to the high frequency of stress responses and chronic pain syndromes. Due to the high drama potential for these patients in theraputic relationships, their reputation is terrible among medical professionals. However, if a systematic approach to repairing the underlying defects in self-awareness, affect management and self-regulation of distress, progress can be made and symptoms reduced. The author has been using a self-regulation protocol for care of these complex and challanging patients for 30 years with some promising results.

At 1600 -- #371) Listening Therapy - Hands On Workshop by Minson, Ron

At 1600 -- #398) Getting Started with MiniQ and full QEEG brain mapping by Demos, John
Topographical brain maps based upon normative data have long been used to guide neurotherapy protocols.  Several key terms and skills must be mastered before effective use can be realized. The goal is to acquire meaningful data, transform that data into a brain map and lastly to interpret the map and to develop protocols. Some of the basic principles of map interpretation include:  • Gaussian Curve • Standard deviation (z-scores) • Frequency bandwidths • Single Hertz bins • Absolute data • Relative data • Asymmetry • Ratios • Coherence • Peak Frequency • Task analysis  Those who rely heavily upon normative data often inhibit just one specific frequency bandwidth in a neurologically significant areas.  However, the application of this model appears on the surface to be one-dimensional. However, EEG neurofeedback training always results in a multi-dimensional effect.   On the other hand, dynamic models of neurofeedback training using 3 or more thresholds can also be developed from topographical brain maps. Using topographical brain maps to guide protocol development in concert with the wealth of knowledge we have gained from clinical experience can prove to be a very powerful partnership. For example, knowing coherence norms can help to improve our success with interhemispheric bipolar montages which often impact coherence readings.   Example #1—Adult male with combined depression, traumatic brain injury and labile mood. This example demonstrates a classic alpha asymmetry and temporal lobe damage from a car accident  Example #2—Adult male with depression, anxiety and inattention that is reflected in the EEG by excessive amplitudes of alpha at O1. Two or three other examples will be considered as time allows.  In each case we will discuss how effective protocols can be developed from clinical norms while considering the testee’s neurology and prominent symptoms.  For those who are just becoming interested in topographical brain maps this lecture will be very grounding.
Saturday, Jan. 20  StoryCon
At 1600 -- #315) Method Storytelling by Jacobs, Karen

Sunday, Jan. 21  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1400 -- #260) Potentiating neurotherapy by Swingle, Paul
Since concentrating on neurotherapy as my primary therapeutic tool, my research has focused on developing techniques for increasing the efficiency and accelerating the process of modifying brain functioning.  Many neurotherapists do provide clients with various adjunctive self-administered treatments to facilitate the therapeutic process.   These “add ons” include relaxation exercises, self-hypnosis, energy psychology routines, life style modification recommendations, subliminal affirmation devices, cranial microamperage stimulators, audiovisual stimulators and therapeutic harmonics.  The reason for prescribing these procedures, of course, is because they are believed to potentiate the therapeutic process.  The above adjunctive treatments are generally administered outside the context of neurotherapy sessions.  Braindriving techniques, often using some of these same stimuli, have been developed for use in neurotherapy sessions for clients not cdapable of volitional neurofeedback.  these procedures are also used when more aggressive treatment to change brain activity are desired. The workshiop reviews the procedures fro braindriving the EEG as well as driving the HEG.  Such procedures can be used for autonomic biofeedback as well.

