Volume 3, Issue 15, April 28, 2005

The Individual and the Market

Author: Dr. Siegfried Othmer

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging experiments are under way to try to uncover what makes individuals buy under some circumstances and not others. This is of great interest at a time when market doctrines are becoming organizing principles for human societies---effectively our new “civic religion.” Psychologists are of course involved in those experiments. A remarkable assumption underlies these studies, namely that such phenomena can be understood essentially on the basis of individual behavior, rather than behavior of the individual embedded in a particular social context. We assume not only that the answer is contained within the subject’s brain, but also that the relevant information is available in imaging studies.

Consider the following example: On my frequent travels I often take the bus to the airport. The redcaps who load the luggage expect a tip, and typically get one. At the other end, the redcaps at the curb also expect a tip, and usually extract one. But what about the bus driver who pulls the luggage out of the bus? He is paid as a bus driver, not as a redcap. So does he get a tip? The expectation is not clear. What actually happens as the driver moves from stop to stop at the airport is the development of a pattern. If at the early stops no one (or only a few people) tip the driver, then that’s the way it is likely to go the rest of the trip. The pattern has been set. It’s ok if everybody saves his or her money. If, on the other hand, a slightly greater percentage of people at the first stop start whipping out their dollar bills, then this pattern begins to grow and dominate over succeeding stops. By the last stop, nearly everyone is ponying up.

There is no way that any measurement on people’s brains before-hand could have predicted such behavior, simply because it is intrinsically group behavior. What is maddening about this is that of course I find myself entrained as well. If everybody tips, so do I. If nobody does, then I don’t either. As a result, the sense of my own autonomy has been fatally crushed! Significantly, I do both with the same brain. As I ride to the airport these days, I am entertained watching this process unfold, and on each occasion I wonder whether I am going to end up tipping or not. The answer is not to be found in my MRI.

So what is the relevance to neurofeedback? There is a social aspect to neurofeedback, obviously. The person has to feel comfortable and to feel supported in the process. Some would therefore like to argue that the whole thing reduces to a social interaction, to the desire to please, if you will. At the other end, some psychologists insist that for research purposes the enterprise be parsed into the “specific” and the “non-specific” aspects of the training. The naïveté there lies in the suggestion that this is readily possible while also retaining the strengths of the technique. One of these notions is as absurd as the other. The social interaction can empower the process, but it is not sufficient to explain it. Without the positive social interaction, however, biofeedback is no longer what it could be.

That being the case, the remedy lies in getting the researchers “out of the kitchen,” and consigning them solely to studying the process at arm’s length. The role of researcher and clinician should be kept distinct. The clinician should be able to work without any handicap imposed by the researcher, and the researcher should not be burdened with trying to play clinician. Rather, the researcher must be consigned to sorting things out in the best way possible through testing and other means. I call this the anthropological model. The researcher should be mandated not to interfere with the clinical process just like the anthropologist must minimize direct impact on the society that is being studied.

Consider what would happen if we actually followed the standard research model. Neurofeedback as we know it would be stripped down to some standard protocol or other. Results would be obtained and dutifully published. Then the question would follow as to whether that technique would then actually “translate” to the clinical world. That’s a separate issue requiring its own demonstration. But we are already there being tested in the real world. All that is necessary is to document what is actually happening using research methodology, and employing disinterested observers or blinded testers. This can be done far more economically than studies that start fresh from the ground up. This approach would encounter the clinical world in all of its current diversity and complexity. And it would allow the most relevant questions—about mechanisms and clinical efficiency—to be framed much sooner.

The other message I take from the anecdote is that research needs to develop tools to investigate group behavior as opposed to individual behavior, and that necessarily takes us out of the realm of pure neurophysiology. This is true at all levels: One of the greatest challenges in physics was modeling phase transitions, state change of particles acting in groups. In neurophysiology the frontier is identifying how information is encoded in neuronal assemblies. The firing of an individual neuron simply does not count. And on the larger stage, the problem is maintaining economic stability with people acting in groups. Collectives can act with incredible speed, as nascent synchrony recruits the bulk of the whole population. Thus we have rapidly-collapsing bubbles in stock markets, and financial crises leading to devaluations. Yet the tools of regulation work only on much longer timescales.

The key advantage that neurofeedback has over anti-convulsant medication is that it addresses itself to the same timescale as the event to be remedied, the collective event of a seizure. And knowing about anti-convulsants does not help one whit in understanding neurofeedback. By the same token, in physics a totally different set of analysis tools needed to be brought to bear to deal with phase transitions. Fortunately, the EEG distills for us the very data that we need to do our work. And we don’t even need to understand it in order to shape it toward improved regulation.

