I was invited to give a talk and workshop at the Innovations in Education Conference in Salt Lake City last week, and that gave me an opportunity to hear about other ways to break the barriers to learning. The moving force behind this conference is Ed Fila and Mike Phillips. Dr. Ed Fila was drawn to this field because of his own learning disabled daughter, the odd duck among a bunch of very successful children, whereas Mike Phillips had spent his first career in the juvenile justice system. One of his last official duties before his retirement was to check up on a cohort of kids to see what happened to them over the five years since they were released from custody in the juvenile justice system. Some 200 of these kids had cost the State close to $20 Million in continuing services, more than $100K apiece, for >20K per year. This is just the tangible public cost, and does not include the impact on other lives and on the private economy. Two-thirds of the kids were in prison by the end of the survey period—a resounding history of failure of the juvenile justice program. Less than 40% of the males, and less than 10% of the females had achieved high school graduation. What if such failed lives could be intercepted early on and set on a different course?

So Ed Fila and Mike Phillips have been gathering the best of available educational and remedial technologies for insertion into the Utah educational system. I have had the opportunity to present at each of their conferences over the years. I am told that my talk was always voted the best of the conference, but neurofeedback has never made the cut of being included in their proposed program. This is quite possibly because of the dearth of a documented track record of positive outcome for a within-school application. But it may also just be too difficult to get neurofeedback through the legislature at this point. The organization received $1M in funding from the legislature, but the disbursement has been held up by the current governor. (more…)

Our latest issue of the Neuroscientist, in its regular survey of the field of neuroscience, comments on an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the effect of stimulant medication on subsequent learning capacity. It was found that “[p]rior treatment with amphetamine or cocaine interfered with the ability of experience in a complex environment to increase dendritic arborization and spine density.” [Ref. 1] Yet it had been established previously that stimulant medication all by itself is capable of increasing dendritic branching and spine density.

It appears that we have to ask more subtle questions than simply whether stimulants provoke neural growth. It may be that if the growth is not shaped or mediated by learning experience then the growth is not much good to us. It may be more like kudzu in Louisiana. Even more ominously, randomly promoted growth may preempt the more useful neural growth on which learning depends. It could even account for the “neuropsychological deficits seen in amphetamine and cocaine addicts.” In sum, then, it may not be good news to discover that stimulant medication promotes neural growth. If not, then we are back to the model that the salutary benefit of stimulants relates to the immediate state change, not to any lingering induced physiological change. (more…)

PDF Attached at bottom

Abstract: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are unique attentional disorders which primarily involve slowed frontal brain wave activity and hypoperfusion of cerebral blood flow in the frontal regions, particularly during tasks such as reading. A variety of disorders, such as anxiety, depression and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), are often comorbid with ADD, thus creating a plethora of complications in treatment procedures. Audio-Visual Entrainment (AVE) lends itself well for the treatment of ADD/ADHD. AVE exerts a major wide spread influence over the cortex in terms of dominant frequency. AVE has also been shown to produce dramatic increases in cerebral blood flow. Several studies involving the use of AVE in the treatment of ADD/ADHD and its related disorders have been completed. AVE as a treatment modality for ADD/ADHD has produced wide-spread improvements including secondary improvements in IQ, behaviour, attention, impulsiveness, hyperactivity, anxiety, depression, ODD and reading level. In particular, AVE has proven itself to be an effective and affordable treatment of special-needs children within a school setting.