At 1400 -- #359) AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO NEUROCARE PRO AND NEUROCAREMOTE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET TO WORK NOW by Brown, Valdeane
NeuroCARE Pro represents the state of the art in modern neurofeedback training. Despite being based in cutting-edge analytic techniques, its underlying architecture and intuitive interface make it one of the easiest systems to learn. This means that you will be “up and running” more quickly while also learning to use state of the art comprehensive and adaptive approaches to target setting. NeuroCARE Pro uses a wide range of multimedia elements for feedback, including DVDs, MP3, MID, WAV, CD and more – and this makes the overall training experience more interesting, engaging and pleasant for your clients. The system also includes 3-D visualization techniques and advanced statistics that are not available on any other system. Whether you’re interested in applying training in the clinical world, bringing it into schools, using it to deepen meditation, or engaging in far-reaching research, NeuroCARE Pro has the tools and features to support your interest and work – including the latest and most complete system for guided neurofeedback training “at a distance.” NeuroCAREmote brings the power and precision of NeuroCARE Pro into a range of environments outside of your office – while still keeping you “in control.” Clients can only train as you think best for them – but they can utilize their favorite DVDs and music to train with state of the art precision, in the privacy of their own home. NeuroCAREmote is an elegant extension to the profound practice of neurofeedback training made possible by NeuroCARE Pro.  This seminar will show you what you need to know to learn how to bring the power of neurofeedback training into your practice quickly and easily – and then extend it into the client’s home and other arenas by using NeuroCAREmote.  The reality of virtual clinics is here now.
Sunday, Jan. 21  Optimal Functioning & Positive Psychology
At 1400 -- #273) Light Mind Technology: The Light Labyrinth and Music Visualizer by Seid, Kirby
Participants will have the opportunity for deep transcendent meditative experiences with The Light Labyrinth, Music Visualizer and large extraordinary quartz crystals.  Part 1: Discussion/Lecture -In this lecture we will discuss: · The Light Labyrinth Project- integrating technology, art and spiritualty o Motivations for altering consciousness- Dreamtime and imaginal realms o Shamanic Gazes- gazes that activate different brain centers to stimulate shamanic experiences o Formulation of the Light Form Programs and Music Visualizer o Visual Resonance- Higher octave harmonic field, multiple levels of awareness o Unfamiliar senses- what are they/ why it is important to develop them · Physics and metaphysics of light and quartz crystals o The light of physics and the light of consciousness o Our relationships and response to color o Physical properties of 100-200 million years old quartz crystals, their creation from geological forces, quartz impact on human consciousness o Piezoelectricity, use in modern world, exploring crystals as consciousness o How crystals refract, compress, combine with light to create complementary frequencies Brief Break  Part 2: Facilitated trance meditation with The Light Labyrinth and Music Visualizer · Exploratory meditation with the light forms, crystals and color · Depending on the size of the group we will have multiple Light Labyrinths and spectacular large quartz crystals linked for simultaneous viewing   Part 3: Question and answer session with experiential feedback.  “The Light Labyrinth definitely puts me in a trance in a complete and total state of awe. It is a really good modality for accessing information. The Light Labyrinth always soothes my heart and makes everything OK, calm and peaceful” Louisa McKusky, Wise Awakening   “Almost every time I’ve spent about an hour with the Light Labyrinth, afterwards I have had very lucid dreams.” Randy Masters, teacher  “The Light Labyrinth enhances the group experience immeasurably - it amplifies the healing energy in the room!”Barbara LaRocca, hypnotherapist

