Can you fix your own neurologic problems without resorting to drugs? Science writer Jim Robbins suggests that some such conditions--like epilepsy, autism, and depression--could yield to a recently developed technique called neurofeedback. His book A Symphony in the Brain describes the process, its evolution from the 1970s fad of biofeedback, its practitioners, and some of its success stories. Using computers to quickly provide information on real-time EEG, practitioners train patients to control global or local brain states--or so the theory goes. Unfortunately for its proponents, there are still no rigorous research data showing conclusive results. Robbins makes a good case that the lack of research is due more to scientific turf battles and a drug-dependent medical establishment than to any fault of neurofeedback. Some of the case studies he explores, of children and adults brought out of comas or trained to reduce their epileptic seizure frequency, suggest that we ought to look more deeply and rigorously into the technique. Whether it works can only be determined by controlled studies, which may be forthcoming. In the meantime, Robbins provides contact lists and additional research information for interested readers, as well as the inspiration to pursue a potentially life-saving treatment. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

If you thought biofeedback was a passing fad, freelance journalist Robbins will enlighten you. Far from a 1970s fringe treatment, neurofeedback (as it has been renamed) is being used to treat everything from autism and fetal alcohol syndrome to attention deficit disorder, manic-depression, stroke and menopausal symptoms. Despite numerous accounts of dramatic improvements of patients afflicted with a wide variety of conditions, the pharmaceutically oriented medical community is only now beginning to acknowledge its effectiveness. The treatment has been marginalized all these years because, like acupuncture, researchers don't understand exactly how it works. Robbins details the fascinating medical history of the therapy, tracing it back to French physician Paul Broca's discovery of the region in the brain where speech originates. At the heart of this riveting story are the people whose lives have been transformed by neurofeedback, from the doctors and psychologists who employ it to the patients who have undergone treatment. Robbins introduces Dr. Barry Sterman, whose 40 years of research supports the use of neurofeedback to treat epilepsy; Jesse DeBoer, who was born with severe brain damage and can now, at 19, function on the level of a learning-disabled person; and school principal Linda Vergara, who teaches grade school students to train their brains instead of using Ritalin to treat attention deficit disorders. Here, too, are the conflicts that have both enlivened neurofeedback and limited its use, much of which Robbins attributes to a lack of funding as he emphatically defends this promising treatment.

From Publishers Weekly

Schwartz (A Return to Innocence), a UCLA psychiatrist and expert on treating patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), teams up with Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, to explore the mind/brain dichotomy and to discuss the science behind new treatments being developed for a host of brain dysfunctions. Building on the work presented in Schwartz's first book, Brain Lock, the authors begin by demonstrating that OCD patients are capable of rechanneling compulsive urges into more socially acceptable activities and that, by doing so, they actually alter their brains' neuronal circuitry. By presenting a wide array of animal and human experiments, Schwartz and Begley show that similar neuroplasticity is possible in stroke victims, often leading to a return of function previously thought impossible. The medical results and treatments they summarize are exciting and deserve widespread attention. In a chapter entitled "Free Will and Free Won't," the authors turn to the philosophical, examining the implications neuroplasticity might have on the differences between mind and brain; they also discourse on the existence of free will. Unfortunately, their integration of quantum mechanics and Buddhism into a search for a mechanism to explain the patterns scientists have been discovering is too superficial to fully engage readers. Nonetheless, a great deal in this book is sure to motivate discussion and more research.

From Booklist

Schwartz's undergraduate major was philosophy, and that interest as well as Buddhism has broadened his outlook and makes this book potentially attractive to more readers than those habitually interested in "brain science." Psychiatrist Schwartz pioneered the use of positron-emission tomography in studying obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The behaviorists' therapeutic use of the often-harsh exposure and prevention method with OCD struck Schwartz as brutal and unproductive. Searching for a new approach, he gradually developed the four-step method that he and science writer Begley thoroughly describe here. Employing the Buddhist idea of willful mindfulness, Schwartz and his colleagues enjoyed considerable research and clinical success. A long, informal collaboration with physicist Henry Stapp enabled Schwartz to overcome the problem of free will and moral action, and one of his major achievements was proving the neuroplasticity of the adult brain, thanks to which the formation of new transmission routes coincides with that of new neurons. Schwartz and Begley bring to life the thinking and work of many original investigators in a book that thoughtful readers will enjoy.

From Publishers Weekly

In an important, gracefully written exploration of the neurochemical basis of mind, neurologist Damasio rejects the Cartesian notion of the human mind as a thinking organ more or less separate from bodily processes. Emotions and feelings, he argues, are essential to reasoning and decision-making. The human brain, he further contends, has a specialized region in the frontal lobes for making personal and social decisions, and this region works in concert with deeper brain centers that store emotional memories. To support this controversial claim, Damasio draws on his work with brain-injured patients at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and also cites the case of Phineas Gage, a Vermont railway foreman who lost his ethical faculties after an explosion in 1848 drove a metal rod through his skull. Damasio's exciting investigation challenges the fashionable metaphor of the mind as a software program. Interested readers are also referred to Richard Restak's The Modular Brain (Nonfiction Forecasts, June 13). Illustrations. 50,000 first printing; QPB alternate; Library of Science selection.

