nIR hemoencephalography for orbitalfrontal stimulation

[kurokawa8]

The first image shows the orbitofrontal region of the brain discussed in bold in the following article:


From Allan Schore "The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right
Brain Development, Affect Regulation, & Infant Mental Health"
http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/schore-2001b.php

"...Relational trauma in the second year would induce a severe pruning
of the right hemispheric orbitofrontal callosal axons that are growing
towards their counterparts in the left hemisphere. This would produce
an interhemispheric organization in which facial expressions, bodily
states, and affective information implicitly processed in the right
brain would be inefficiently transmitted to the left hemisphere for
semantic processing. Maltreated toddlers show a dramatic inability to
talk about their emotions and internal states (Cicchetti, Ganiban, &
Barnett,1991).

This represents the early expression of alexithymia, "no words for
feelings," a common symptom of trauma patients (Taylor et al., 1997,
1999). Neuropsychological studies of alexithymia now demonstrate a
right hemispheric dysfunction and a specific right to left deficit of
callosal transfer (Dewaraja & Sasaki, 1990). A physiological
disconnection of the two hemispheres results in an inability of the
affective and symbolic energies of the right hemisphere to be
externalized through the verbal expression of the left hemisphere. A
hyporesponsivity in the prefrontal and orbital circuits has been
suggested to underlie alexithymia (Hommer et al., 1997)."

"...The right hemisphere ends its growth phase in the second year, when
the left hemisphere begins one, but it cycles back into growth phases
at later periods of the life cycle (Thatcher, 1994). This allows for
potential continuing reorganization of the emotion-processing right
brain. The orbitofrontal regions, which are involved in "emotion-
related learning" (Rolls, Hornak, Wade, & McGrath, 1994) are unique in
that they retain the neuroanatomic and biochemical features of early
development, and for this reason they are the most plastic areas of
the cortex (Barbas, 1995). If, however, in its earliest organizational
history this system is exposed to frequent and intense caregiver-
induced dysregulation, its primordial organization will be poorly
capable of coping with the stresses inherent in human relationships.
Maladaptive infant mental health describes a system that early on
becomes static and closed, and due to its inability to respond to
novel stimuli and challenging situations it does not expose itself to
new forms of socioemotional experiences that are required for the
continuing experience-dependent growth of the right brain."


The second image shows the nIR hemoencephalography device.  The nIR device sends light through the skin and bone of the forehead, bounces the light off blood in the tissues in the brain, and collects the bounced light with the photoreceptor on the nIR device.  The nIR device sends the data to a computer, effectively showing the amount of blood perfusion in the frontal lobe on a PC monitor in real time.  This data can be used for biofeedback.  The nIR device gives the patient a mechanism to "exercise" the frontal lobe or increase the amount of blood oxygenation and neuronal activity to the frontal lobe area.

The third picture shows brain SPECT scans of the brain following nIR hemoencephalography therapy.  Notice the orbitofrontal areas of the brain show much higher activity.  The details of nIR hemoencephalography are here http://cerebrabraintech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/AnEfficientBrainExerciseTherapy.pdf

The fourth picture shows a brain SPECT scan of my brain.  Note the low levels of blood perfusion in the frontal cortex, particularly with the left frontal cortex.

It is my hope the alexithymic brain with reduced orbitofrontal callosal development can retain the plasticity indicated in the article above and that nIR hemoencephalography can result in a cure. 

I have one of these devices.  I've been using it for the last few weeks.  I will report my experiences.

[Gerry Merrison]

That's really interesting, if a bit depressing. Good luck with the device, interested to hear how you get on.
Gerry

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Alexithymia Exchange" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to exchange-foru...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to exchang...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/exchange-forum/2716b3e3-00e6-4ab9-997f-6d9554491f5b%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[kurokawa8]

Sorry if this is rambling or hard to read.  I have definite positive results to HEG.

Every night I perform one HEG session.  Each session involves 10 minutes on each of the left lobe, the center, and the right lobe.  I completed 18 consecutive days of HEG, rested for a week, and then resumed for four days.

 I feel a wiggling above my left eye.  I think it's the blood flow of my left lobe pressing down on the ocular cavity.  I feel a constant low grade pressure on my forehead. 

The major change is that I have a distinct feeling that a sleepy portion of my brain is now awake.  Even when I rest my eyes, or wake up in the middle of the night I can feel that area is active.

I feel less frustration with concentration tasks.  I feel less twisted up in my head.  I think the failure to concentrate results in intense frustration that manifests as a tightening sensation in my neck.   Usually its omnipresent and I can't get the neck tightness to go away.  Now that the sleepy part of my brain is awake my neck doesn't hurt so much any more.  It only aches a very little.

