Showing posts with label cognitive theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cognitive theory. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Timing Literature Review Source
Improved brain timing is at the heart of most of the big breakthroughs for clients in my practice. I've tried to keep up with the literature, but it is vast and complex. Now Kevin McGrew and Amy Vega have put together a review of theory, diagnosis and treatment research. It is available here in PDF format. There are additional appendices for those who wish to delve deep into the literature. The appendices can be accessed via Kevin McGrew's August 14th blog. In that blog, he gives an interesting introduction to the paper. Check it out.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Personal Genome Project: Nature & Nurture
Yesterday's New York Times Magazine (1/11/09) had an interesting cover story by cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, who is a participant in the Personal Genome Project. The genome project will create technology and practices allowing individuals to access and interpret their personal genetic information.
The identification of a person's traits (personal genomics) using DNA is in its infancy. We can identify risks for some diseases, and map some physical attributes such as hair color and skin tone, but not always accurately. We can identify ancestral lineages (- which is very cool!).
What I found most interesting in Dr. Pinker's article is that personality and behavioral traits such as extroversion, intelligence, religiosity, neuroticism, mental illnes can be mapped to our genes to some degree. And giving nurture (as opposed to nature) its due, our differences from each other can be also attributed to culture, shared environments (homes, work and schools), and unshared environments. However, gentic studies are finding that the older we get, the more our behaviors appear to revert to our genetic traits. That is, we move away (perhaps literally) from the cultural and environmental factors as we grow and mature and back to the original DNA expression of ourselves.
Hmm... this will surely impact psychotherapy, spiritual development and a slew of other areas. The nature vs. nurture debate should explode in the near future.
The identification of a person's traits (personal genomics) using DNA is in its infancy. We can identify risks for some diseases, and map some physical attributes such as hair color and skin tone, but not always accurately. We can identify ancestral lineages (- which is very cool!).
What I found most interesting in Dr. Pinker's article is that personality and behavioral traits such as extroversion, intelligence, religiosity, neuroticism, mental illnes can be mapped to our genes to some degree. And giving nurture (as opposed to nature) its due, our differences from each other can be also attributed to culture, shared environments (homes, work and schools), and unshared environments. However, gentic studies are finding that the older we get, the more our behaviors appear to revert to our genetic traits. That is, we move away (perhaps literally) from the cultural and environmental factors as we grow and mature and back to the original DNA expression of ourselves.
Hmm... this will surely impact psychotherapy, spiritual development and a slew of other areas. The nature vs. nurture debate should explode in the near future.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Your Brain on Music
Just finished reading the 2006 book, This is Your Brain on Music, The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin. No surprise that it was a finalist for the LA Times' Book Prize.
This wonderful book looks at music and the brain from a-to-z. In doing so, it demonstrates how music and modulated music travel about the brain in a way that influences our ability to trust, self-regulate, identify sounds in space, motor plan, communicate, organize, discriminate sounds, multi-task and relax. In other words, the book provides insight into how sound therapy works -- but without ever mentioning the term sound therapy.
Music operates independent from language. Some aspects of music, like pitch, are hard-wired into brain areas. They have their own neural centers on the right side of the brain. For example, a neuro-surgeon can pinpoint the note, C#, in the open brain. Other aspects of music: musical syntax, timbre, rhythm, etc., are processed simultaneously in their own specialized regions across the brain. Music can be an intellectual, regulatory, emotional and/or social experience. We admire the construction of a song, work to the beat of a driving rhythm, allow ourselves to move with musically expressed emotions, and make music a part of our social events and rituals.
The brain has two main pathways for music. The first moves from the inner ear into the auditory processing areas where it then moves to other high-functioning cortical regions including executive functioning and memory. The second pathway moves directly from the inner ear to the primitive cerebellum where motor planning and our fight-or-flight is centered. The cerebellum is also the seat of the brain's timing and rhythm, and has important emotional function. Both pathways are bi-connected to each other and to a variety of emotional centers in the brain including those responsible for pleasure and reward.
Why did music evolve into animals? Darwin linked music to sexual selection by virtue of music's seductive powers. Others have noted that it was (and continues to be) an important aspect of social bonding and cohesion. This would make it important to the evolution of social beings like ourselves.
The book is full of deep information as well as interesting tidbits.