At 1400 -- #312) LOVE AND SYNCHRONICITY by Roland, Allen
LOVE & SYNCHRONICITY   It was Carl Jung who wrote ;   We are in the deepest sense , the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic love. I do not use love in  its connotations of desiring, preferring, favoring, wishing and similar feelings, but as something superior to the individual ~ a unified and undivided whole.   Jung's theories of the collective unconscious fit within and support my model of a Unified field of Love as a universal psychic energy field that unites and connects all beings.   In Religion and the Collective Unconscious , June Singer explains this phenomenon;   " The Collective Unconscious , as Jung perceived it, does not merely derive from personal experience but precedes the individual in time . It is not individual, but universal, carrying traces of the entire evolution of the species. Thus, the Collective Unconscious is a principle identical in all men and constitutes a substratum of a suprapersonal nature in all human beings."   As such, my Unified field of love and soul consciousness, like Jung's collective unconscious, is a boundless psychic energy field that precedes us in time. You might say it exists within us , yet we are born into it.    But the suprapersonal substratum of the Unified Field is Love . Love is a universal urge that carries within itself the traces of the entire evolution of the species in terms of its urge to unite and complete itself.   As such, this state of love and soul consciousness ( the Unified Field ) does indeed constitute a substratum of a suprapersonal nature that is present and deepest within all human beings .   Which brings me to the subject at hand ~ Synchronicity .   Jung's theory of synchronicity ( meaningful events and coincidences which later make complete sense ) can be explained as the working out of our individual yet interconnected destinies within a Unified psychic energy field of love and an evolving loving plan.   Thus , all of our key love relationships must be seen as synchronistic ~ in that they have led us closer to our ultimate surrender to love and our part in an evolving loving plan.   I am continually amazed at my ongoing heart connections with former mates and lovers ~ whereas we are drawn together and celebrate our next step on the journey of the heart ~ even though we are physically separated by distance.    In other words, those who we love deeply become part of us forever .   Think of it as a Universe of Heartstrings and when we do not deny love but instead celebrate it ~ our heartstring vibrates to a chord that is felt by all we love and have loved.   Thus Love is the ultimate energy which we must surrender to , both individually and collectively , inorder to fulfill our destiny .   That path of the heart is inner guided and synchronicity is the vague awareness that each event or relationship is a step on that journey ~ which indeed it is .    Jung was convinced that deep within the unconscious  ~ in the hidden regions of the human psyche that profoundly influence the conscious mind ~ lay all the answers for the unfolding and perfection of each human being.   He was also convinced that a source of energy , a psychic equivalent to that released by the splitting of the atom, could be released form the psyche's hidden depths.   And he was correct !   The primal force of love is that energy and the threshold to another universe of consciousness ~ and to a new way of being !   We are being continually led on that path through synchronistic events but few listen and fewer still respond to this inner call .   Responding to this inner call is the ultimate YES to yourself and affirmation of your life.      Allen L Roland, Ph.D