Usually when I talk to people I feel part of my brain fall asleep.  Often that triggers people to yawn in my face.  Coworkers, students, family members, everyone.  It happens way too often to be a coincidence.  Recently I think I passed a major test.  When I see my friend he yawns every single time I talk to him.  It's very frustrating.  Well the last visit he didn't yawn one single time.  That has never happened before in all the time I've known him since 2005.  I talked with him all day without any yawning at all.  Nobody else I've spoken to has yawned in my face either.  I can feel my brain waking up and engaging with people!  :)

I did an EMDR session just today.  I tried to go to the most painful event I could remember, my mom dying in the hospital.  I plugged into my grief and despair.  I cried.  This time however the sleepy part of my head did not go to sleep.  The grief didn't cause me great pain like it normally would.  I didn't feel any emotions, per se.  I discharged the usual 5% of the energy like expected, but this time it didn't hurt my head or my neck.  It was a huge reduction in the physical pain I would normally expect.  My counselor says somatic responses of any kind to EMDR are major. 

I don't feel any of my feelings so far.  According to the pdf on HEG that I linked earlier the successful results came after 30 half hour sessions.  I imagine since my SPECT scans showed WAY less activity than the test subject's then I will have to do more than thirty sessions to attain a similar amount of success.  On that basis I'm maybe about 1/3 of the way there and will reach that point in 30 days.

[kurokawa8]

Here is the collected data so far.  There are three major sections representing left, mid, and right lobe respectively.  The first two columns in each of the sections in black are data collected directly from the HEG device; the baseline value for that day and the average gain % in blood perfusion for that session.  The columns in blue show cumulative averages of the baseline and cumulative averages of the average gain % to date.  The two major things to notice from the data so far: the baseline values of the left lobe are consistently less the baselines of the center and right lobe as expected, and the cumulative average gain for the left lobe is increasing over time which suggests my left lobe is getting strong very quickly.  

[kurokawa8]

It's much easier to read text.  I can maintain focus for much longer.  I always thought that my eyes got fatigued super easy but I guess it was my brain.

So far definite improvement with ADD symptoms but no movement with alexithymia yet.

When I did methamphetamines a long time ago I noticed I would get no effect when I used it on the right side but I would feel great when I used it on the left side.  It really felt more than just a high, that something missing had been recovered somehow.  Makes sense considering my left prefrontal lobe is at least 5 standard deviations below normal on the SPECT scan.  I wonder if I felt joyfulness with the methamphetamines?  I think so.  This HEG therapy is a low grade version of methamphetamines.  There's hope.

[kurokawa8]

I'm surprised to see the word depressing.  I thought my post would be inspring, hopeful, possibly good news.  I guess its my SPECT scan that would be depressing?  Sympathy?

I've had some completely surprising feedback in the past.  "If you could see yourself it would destroy you" or "when you disappeared yesterday we all thought you killed yourself" or completely out of the blue "Don't ever talk to me again.  Leave me alone."  I didn't understand why people would say things like that to me. 

My inner dialogue in these cases is something like "they/he/she must be really mad about something so they conspired to use a strategy to lash out at me in a particular way so their anger would be more effective because I had been historically so unsatisfactory with emotional communication."  When I sought clarification it never worked, usually resulted in a double-down of the rejection, and only deepened my suspicion it was just an unfair creative tactic borne from resentfulness of my emotional incapacity.

I guess my situation is really bad on paper.  If this HEG works and I can suddenly feel and I end up plunging myself into the depths of despair I'm doing it anyway.  I don't care I want to feel.  No matter what I will never give up.

[kurokawa8]

Have to slow down.  My scores are beginning to drop.  My head aches.  I can tell I worked it for too hard for too long.

I had a few "verklempt" moments this last week.  I raged, I cried, I was touched by a movie.  In all three cases I would normally short-circuit and feel a strangling ache in my throat.  I still short-circuit but I no longer feel a strangling in my throat.

[kurokawa8]

Another EMDR session.  My counselor had me go back to a recent experience where I was angry at someone at my boxing gym.  I spoke to someone at the gym and he kind of dismissed me and walked away from me.  I raged on the heavy bag like as if to say "hey motherfucker dont turn your back on me because it will come back to you" kind of a thing. 

So during the EMDR session I spoke of the incident.  My counselor said go ahead channel it.  Punch the air, talk it out.  I punched the air and yelled.  I felt something unusual.  I felt a burning heat in my eyes that seemed to sustain itself.  The arousal lasted a while instead of automatically diverting to a strangling/frustration feeling in my throat like it normally would before I started using the HEG device.  I experienced a prolonged heat in my eyes, an anger.  I stuck with it and then I felt something very strange.  The best I could describe it was an ocean spray sensation.  Like cool water spray and cool droplets of water spritzing up from my neck into the center of my brain, but also through my skin onto my skin?  I felt it on the inside and outside.  My counselor said it was evidence of homeostasis.  I still had no understanding.  The sensations were confusing.  It had to be homeostasis because the heat in my eyes went away.  My counselor was extremely happy about this.