From Library Journal

The idea that the mind exists as a distinct entity from the body has profoundly influenced Western culture since Descartes proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am." Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa and a prominent researcher on human brain function, challenges this premise in a fascinating and well-reasoned argument on the central role that emotion and feelings play in human rationality. According to Damasio, the same brain structures regulate both human biology and behavior and are indispensable to normal cognitive processes. Damasio demonstrates how patients (his own as well as the 19th-century railroad worker Nicholas Gage) with prefrontal cortical damage can no longer generate the emotions necessary for effective decision-making. A gifted scientist and writer, Damasio combines an Oliver Sack-like reportage with the presentation of complex, theoretical issues in neurobiology.

PsycCritiques, Frank Masterpasqua

Provides lucid explanations of the mechanisms underlying neurofeedback as well as the research history that led to its implementation.

Book Description

A primer for therapists interested in adding neurotherapy to their practices.

This book introduces the reader to neurofeedback, including its history and scientific basis. Case studies help the reader understand how these techniques are applied to therapeutic situations such as ADD and learning difficulties. Information about training, setting up an office, and neurofeedback equipment are provided.

An introduction to the innovative therapy that restores optimal functioning of the brain after physical or emotional trauma

• Provides an alternative to the more invasive therapies of electroshock and drugs

• Shows how this therapy helps ameliorate anxiety and depression as well as childhood developmental disorders

• Includes extraordinary case histories that reveal the powerful results achieved

According to the Centers for Disease Control, each year 260,000 people are hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries. The Brain Injury Association reports 1.5 million injuries, many of which go undiagnosed but which lead to all kinds of cognitive and emotional impairments. While neuroscience has learned an enormous amount about the connection between brain trauma and personality changes, the methods proposed for resolving these alterations are generally limited to drug therapy or surgeries.

This book explores a much less invasive but highly effective technique of restoring brain function: the Low Energy Neurofeedback System (LENS). Developed by Dr. Len Ochs in 1992, it has had extraordinary results using weak electromagnetic fields to stimulate brain-wave activity and restore brain flexibility and function. The treatment works across a broad spectrum of human activity, increasing the brain’s abilities to adapt to the imbalances caused by physical trauma or emotional disorders--both on the basic level and in the more subtle areas of cognitive, affective, and spiritual processes that make us truly human. While the treatment has had remarkable results with individuals who have experienced severe physical trauma to the head and brain, Stephen Larsen sees it also as an important alternative to chemical approaches for such chronic behavioral disorders as ADHD and monopolar and bipolar depression.

We all want good health, live life creatively, avoid suffering, experience deep personal relationships and live our lives fully as possible. We want time and opportunity to enjoy this marvelous earth and be valued by society. What are we willing to do (or not do) to improve the quality of our day to day lives?

The Process takes on the challenges of transforming the commonplace into the extraordinary, of bringing about healthy change in as many lives as possible, of learning and practicing together the art of adventuring into the unknown, of changing periods of second hand consciousness into a fuller awareness and expression of the original life, of allowing the greatest potentials of the mind/body to unfold. The mission of The Process Project is to make the art and science of self-actualization and self-knowledge available to as many as possible. The decade of the Brain has opened onto the Century of the Mind. Your personal horizons may be infinite.

About the Author

R. Adam Crane BCIA Senior Fellow, BCIAEEG, NRNP Diplomate. President American BioTec, Director of BioMonitoring International and BioTec Corporations, Founder of Health Training Seminars. Adam Crane and the companies he founded have played leading roles in mainstream medical/educational biofeedback, and applied psychophysiology.

"This is the first clinical textbook on Neurofeedback (NFB) to be published, and if you are a professional seriously interested in neurofeedback, we urge you to buy it immediately."

--MINDFITNESS.COM, An American BioTec e-mail Newsletter

"This is the first clinical textbook on Neurofeedback (NFB) to be published, and if you are a professional seriously interested in neurofeedback, we urge you to buy it immediately. We are so impressed by the book that we are including its use in our seminars...That said, get the book. Some of the writing is brilliant. You will learn a lot. And if you love neurofeedback you will be in for some fascinating and fun reading."

--Adam Crane, Ph.D. in the JOURNAL OF NEUROTHERAPY (Fall/Winter 1999)

"This book is an important step in bringing to a wider audience the major diagnostic and curative modalities of QEEG and EEG neurofeedback... The practicing psychologist beset by insurance carriers demanding proof of treatment efficacy should come away from reading this book with a compelling excitement. What stands out in prominent relief is that psychologists are using off-the-shelf technology to effectively treat disorders that had been considered untreatable... This volume is rich in information."

--CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY (Volume 46, Number 5, 2001)