Vibration, Frequency, and Neurofeedback

The current issue of the house organ of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, the IEEE Spectrum, deals with the topic of the loss of balance in the elderly. The problem is largely traceable to the loss of sensitivity by mechanoreceptors in the soles of the feet. These are less swift in detecting the shift of weight that occurs as the body inevitably sways back and forth slightly, by up to 20mm or so. (Incidentally, I think that means we sway more than the Seattle Space Needle.) By adding vibration to the soles of the feet, the mechanoreceptors actually become more sensitive, and the person maintains better balance.

The vibration that is supplied to the feet is by itself beneath the level of sensation. The person is entirely unaware of it. But in combination with the shifting pressure on different parts of the foot, the combined signals lower the overall threshold of detection. This seems counter-intuitive, in the sense that adding noise to the system is making the whole system more sensitive, not less. In fact, noise often makes regulatory systems work better. This is not an isolated instance. But to make sense of this, consider that in the elderly the ordinary pressure on the foot is not enough for the mechanoreceptors to cross threshold. Adding a variable signal means that threshold will at least be crossed occasionally, thus increasing sensitivity. If the vibration were to be provided at a constant frequency, we know what the body would do with that: It would learn to ignore it through habituation. After a while, the signal might as well not be there at all. So the sub-threshold vibration must be provided with variable frequency.

Now we know that sensory systems also work at frequency. The visual system and the sense of smell both depend on forty-Hz rhythms, for example. Mechanoreceptors also have periodicities associated with their responsiveness. The superposition of the vibrational signal at one frequency upon the periodic firing readiness of ensembles of mechanoreceptors heightens the sensitivity of the matching ensemble. Different vibrational frequencies couple with different ensembles at different times. Momentarily each of these systems is in resonance. Since the driven signal varies randomly in frequency, this randomly occurring dance of synchrony is referred to as “stochastic resonance.”

What are the implications of this for neurofeedback? First of all, the above analogy translates more or less directly to how the personal ROSHI functions. By stimulating the brain at extremely low levels at different frequencies, the stimulation has a transient additive effect on whatever ensembles in cortex are resonating at that frequency at that moment. The brain sees this as an interference with its affairs and mounts a response. The response is such as to counter the effect of the stimulation. Regulatory loops are strengthened. The brain, whose main function is to pay attention to itself, will become even more sensitive. The addition of what must be considered noise from the perspective of the brain will have succeeded in increasing sensitivity to internal states. So Chuck Davis will have another set of big words to chuck around: stochastic resonance.

The same description can also help to explain some of the paradoxes of more traditional Audio-Visual Stimulation. The persistent stimulation with a single frequency leads to habituation and adaptation. So when we stimulate at “A” we don’t necessarily get “A”. And what we get at the first session we may not necessarily get at the second or the thirtieth. By varying the stimulation frequency we fly more under the radar and the effectiveness will not diminish over time. Further, by lowering the intensity of the stimulation we may actually facilitate this mechanism.

By varying the stimulation frequency all over the map, we also approach the ideal of “non-prescriptive” neurofeedback. There is no question here of tailoring the stimulus for different brains, or of tailoring it for different diagnoses. It aims for improved regulatory response by the brain in complete generality. Now the generality of the effect is a matter of clinical observation, not of theoretical necessity, so this bears further discussion. We are aware that only a small fraction of the brain’s regulatory responsibilities are managed through synaptic transport. This fact alone has probably been more responsible than any other for traditional biofeedback therapists conceding only a small role, if any, to EEG biofeedback. My explanation du jour is that synaptic transport in fact imposes the tightest constraints on brain function. Get that part right, and everything else follows more effortlessly by virtue of the brain’s integration of regulatory networks. The compartmentalization of regulatory functions that constrains the mind of the biofeedback therapist has been his greatest blunder.

Now it will not escape observation by the reader that our own contribution to neurofeedback over the years has been in a very different direction. It has been the refinement of a strategy that centrally involves the reinforcement of cortical activity at a particular frequency. As the database on this approach has expanded, and as our clinical observations have been further refined, we find that the volume in state space over which such a challenge can be conducted benignly as well as profitably may be rather small, particularly in our most challenging clients. This trend is not about to change. It is solidly established. Neurofeedback that involves reinforcement at a particular frequency should be done with exquisite attention to the client because of the vectoring of states of arousal and affect. This is ineluctable.