At 1400 -- #332) Neurophysics of optimal and psi performance by Collura, Thomas
In this workshop, we will investigate EEG patterns that have been associated with optimal mental performance, including psi phenomena.  In particular, specific experiences and research results will be presented that describe EEG phenomena that are observed in connection with deep meditation, episodes of telepathy, clairvoyance, and energy healing.  We will describe specific protocols that are targeted at producing enhanced states.  A general model that appeals to a sequence of activation/relaxation/synchrony/phenomenology will be presented, and framed in terms of EEG training protocols.  Joint work, such as with couples involved in telepathy, or healing, will be discussed.
Sunday, Jan. 21  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1600 -- #307) HEALING MYSTICISM:  DEEP PSYCHOTHERAPY AND UNITIVE STATES by Brod, Thomas
Research into psychotherapy with psychedelic drugs was in its infancy when federally supported research into such drugs was halted in 1965.  Competing models of “psychedelic vs psycholytic” therapy were left with unfilled promise, and the dominant model of psychoanalysis at the time, ego psychology, had little to contribute to the discourse.  Ironically, Hans Loewald’s theory of Integration forms the  basis for the contemporary understanding of Unitive States--the perspective which reopens potential legitimate psychotherapy research into these substances. We will structure the workshop toward an examination of those complex, open issues.    The presentation will begin with a brief summary of the material from the plenary session on current research into psilocybin-induced mystical states and Mario Beauregard’s recent fMRI study of neural correlates of mystical experience in Carmelite nuns.    Next, a recently made videotape of  Toronto-based Professor of Religious Studies and psychoanalyst Dan Merkur will be the springboard for a new consideration of the potential therapeutic application of drug-enduced mystical states. Merkur’s career has has been spent studying mystical and unitive states.  Unitive thinking manifests consciously in mystical experiences and represents a healthy line of cognitive development: “unconscious unitive thinking has a natural and healthy tendency to manifest as conscious spirituality.”  Recently Merkur, a former professor of religious studies and author of 11 books tied to the psychology of spiritual states, has proposed a framework for working with people—while  they are actively under the influence of a psychedelic drug—which theoretically could facilitate psychological mindedness and the rapid maturation of that line of personal growth.    Finally, we will draw on the collective experience (wisdom) of the workshop attendees to consider how/whether contemporary psychotherapy research might inform the development of a proposed new psychotherapy study involving mystical experience-inducing psychedelic substances.
Sunday, Jan. 21  Optimal Functioning & Positive Psychology
At 1600 -- #269) Entering the Mandala: Living the Sacred Circle sm by DeLuca, John
From early childhood, we begin to construct a notion of ourselves along with a particular world view.  Later, when our life experience is at odds with the perceptions and conceptualizations that arise from these fabrications, we experience suffering of some kind. In many instances, these notions of ourselves have become fixed and rigid.  We forget that what we take as solid and real today were often the working assumptions of a child, and often based on insufficient information, faulty logic and/or misperception.  Yet today, their origins are buried deep in our unconscious, and continue to have an impact on our thoughts and feelings.  In this experiential workshop, we explore the notion of the self as a mandala as understood by the depth psychologist Carl Jung.  However, our focus will be on understanding and transforming the five primal energies associated with the mandala into their corresponding wisdom essence. As such, our focus will be on identifying and transforming our habitual patterns of being in and seeing the world.  In this sense, the mandala is a metaphor for the deconstruction and reformation of the self and our personal cosmology.  By shifting beliefs, notions of our self, and of our patterns of perception and conceptualization, we provide the ground for developing alternative and healthier perspectives of our self and the world.  Through a process of immersing onself into the sacred space of the mandala environment, or "living the sacred circle", you can engender a life-changing shift in consciousness.   Change your expectations and change your world. Re-vision yourself and begin living the light!  © 2003-2006  John W. DeLuca  All Rights Reserved

At 1600 -- #280) Polycontrast Interference Photography:  What Does your Energy Field Reveal? by Rubik, Beverly
Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP) is a novel method to visualize and photograph various aspects of the whole-body human energy field, including the various chakras, dantians, and acupuncture meridians, via photon interaction with the human body.  It was developed by Harry Oldfield, British scientist and inventor, who is world-renowned for his work with Kirlian photography.  The PIP method involves digital processing of light interference patterns on and around the human subject, who is standing in minimal attire while being illuminated by uniform, full-spectrum white light. These light interference patterns are then interpreted by the PIP software, which reveals information about areas of energetic imbalance and blockages within the body, through software-enhanced colored patterns that may be visualized in three dimensions around the body.  Just as x-rays are used to show internal body structures, PIP may be considered as an “e-ray” that depicts the energy anatomy of the human biofield.    For example, a PIP scan Another example of a scan of a Buddhist Lama showed a huge and vibrant aura with dancing lights all around the man, plus a remarkably symmetric pattern of bright colors revealing the chakras.  While a PIP scan of a man before energy healing showed a pattern of some congestion and turbulence in the energy field, characteristic of  poor energy regulation, the PIP scan after energy healing showed that most of the torso was green and yellow, possibly due to the chakras being energized.    All participants who wish to be assessed will be PIP-scanned in this workshop.  In order to be scanned most accurately, participants should wear white clothing that covers the body minimally, such as white swimwear or underwear, and they must be willing to be scanned in this attire.  From the symmetry of the PIP patterns as well as colors obtained, the energy fields of participants will be evaluated and discussed.   If time permits, we will show the influence of an intervention or a mind-body exercise such as qigong on the human energy field of several participants.
Monday, Jan. 22  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1400 -- #382) Head and Heart: Combined Modalities: The LENS neurofeedback and HRV training by Larsen, Stephen

