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"A Journey Toward Personal Autonomy" Othmer, S
EEG Biofeedback
Training: A Journey Toward Personal Autonomy
Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D.
April 1994
"If you are going to make a big jump in science, you will very
likely be unqualified to succeed by definition."
James Watson
The Medicalization of EEG Biofeedback
There are two emerging trends within the field of EEG biofeedback.
One branch is trying to gain legitimacy by proving itself within
the terms of the traditional medical model. The other finds its
roots in truly person-centered psychotherapy, with all its intrinsic
complexity, and with the goal of a heightened sense of self and
of personal autonomy. Unfortunately, the appearance of the sergeant-at-arms
of the prevailing order, namely the FDA, threatens to regiment the
field in train with the prevailing medical paradigm. According to
the dictates of convention, we must prove efficacy in controlled
studies with respect to each individual canonical disorder. These
disorders are treated as if they were all independent; proof for
one says nothing about the other. More over, since we happen to
be using a physiologically based tool, it is argued that we must
prove the results with a physiologically based measure. It is not
enough to get clinical results; we must also see change in the EEG.
And there must be a unique relationship of protocol to disorder;
preferably a single, unique protocol for each. It is increasingly
recognized that the "disease" model of mental disorders
has significant shortcomings. Disorder is inherently disorderly.
It is not easily compartmentalized into binary criteria: you have
it or you don't; you are or you aren't. There is a continuum, and
even within each individual there are fluctuations over time. In
the T.O.V.A. test, variability is the most reliable indicator of
ADHD! This variability extends over all time scales, not only that
of the 22-minute test. Biederman (1992) has shown that even by strict
diagnostic criteria about 50% of ADHD cases exhibit comorbidity
for major depressive disorder, more than one anxiety disorder, or
conduct disorder. This does not even consider oppositional-defiant
disorder, dysthymia, specific sensory processing problems, sleep
disorders, elimination disorders, and Tourette Syndrome. With such
a high degree of comorbidity, is it not more correct to regard ADHD
as intrinsically heterogeneous? Is "pure" ADHD not a researcher's
fiction that serves his own research needs for an arbitrary limitation
of variables? We grant that the category exists, because it can
be defined to exist and the set is not empty (researchers do find
subjects), but it is largely non-representative of the clinical
population at large. Even Larry Silver, author of "The Hyperactive
Child", is finally coming around to the view that ADHD may
be an intrinsically heterogeneous condition (Silver, 1994). That
can be taken as an indication of a change in main-stream thinking.
The heterogeneity posited above does not even deal with other neurological
conditions that also have attention deficits in their symptomotology,
such as traumatic brain injury, birth injury, ischemic attacks in
the elderly, and the sequelae of immune dysfunction elicited by
silicone breast implants, etc. In fact, attention deficits are ubiquitous
among the disorders listed in the DSM-III-R, even if they are not
diagnostic for them. According to the medical model, we would need
a person to meet "clinical diagnostic criteria" to legitimize
use of the biofeedback "tool". Since the tool uses the
EEG, we must have an observable "deficiency" in the EEG,
correlated with the disorder, which is to be remedied. And the technique
must in fact remediate that deficiency in the EEG before "legitimacy"
of the technique can be accepted. Even if this strategy can be defended
on its own narrow ground, and even if it results in the acceptance
of EEG training by the dominant medically oriented culture, it misses
the point and severely under values the technique of EEG training.
It perpetuates the patriarchal paradigm in which the repository
of essential wisdom lies within the EEG or CAT scan or PET image,
as interpreted by its elect acolytes, leaving the "patient"
the tyrannized victim of yet another "procedure". "Objective"
data override his own experience and observations as having little
or no value. By being even more effective than prior modalities,
EEG training enhances the opportunity for the health professional
to arrogate to him self even more power over the individual. This
view of EEG biofeedback reached the pinnacle of absurdity in an
episode that I only know about second-hand. One enthusiastic user
of the quantitative EEG, talking to a person who was not pleased
with the results of his own EEG training, asked whether a map had
been done to determine the appropriate training protocol. When he
was told no, he said that that was grounds for a malpractice suit!