I think I should start giving conceptual boundaries to the homeostasis with words and symbols even if I don't get it. 

I worry that despite this progress my brain will simply reinforce the primal repression. 

A delay.  My device was broken and I had to have it repaired but I just got it back.

[kurokawa8]

55 sessions in total, well within the range of maximum probable effect.  all previously reported benefits maintained.  No new changes in alexithymia.  Perhaps long-term usage will show a benefit.  I'll continue.

I'm now adding temporal lobe HEG biofeedback in addition to the frontal lobe.

From Daniel Amen's "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life":

"In our experience, left temporal lobe abnormalities are more frequently associated with externally directed discomfort (such as anger, irritability,
aggressiveness), while right temporal lobe abnormalities are more often associated with internal discomfort (anxiety and fearfulness). The left-right
dichotomy has been particularly striking in our clinical population. One possible explanation is that the left hemisphere of the brain is involved with
understanding and expressing language, and perhaps when the left hemisphere is dysfunctional, people express their discomfort inappropriately. When
the nondominant hemisphere is involved, the discomfort is more likely to be expressed nonverbally."

My brain SPECT scans definitely show decreased activity in the left temporal lobe compared with the right.  Amen's theory above lends itself to a possible correlation between left temporal lobe dysfunction and a deficit in language processing, which may be related to alexithymia.

The problem with HEG on the temporal lobe is that the temporal lobe is buried deeper in the skull and the hair follicles near the temple tend to interfere with the HEG.  I'll try to stick with it for at least 30 sessions.

[kurokawa8]

I've been meaning to revisit this post.  I never gave it resolution.

According to the data above I achieved the highest performance in my underactive left lobe at the two week mark ("cum. gain" in blue on the left side).  At that point I plateaued and then eventually burned out at the 60 day mark.  I think a wise program would be to go all out every day for two weeks and then taper down to a maintenance level of say 3 HEG sessions a week for two weeks, then 2 then maybe 1, or for as little as you can while maintaining the benefits.

As far as my failure to cure alexithymia with nIR HEG, apparently just "forcing the christmas tree to light up" isn't enough. 

My understanding of brain development is that from age 0 to 1.5 fMRIs show an explosion of activity in the right brain compared to activity in the left brain.  The right brain is the emotional center of the brain.  The infant is subjected to an overwhelming storm of emotions like a leaf blowing in the wind.  With direct eye contact, soothing touch and soothing language the mother "entrains" the infant to help lower hyperactive arousal states.  The mother helps ease the chaos of the storm.

At about age 1.5 there is a switch in brain activity; fMRIs show an explosion of activity in the left brain compared to the right.  The left brain is the seat of language, logic and symbolism.  You can tell when this stage begins when the baby starts to babble.  At this point the baby starts to gain a cognitive understanding of heightened arousal states and can begin to communicate them, understand them, and give them conceptual boundaries so the experience can be "digested".

Both of these stages complete the circuit for successful emotional processing.  Alexithymics have some kind of short-circuit in this process, but simply lighting up the christmas tree on the underactive left side may not be sufficient to repair it.  Perhaps we have to apply some kind of learning method for developing the circuit in addition to the HEG tool.  A few ideas; Entrainment-simulate direct eye contact with a mother image to help reduce arousal states.  Pharmaceutical intervention to create feel-good chemicals like oxytocin or mdma.  Language/symbol practice for expressing and representing these emotional states.  EMDR to stimulate cross-hemispheric transfer.  Engagement of the parasympathetic state to achieve homeostasis.

-Start with nIR HEG for two weeks to get up to maximum activity level.  Continue with maintenance-level practice.
-practice EMDR once a week.  Choose a particular emotional state to "visit" during the session. 
-Rig an image of a mother's face on your computer to speak back your words to you during EMDR with a slight delay to mimic entrainment.  Speech-to-text recognition to send your words to the computer and text-to-speech translation for the mother face to speak out from the computer perhaps.  This process may be improved using synonym replacement of words by the computer on the fly.
-Get a therapist to prescribe oxytocin to coincide with entrainment.
-"come down" from the arousal state in a meaningful way by triggering the parasympathic nervous sytem using iRest guided relaxation and focusing on the physical state:  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/exchange-forum/nbgaNcKe6Mo

I'll TRY to endeavor to get this rolling and report my experiences here.