Introduction
All mental functioning involves an element of arousal, that is, the awakeness or alertness of the brain. The degree of the brain’s (cortical) arousal dramatically affects how well a particular function can be performed. For instance, it is almost impossible to pay attention if the brain is producing an abundance of alpha or theta (Oken & Salinsky, 1992), just as it’s difficult to fall asleep with excess beta and low alpha activity in an eyes closed condition. People with attentional problems such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have particular difficulty shifting their pre-frontal lobes into gear (suppressing alpha and/or theta) during cognitive tasks, particularly passive, spatial tasks such as reading (Lubar, et.al., 1985, Tansey, 1985). However, high levels of stimulation (which AVE provides in abundance) have been shown to improve attention and reduce hyperactivity (Cohen & Douglas, 1971; Leuba, 1955; Zentall, 1975; Zentall & Zentall, 1976), and the presence of rock music has also been shown to reduce hyperactivity (Cripe, 1986). This may explain why those with ADD do so well with video games and action sports. Unless the activity is exciting (pushing up arousal), the pre-frontal and frontal lobes quickly lose their attentiveness and activation. Theta and/or alpha brain waves increase dramatically and the person “fogs out.” ADHD rarely occurs in isolation and is often combined with other conditions including depression, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, learning disabilities, anxiety disorders, and other significant psychological, psychiatric, and neurological problems (Lubar, 1999; Hunt, 1994; Barkley, 1989). (more…)

DF Attached at bottom Audio-Visual Entrainment: II. Dental Studies
David Siever¹, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Abstract: A great deal of temporo-mandibular joint dysfunction and myofascial pain dysfunction
is activated in relation to anxiety and fear responses to challenging tasks, self-criticism and daily
hassles. AVE, like passive meditation, appears to effectively alleviate these symptoms.
Historical Background
The first few studies of visual entrainment (VE) involved a device called the Brain Wave
Synchronizer. The seminal hypnosis study by Kroger and Schneider in 1959 prompted more
research along hypnosis lines. Shortly thereafter VE was used as an analgesic for gastrointestinal
surgery, where it was found that over 90% of patients entered useable levels of trance
induction prior to surgery (Sadove, 1961). The Sadove study caught the interest of the dental
profession, which was awakening to the role of anxiety in temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ) and
myofascial pain dysfunction and during dental procedures. (more…)

Author: Mark Steinberg

Video games have become a staple in the American sensory and entertainment diet. The interactive animated electronic screen prevails over games and entertainment the way word processing software has essentially replaced typewriters. If video games are the fast food of the mind, then there is mounting evidence that we are filling minds with unhealthy junk and supersizing the delivery to boot. In contrast to other pariahs of the modern age, video game phenomena are largely skewed toward the younger population, particularly children and adolescents.

It is estimated that a staggering 92 percent of young people tune into the virtual worlds of electronic entertainment purveyed on computers, arcades, and electronic gaming devices. In 2003, computer and video game sales generated a whopping $16.9 billion! Amidst the hoopla of retail frenzy and controversy about video games, it mostly escapes the professional and lay communities alike that there are video games specifically designed and proven to reduce the risks often associated with and attributed to the video genre. Aside form aesthetic or thematic appeal, video games are not restricted to a single stratum commercial wave that engulfs and drowns its players in a tsunami of mindless capitulation. (more…)

The news broke on a day that did not exist for me. I left for Australia on the 27th, and arrived on the 29th. I knew nothing about the scandalous photos that had just surfaced in the US on the 28th until I returned a few days later. Significantly, the photos were not the topic of conversation in Australia. Was that mere politeness, a reluctance to probe their guest with respect to these disagreeable facts? I was thus able to enjoy my visit without having to come to terms. Don’t all of us wish that such innocence could have continued? On another occasion, I found myself in Australia at the time of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma, and in Edmonton, Alberta at the time of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Perhaps I should publish my travel schedule so that precautions can be taken.

What is the relevance of this to our concerns? In a little town in the United States, some dozen large photos in a public space feature the young people of the town who are currently serving the Armed Forces in Iraq. One of those pictures was just taken down, because the soldier–a woman soldier–was seen in the photos just released from Saddam’s gulag. The display of her picture had become an embarrassment. How does it come to be that that smiling young woman could metamorphose into the laughing, taunting creature with a tethered naked Iraqi male prisoner on the floor? (more…)