The approach to EEG biofeedback which is based on the medical model
can probably best be defended by someone who actually uses it. Let
me describe the alternative model. The perspective is one of the
healthy brain, which has the versatility to modulate arousal states
and attentional styles as the immediate situation requires. In the
disordered brain, this ability is diminished to some degree, or
brain function is compromised by discontinuities in cortical processing,
or breakdowns in intra-cortical communications. The EEG reflects
first and foremost the state of arousal in which the individual
finds himself. EEG biofeedback training, by favoring specific frequency
bands, can "move" a person to a different physiological
state in the general case, provided merely that the person is willing
to "try to train". This is claiming no more than that
a person can be changed in physiological state by temperature and
EMG training, about which no controversy remains. We are simply
using the more "central" information of EEG correlates
of physiological states rather than peripheral measures. Moving
a person to a different physiological state may benefit him in terms
of the experiences he may have in that state, or in terms of an
enhanced ability to navigate among different physiological states
autonomously. Also, exercising the ability to maintain a particular
state tends to reinforce and stabilize the mechanisms by which various
states are maintained. These abilities need have little to do with
pathology. In fact, these abilities are greater, and can perhaps
be enhanced even more, in the more mentally competent person. Whether
someone derives benefit from the training has little to do with
any traditional diagnostic categories of mental disorders. The training
accomplishes three essential tasks, in our view: 1) It enhances
the ability of the individual to access and maintain different states
of physiological arousal; 2) it enhances and supports the mechanisms
by which the brain manages cortical hyperexcitability; 3) it reinforces
equilibrium states, i.e. homeostasis.
With respect to the first, the training enables remediation of
arousal disorders; promotes entry into diminished arousal states
of alpha and theta for therapeutic objectives; increases the inventory
of attentional states (from narrow to broad focus); and facilitates
training toward peak performance. EEG training makes a unique contribution
here, insofar as traditional EMG and temperature biofeedback have
tended to address conditions of overarousal, such as anxiety disorders,
hypervigilance, panic, and adverse stress reactions. By contrast,
EEG training also addresses conditions of underarousal such as endogenous
and reactive depression with equal facility. The efficacy for ADHD
can also be seen in terms of remediation of an underarousal condition.
And relief from chronic pain can likewise be seen through its intimate
connection with depression, i.e. underarousal.
With respect to 2), enhancement of stability conditions, we can
identify several "degrees" of instability for our purposes:
In the most extreme case, EEG training stabilizes the brain against
chaotic excursions into pathological states such as seizures, rages,
and migraines. Secondarily, it stabilizes the brain against more
minor excursions which manifest themselves in such phenomena as
temper tantrums, night terrors, sub-clinical seizures, ordinary
headaches, motor and vocal tics, obsessive- compulsive behaviors,
episodic dyscontrol, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, and PMS (see
Disorder page). Thirdly, it stabilizes the brain against the even
lesser disruptions and discontinuities of cortical function which
manifest in disturbances of attentional mechanisms, of sequential
and parallel processing, of visual and auditory processing and memory,
of other specific learning disabilities, and of the normal sequence
of sleep stages.
With respect to 3), reinforcing homeostasis, the training achieves
normalization of the pain threshold, normalization of appetite,
and apparent normalization of the blood glucose level. The stabilization
of arousal level already discussed in 1) above can also be viewed
as a return to homeostasis. The best evidence of the power of this
tool may be seen in the fact that clients are liberated from dependency
on all types of medication which modulate arousal, including anti-depressants,
stimulants, sleep medications, pain medications, and anxiolytics
(including alcohol). This we have consistently observed.
When EEG biofeedback is tried by the mentally competent person,
he augments his natural mental skills and his range of control further.
What is this worth? That is not for us to say, but we can provide
information to the person training, and let him make that decision.