This wonderful book looks at music and the brain from a-to-z. In doing so, it demonstrates how music and modulated music travel about the brain in a way that influences our ability to trust, self-regulate, identify sounds in space, motor plan, communicate, organize, discriminate sounds, multi-task and relax. In other words, the book provides insight into how sound therapy works -- but without ever mentioning the term sound therapy.
Music operates independent from language. Some aspects of music, like pitch, are hard-wired into brain areas. They have their own neural centers on the right side of the brain. For example, a neuro-surgeon can pinpoint the note, C#, in the open brain. Other aspects of music: musical syntax, timbre, rhythm, etc., are processed simultaneously in their own specialized regions across the brain. Music can be an intellectual, regulatory, emotional and/or social experience. We admire the construction of a song, work to the beat of a driving rhythm, allow ourselves to move with musically expressed emotions, and make music a part of our social events and rituals.
The brain has two main pathways for music. The first moves from the inner ear into the auditory processing areas where it then moves to other high-functioning cortical regions including executive functioning and memory. The second pathway moves directly from the inner ear to the primitive cerebellum where motor planning and our fight-or-flight is centered. The cerebellum is also the seat of the brain's timing and rhythm, and has important emotional function. Both pathways are bi-connected to each other and to a variety of emotional centers in the brain including those responsible for pleasure and reward.
Why did music evolve into animals? Darwin linked music to sexual selection by virtue of music's seductive powers. Others have noted that it was (and continues to be) an important aspect of social bonding and cohesion. This would make it important to the evolution of social beings like ourselves.
The book is full of deep information as well as interesting tidbits.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Physics and the brain
**Meandering-Entry Alert**
This entry talks about replacing depressed thoughts and associations with pleasant ones, creating new associations and memories in the brain that can be the basis for a more pleasant life. It builds off of brain theory (neural networks from a lecture from U. of Mich.) and psychotherapy.
Self Sabotage
My husband, Peter, a psychotherapist, has written a book on self-sabotaging behavior. He says that we subconsciously try to repeat negative experiences - usually left over from earlier times or childhood. It is hard to change our ways. For example, if we are depressed, we will seek out behaviors to reinforce our depression. He says that we have to catch ourselves in the act, and then purposefully change what we do.
The Novelty of Pleasant Associations
I would like to propose that when we feel depression stir, we step back from it, see it for an emotion (that is, don't identify with it, just look at it) for about 10 seconds. It will fade. When it comes back (even in a few seconds), repeat the process. At this point, we should be in a less-depressed state. Now try to find gladness, and look for things to associate it with: a potted plant, art, a person we enjoy. This new memory is novel. It will be taken into the brain, and if it sits there for a few minutes without depression, may stick. Thus we will have associated something in our environment (the plant) with gladness, and with repeated sessions over several days, can take hold in our being.
This method creates a novel experience, a novel association between pleasantness and situations that might have been associated with depression. For example, Michigan is gray in the winter. Without sun, people here tend to get seasonal affective disorder (and the poor economy is no help!). So, what happens, for example, if you go away from Michigan for 5 years? A psychiatrist friend of mine once explained that without the associations of winter events with no sun, seasonal depression will fade. In place of gray skies, different memories will exist and they will override the gloomy ones.
Can one get the sad memories to fade without leaving the gloomy weather? I think so. Read on.
Lecure on Memory
The beauty of living in a (great) college town is the availability of stimulating lectures. Today, Professor Michal Zochowski of the University of Michigan Biophysics department lectured on "Physics and Brain Function". Professor Zochowski creates neural networks in petri dishes. A neural network is a very complex structure that can be "taught" to learn things. That is, information can be input to the network and then retrieved later. The format of the neural network's information is so complex, that you can't figure out what it is doing. For example, if I look on my computer for information I have stored, I can find it. I can see the folders and find the folder it is stored in, open a file in the folder and then find the informaiton. However, this is not possible for information stored in a neural network.
If you try compare the brain's memory and function to a (PC or Mac) computer, the comparison breaks down very quickly. Computers are far to simplistic. However, it is possible (at this point), to use a neural network to model brain function and gain some insight.
Professor Zochowski uses his neural networks to simulate the brain's hippocampus and cortex. The hippocampus is thought of as a "device" that 1) finds interesting (and novel) associated bits of information and 2) keeps alive a memory of the bits and their association so that the cortex can (very slowly) put this into long term memory as a newly learned fact. The cortex acts as a mechanism for creating and storing long-term memories. Together, they take novel information, keep an impression of it alive and then after a while (if the information is interesting enough to be still alive), store it in long term memory and create rich connections so that it is easily found. To test these assumptions of how the brain's memory works, Professor Zochowski programmed his neural networks to mimmick the hippocampus and cortex as stated above. The model duplicated know brain wave formation and function, and so the neural network is a good model for now.