Another central concept, however, has been that of balancing the training with multiple protocols—a balancing of right and left hemisphere training, front and back training, moving both up and down in frequency, etc. This brings into the schema an A/B design in which the consequence of one type of training is always balanced off against the consequences of another. This brings the most refined and potent research discipline into every session. The result is that we have a powerful strategy of optimization of clinical approach. Of course this approach always involves only the “near neighborhood” of what we are already doing. We optimize in a limited parameter space.

This is why our preferred technique, powerful as it is, should typically be complemented by another that obeys entirely different rules. In some sense, the more it contrasts what we do the better. Hence it is quite appropriate that the training imposing strong constraints on the conduct of the work be complemented by the techniques that impose the least constraints. Two classes then emerge. Into the category of highly targeted training I would lump, in addition to our own mechanisms-driven training, the LENS and QEEG-driven training. Into the category of non-directive training I would lump the personal ROSHI, HEG, CES, and Heart Rate Variability.

Then, you may ask, where does NeuroCarePro fit? Val Brown has been among the earliest and strongest voices in support of the non-directive, non-prescriptive character of neurofeedback. And the design of the system supports that objective. But as Val himself says, the system can be tailored any number of ways, so it is not categorically in one bin or the other. Moreover, there is no barrier to combining the ideas that find expression in NCP with more targeted training. So NCP is a chameleon.

Another Digression

Los Angeles looks forbidding only to those who visit. Those who live here end up carving out a sort of bubble existence that holds the world outside at bay. We are fermions—no two particles can occupy the same space. But sometimes we bump into the rest of the world inadvertently. On my way to the office the other day, a truck ran into the back of my car as it was stopped waiting for traffic to move. The driver did not speak any English. He did not have insurance. Not having the regular police number on my cell phone I called 911. The thing was busy. And busy. And busy. The office summoned the police for me and we waited for their arrival. Eventually I called the police directly. No, they had no intention of coming out. Was a crime committed? Well, driving without insurance is a crime in California…. But it was clear that she did not mean that kind of crime. And being an illegal immigrant is a crime also. But she did not mean that kind of crime either. We were on our own.

Suddenly I came to realize just how threadbare the public square has become. Some years ago, when I was last involved in another chain-reaction fender bender in these parts, the police were quite upset when they found out that one of the cars had driven off before they arrived, even though it had suffered no damage. The rules of engagement had obviously changed.

The person who ran into my car was “socializing the costs” of his driving, just as the majority of recent immigrants socialize the costs of their health care. Let the society pay. And on the other hand, the society pushes back. In Missouri this week, Medicaid eligibility was cut back to one-third of poverty level, meaning that if the family income (for, say, mother and child) were more than $70 per week, they are on their own healthcare-wise. And the mouthpieces for the elite continue to prattle on about abuses in the system.

Meanwhile good old American companies are bringing over young Indians to be taught their jobs by the Americans whom they will be displacing. Not in India, mind you, but right in here in the United States, sitting at the American worker’s desk, taking over the American worker’s computer and telephone. The poor sucker who has now lost a whole career, and not only his seniority, is of course told that he should simply buck up. This is capitalism. Just retool yourself. There is no doubt that the Indian young man will work for less than the American. He does not yet have a family. He won’t bother to purchase car insurance or health care insurance. And of course he won’t ask his employer for a retirement plan. He knows that if he gets uppity he will be on the next plane back to India. The company that hired the Indian has traded a value to which all Americans contributed—the value of being here in this society. And all the costs of that transaction are borne by Americans, not by the company. Capitalism thrives because it never pays all of its bills.

One thinks of the Titanic, with the folks in steerage going down with the ship knowing their proper place. Or one thinks of Venice, with the waters rising and the timbers rotting, with public policy in fibrillation. The clouds are gathering. This will not compute over the longer term. The bubble of arrogance and of greed beyond the bounds of avarice will be punctured. Unfortunately, it is not just a matter of recognizing our state of affairs and acting upon it. The time constants are off. It takes much longer to effect a solution than to get into trouble in the first place. And to top that off, many in the world will cheer the cratering of our institutions. Yet others will actually welcome the chaos as the fulfillment of a prophecy. We can’t count on them to be part of the solution. Scary.

End Notes “TCP/IP connects computers with one another; HTML connects content; and blogs connect people with one another.” Joi Ito

Dan Neill, writer for the Los Angeles Times on automotive affairs (a full-time position hereabouts), became poetic in writing about Mercedes’ latest creation.

Though recent reports from J.D. Power

Have been as depressing as Schopenhauer,

One thing our fathers found,

You can’t keep a German in a lab coat down.

Dr. Siegfried Othmer