Biofeedback, at its best, is empowerment of the individual. We are
simply the agency of that empowerment. When Klaus Tennstedt was
first offered the opportunity to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic,
he was asked by a reporter: "I guess you won't have to rehearse
very much with the Philharmonic?" "On the contrary",
came the reply, "with that instrument at my disposal, just
think of the possibility of refinement, of nuance, that is not possible
with ordinary orchestras. We will rehearse more, not less."
(My memory may have failed me on the precise quotation.) Thus with
EEG biofeedback.
EEG biofeedback training at its best recognizes the heterogeneity
of the clinical population and adjusts the training appropriately.
In the case of ADHD, we must assess who the person is who has these
attentional deficits, and we must characterize the individual in
terms of attentional style and patterns of physiological arousal.
We must know his family and genetic history, and any history of
trauma. Out of all this comes a preferred starting training protocol.
This is tried during the intake session. We then teach the individual
to observe himself so that he can be a witness to the impending
changes. At the next training session, we ask about the results
which have been achieved. In at least forty percent of cases, the
person will have something to report which is clearly traceable
to the training in that first session: sleep may have changed; mood
or irritability may have changed; alertness and school behavior
may have changed. This allows us to judge within three training
sessions in most cases that we are on the right track with a person.
Otherwise we change protocol. The multi-dimensional assessment we
do on a session-by-session basis is the home turf of the qualified
psychological or educational professional. How unfortunate that
such a person should be asked to subordinate that information to
the tyranny of a single parameter, such as the theta-beta ratio.
Is it changing? Is it changing the right way? Who gives a damn,
if the client is responding well? The client is a rich source of
information about himself, and we should not defer to a single parameter.
The case for the use of this parameter has never been adequately
made even by those who insist upon such rigor. Chris Mann, in his
QEEG study of ADHD, found that if all the EEG data was taken collectively
from baseline, reading, and drawing tasks, a false negative rate
of 20%, and a false positive rate of 26%, could be achieved. With
a prevalence of ADHD taken to be 10%, the positive predictive power
of the EEG, making use of Bayes' Theorem, is only 0.37.
We looked over our data several years ago, and we found in reviewing
167 client files that more than half changed in the "wrong"
direction in terms of theta/beta ratio over the course of training,
quite irrespective of progress made in the training. Most of the
clients did not change significantly one way or the other, which
is perhaps the most significant finding. We don't preselect clients
for high theta/beta ratio at the outset, and so these results should
not be surprising. We get normalization of the EEG, in whatever
direction that may lie. (The high frequency part of the spectrum
may be high initially, perhaps due to anxiety conditions, and normalization
means a decrease in beta amplitudes rather than the reverse.)
One reason that Barry Sterman's early work with epilepsy was not
more accepted was due to the fact that the "SMR" amplitude
was not found to increase with the training, even though seizure
incidence improved. Expectations for such changes in the EEG were
simply wrong. A peak in the spectrum at 14 Hz is not part of the
normal human, waking EEG, and should not have been expected. We
are training (exercising) a mechanism which is operative at 14 Hz;
we are not training for an outcome of higher EEG amplitudes there
(except operationally during the training session). (Cats do have
a peak at 14 Hz in the spectrum, and that did increase with training.)
The biofeedback training protocol which has been used most extensively
for epilepsy by Barry Sterman is SMR training (12-15 Hz) around
C3 at sensorimotor cortex. This has been true irrespective of any
seizure focus elsewhere on the cortex, and irrespective of the nature
of the seizure; yet the training has been effective. The strongest
case for using brain map data to guide the EEG training can be made
for those instances in which we have localized injury, as in seizure
disorder, traumatic brain injury, or stroke. Even here, the historical
data demonstrates efficacy for training a mechanism, rather than
training tailored specifically toward normalizing the EEG. No doubt
additional and important gains are to be made by training at the
location of the deficit, as determined by EEG data or other means.
We use brain mapping in these cases ourselves, and have found the
data very informative. Nevertheless, the point remains. In the case
of ADHD, for example, the choice of whether SMR training (12-15
Hz) or higher frequency-training (15-18 Hz in our case, or 16-20
in Lubar's) cannot now be made on the basis of the EEG. It is made
on the basis of symptoms.