Back to Michigan gloom, memories and making new associations. What does the neural network experiment tell us? Does it support our thesis of replacing sad memories with happier ones? I think so.
The model suggests that by creating a new set of associations and holding them steady for a few minutes, a new memory is made. We need to pay keen attention to the stimulus (the pleasant association) so that it appears to be a novel event. If it is done repeatedly, it will strenghthen and override the old one. With disuse, one hopes that the old memory will fade.
This entry talks about replacing depressed thoughts and associations with pleasant ones, creating new associations and memories in the brain that can be the basis for a more pleasant life. It builds off of brain theory (neural networks from a lecture from U. of Mich.) and psychotherapy.
Self Sabotage
My husband, Peter, a psychotherapist, has written a book on self-sabotaging behavior. He says that we subconsciously try to repeat negative experiences - usually left over from earlier times or childhood. It is hard to change our ways. For example, if we are depressed, we will seek out behaviors to reinforce our depression. He says that we have to catch ourselves in the act, and then purposefully change what we do.
The Novelty of Pleasant Associations
I would like to propose that when we feel depression stir, we step back from it, see it for an emotion (that is, don't identify with it, just look at it) for about 10 seconds. It will fade. When it comes back (even in a few seconds), repeat the process. At this point, we should be in a less-depressed state. Now try to find gladness, and look for things to associate it with: a potted plant, art, a person we enjoy. This new memory is novel. It will be taken into the brain, and if it sits there for a few minutes without depression, may stick. Thus we will have associated something in our environment (the plant) with gladness, and with repeated sessions over several days, can take hold in our being.
This method creates a novel experience, a novel association between pleasantness and situations that might have been associated with depression. For example, Michigan is gray in the winter. Without sun, people here tend to get seasonal affective disorder (and the poor economy is no help!). So, what happens, for example, if you go away from Michigan for 5 years? A psychiatrist friend of mine once explained that without the associations of winter events with no sun, seasonal depression will fade. In place of gray skies, different memories will exist and they will override the gloomy ones.
Can one get the sad memories to fade without leaving the gloomy weather? I think so. Read on.
Lecure on Memory
The beauty of living in a (great) college town is the availability of stimulating lectures. Today, Professor Michal Zochowski of the University of Michigan Biophysics department lectured on "Physics and Brain Function". Professor Zochowski creates neural networks in petri dishes. A neural network is a very complex structure that can be "taught" to learn things. That is, information can be input to the network and then retrieved later. The format of the neural network's information is so complex, that you can't figure out what it is doing. For example, if I look on my computer for information I have stored, I can find it. I can see the folders and find the folder it is stored in, open a file in the folder and then find the informaiton. However, this is not possible for information stored in a neural network.
If you try compare the brain's memory and function to a (PC or Mac) computer, the comparison breaks down very quickly. Computers are far to simplistic. However, it is possible (at this point), to use a neural network to model brain function and gain some insight.
Professor Zochowski uses his neural networks to simulate the brain's hippocampus and cortex. The hippocampus is thought of as a "device" that 1) finds interesting (and novel) associated bits of information and 2) keeps alive a memory of the bits and their association so that the cortex can (very slowly) put this into long term memory as a newly learned fact. The cortex acts as a mechanism for creating and storing long-term memories. Together, they take novel information, keep an impression of it alive and then after a while (if the information is interesting enough to be still alive), store it in long term memory and create rich connections so that it is easily found. To test these assumptions of how the brain's memory works, Professor Zochowski programmed his neural networks to mimmick the hippocampus and cortex as stated above. The model duplicated know brain wave formation and function, and so the neural network is a good model for now.
Back to Michigan gloom, memories and making new associations. What does the neural network experiment tell us? Does it support our thesis of replacing sad memories with happier ones? I think so.
The model suggests that by creating a new set of associations and holding them steady for a few minutes, a new memory is made. We need to pay keen attention to the stimulus (the pleasant association) so that it appears to be a novel event. If it is done repeatedly, it will strenghthen and override the old one. With disuse, one hopes that the old memory will fade.
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