At 1400 -- #379) Introduction to QEEG by Wilson, Jeffrey
Not overly technical, this workshop focuses on a general understanding of the information provided by the QEEG (i.e., frequency bands, absolute and relative power, Z-scores, coherence, etc.) and the practical application of QEEG to Neurofeedback training.  A QEEG is not required for successful Neurotherapy.  However QEEG can uncover otherwise hidden locations of brain dysfunction that, when treated,  can significantly increase the effectiveness of Neurofeedback Treatment, or turn a non-responding case into a successful one.  Different QEEG analyses often provide different evaluation outcomes.  The workshop will compare some common differences between the Neuroguide, NxLink, and SKIL database analyses, discussing strengths and weaknesses of each.

At 1400 -- #333) Whole Brain and Couples/Group Training using EEG Connectivity by Collura, Thomas
This workshop will cover the basic principles of two-channel training including coherence, synchrony, spectral correlation, comodulation, phase, and sum-channel training.  It will include technical and practical explanations of these metrics, as well as methods used to train them.  Practical training protocols will be demonstrated, including new protocols such as the “BiHemiSynchronous” protocol that combines the effects of bihemispheric training with interhemispheric connectivity training, and the four-channel "QuadHemiSynch" protocol.  Couples (two person) joint, group, and competitive synchronous training will also be explained and demonstrated.
Monday, Jan. 22  Optimal Functioning & Positive Psychology
At 1400 -- #389) How Can You Increase Job Productivity and Enjoyment? by Maymin, Senia
In this workshop, we will go over three factors that can increase your job enjoyment and your colleagues' job enjoyment.  We will do exercises in Strengths, Flow, and Optimism. This is a lively, active, hands-on workshop: you will move around the room and have several exercises.  For Strengths, we will tell strengths stories and build a strengths structure.  For Flow, we will discuss work conditions favorable to flow.  For Optimism, we will go over explanatory styles and discuss resilience.    Suggestion:  To make the Strengths part more personal and active, I suggest you fill out one questionnaire online sometime before the workshop (for example, the night before).  Go to www.authentichappiness.com and take the 20-40 minute the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire.  ----------- In this workshop, we will go over three factors that can increase your job enjoyment and your colleagues' job enjoyment.  We will do exercises in Strengths, Flow, and Optimism. This is a lively, active, hands-on workshop: you will move around the room and have several exercises.  For Strengths, we will tell strengths stories and build a strengths structure.  For Flow, we will discuss work conditions favorable to flow.  For Optimism, we will go over explanatory styles and discuss resilience.    Suggestion:  To make the Strengths part more personal and active, I suggest you fill out one questionnaire online sometime before the workshop (for example, the night before).  Go to www.authentichappiness.com and take the 20-40 minute the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire.
Monday, Jan. 22  Winter Brain Meeting
At 1600 -- #386) Protocol Efficiency by Scott, Bill
We’ll spend the majority of this two hour course answering questions, going over cases and exploring the class’s experiences.

At 1600 -- #387) Protocol Efficiency by Scott, Bill
If everyone had significantly abnormal EEGs we tend to see them regress to the mean. What about those who don’t. This is the majority of my practice and we’ll spend the majority of this two hour course answering questions, going over cases and exploring the class’s experiences.   Questions answered will be:  How much beta? How much SMR? When do we start alpha-theta? What does it look like when people overdose on protocols? How do we handle overdoses? When do we need to add beta SMR to alpha theta protocols? How do you get a ballpark guess as to how many sessions one is likely to need?  Why are negative reactions better than no reaction? How do we handle the placebo question? Why might we not be seeing beta or SMR significantly changing. What are common reasons people don’t respond to alpha-theta training? How do we help clients handle change they asked for yet didn’t expect to receive?  I’ll also cover language I use that seems to facilitate client understanding of the process. This makes it less uncomfortable to describe to their friends. I’ll also teach the class some techniques I’ve leaned on giving alpha-theta training for people with severe panic disorders.

At ?? -- #249) Neuroscience and Meditation by Lowan, John