One of the unfortunate plagues that the field of psychology visits
upon itself is an envy of physics, a yearning for the provable fact,
the hard number. This tyranny of numbers is unfortunate, since the
faith is so misplaced. To this, one must add the deferential posture
the psychologist bears before medical authority, before medical
research procedures, and before the disease model of mental disorders.
And finally, one must lament the deferential posture the clinical
psychologist bears before the academic research professional. At
its best, psychotherapy is integrating and inductive in nature,
so contrary to the reductionist propensities of research. Why is
the clinical psychologist defensive? The researchers are still arguing
among them selves whether recovered memories are real. Rats don't
help you answer that question. The truly interesting phenomena in
clinical psychology are not reducible to researcher's categories.
It is ironic that a person like Elmer Green, schooled as a physicist,
should not feel embarrassed about using terms like "soul",
or "subtle energies", and that a hard scientist like Francis
Crick should seriously concern himself with theories of consciousness.
These matters embarrass psychologists steeped in behaviorism and
still trying to be like physicists. Surely the perception of consciousness,
or soul, is as real as the perception of pain, and equally resistant
to quantification and concrete observation. Clearly the brain manages
itself along with the rest of the body. Awareness of self is merely
the complement of awareness of out side stimuli; at a sufficient
level of complexity, the fusion of self-awareness with a perception
of self-interest (self- preservation, self-propagation, etc.) becomes
what we perceive as consciousness. Insofar as biofeedback increases
the range of information the brain has about itself and can act
upon, we are enhancing the scope of consciousness. At its best,
psychotherapy nurtures the soul. Biofeedback is its physiological
complement.
We have found dramatic effects of EEG biofeedback on such maladies
as PMS. The protocol we have used is essentially the same, regardless
of what the EEG looks like. And most of the EEGs in fact look fairly
normal. There is no known EEG correlate of PMS. Should we desist
until one is found upon more subtle examination? There is no known
EEG correlate of Tourette Syndrome. Yet our training can be very
helpful. Do we desist until EEG criteria are developed? The EEG
training is very helpful for temporal lobe epilepsy (complex partial
seizures), yet the EEG is not an unambiguous diagnostic. According
to George B. Murray, authority on complex partial seizures at the
Harvard Psychiatry Department, "The EEG manifestations of complex
partial seizures do not usually appear with Cartesian clarity The
scope of the EEG manifestations can be as broad as the entire field
of EEG" (Murray, 1981). Do we desist until these things are
sorted out?
Unfortunately, the EEG reflects only gross anomalies according to
present analysis techniques, which are largely based in the frequency
domain. Even here, specificity can be improved by comparing EEG
data under challenge with that at baseline. With challenge tests,
however, we have three pieces of data available: 1) how well the
person performs the challenge task; 2) how he reacts under the challenge;
and 3) what the EEG looks like under challenge. Among these three,
the first two remain the most informative. And as we move away from
manifest pathology, the problem gets worse. This can be illustrated
with an example from PET scans. Here, the area of the cortex involved
with mathematical calculations can be revealed by measuring local
glucose uptake or blood flow. If this is tried with a mathematician,
however, we find little effect! Mathematical calculations do not
challenge his brain enough to significantly change glucose demand.
Hence, PET scans do not reveal where math problems are processed
as well as where math problems are processed by those who do so
badly. It exposes bottlenecks better than function. Likewise with
the EEG. As we work with more functional individuals, the common
EEG parameters become less instructive.
How is EEG biofeedback done well? Biofeedback is information. And
the evidence is that more information is better. One "quality
factor" for EEG biofeedback appears to be the information density:
how much information is being given to the brain in a given amount
of time. Joe Kamiya has always lamented the fact that the field
was launched with "on-off", "go/no-go" feedback
(binary feedback). He has long urged that proportional feedback
be provided. In this manner, the feedback can "track"
the signal with a "better/worse" implementation. How well
the feedback signal accomplishes this is a matter of two quantities:
1) lag of the feedback signal with respect to the real-time EEG,
and 2) information density (signal update rate). It is not enough
to have one without the other. In our implementation, bench-marking
shows that a feedback signal lag time on the order of 120 msec,
and a message update rate of forty times per second, are manifestly
sufficient to give good feedback by the above-mentioned criteria.
The client is usually able to "relate" to the signal being
presented and to "feel" that it belongs to him and that
he has some control over it. We also provide a stimulus-rich training
condition by minimizing the inhibit periods, which are limited (by
threshold) to about 20% of the time. These techniques have enabled
us to work successfully with two-and-one-half year-old children,
with deaf three year-olds, and with persons having severe cognitive
disabilities (traumatic brain injury and strokeTwo views of EEG
biofeedback have been presented. One is oriented toward the remediation
of pathology, based on established clinical categories of disorders,
and the other is based on increasing the competence, versatility,
and stability of the brain generally. The former is grounded in
measured EEG anomalies, the other addresses known brain mechanisms.
These mechanisms are either subcortical, or their location on cortex
is known from neurophysiology or from direct experience with EEG
biofeedback. The orientation toward canonical disorders portends
trench warfare against the prevailing medical establishment, disorder
by disorder, drug by drug, and it portends contentious interactions
with other health disciplines who consider their turf invaded. An
orientation toward a general increase in brain competence and self-regulation
is more appropriate to the underlying phenomenology, avoids the
compartmentalization of mental disorders, and opens up the promise
of benefit to the many who do not meet clinical criteria for "disorder"
but can still manifestly be helped by the training. It augurs in
a time of focus on health and peak functioning rather than on disease
and disorder; an orientation toward education rather than toward
treatment. It establishes a new modality which is congenial to those
already trained in the field of clinical and educational psychology.
It particularly avoids the turf issue (vis-a-vis M.D.'s) of whether
psychologists shall diagnose mental disorders on the basis of physiological
measures such as the EEG. We have presented above, in the most concise
way we know how, a more comprehensive vision of EEG biofeedback,
which will hope fully empower the clinician to wrest this technique
from the hands of the exclusively left-brained researchers and make
it his own. There is no need to be intimidated by the EEG. The combination
of existing clinical wisdom with this tool is revolutionary in its
implications for the future of mental health, and for the intellectual
journey that we are all on. At its best, biofeedback aids function,
not merely dysfunction. In the hands of the humane clinician, it
gives flight to the soul. "Tradition teaches that soul lies
midway between understanding and unconsciousness, and that its instrument
is neither the mind nor the body, but imagination. I understand
therapy as nothing more than bringing imagination to areas that
are devoid of it, which then must express themselves by becoming
symptomatic." - Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul References Barkley,
R. (Apr, 1992). Is EEG Biofeedback Treatment Effective for ADHD
children? CHADDer Box, 5-11. Biederman, J., Faraone, S.V., Lapey,
K. (1992). Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America,
1, 335. Mann, C.A., Lubar, J.L., Zimmerman, A.W., Miller, C.A.,
Muenchen, R.A. (1992). Pediatric Neurology, 8, 30-36. Murray, G.B.
(1981). Complex Partial Seizures, from Manschreck, T.C. (ed), Psychiatric
Medicine Update, pp. 103-118. New York: Elsevier. Schaef, A. W.
(1992). "Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science, A New Model for Healing
the Whole Person." Harper San Francisco, p.92 Silver, L.B.,
Ostrander, R. (1994). Comorbidity between Learning Disabilities
and the Disruptive Behavior Disorders, Presentation at the LDA International
Conference, Washington, D.C., March 1994. T.O.V.A., Test of Variables
of Attention, UAD, 1-800-PAY-ATTN Ullmann, R.K., and Sleator, E.
(1986). Responders, nonresponders, and placebo responders among
children with Attention Deficit Disorder. Clinical Pediatrics, 25,
594-599. Watson, J.D. (1993). Science, 261, 1812.
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