Tag: brain

THIS SHOULD BE AN ADVENTURE

For the last three weeks I’ve been at half the dose of the two antidepressants I take, Welllbutrin and Lexapro. This is part of my neurofeedback therapy; at a certain point the drugs are more of an obstruction than a help for technical reasons, so it’s a good idea to reduce them.

So far, so good. I had some crummy withdrawal effects but nothing out of the ordinary psychologically. Not better, not worse.

As of today I’m off both meds completely. After another three weeks of NFB I stop NFB, and then over the next few weeks I’m supposed to get some idea of how much this whole thing has helped. My practitioner says that in her experience people don’t really feel the useful effects of neurofeedback until after it’s stopped and some of its side effects are reduced. We’ll see.

This is the first time in nearly 20 years that I’ve not been on some type of SSRI antidepressant and the first time in at least two that I’ve not been on a dopaminergic medication. I wonder what Mr. Brain’s gonna do this week?

If you see me up in a tree wearing a Russian admiral’s uniform and singing the Laughing Song from Faust, etc., notify a physician.

A spammer darkly

hotelsamurai pointed me to this Wired News story which has interesting implications.

These researchers have invented a scheme for finding interesting images. Computers aren’t so great at it yet, but humans are. In fact, we’re so good at it that we recognize important images before we consciously know it, and this recognition can be measured by EEG. In their setup, a human watches images go by, and the ones that register on the EEG as “of interest” are set aside to be looked at more carefully. In short, it’s brain-aided image triage.

Given the current sources of funding for research, the examples given are surveillance camera shots, and the T-word has to be mentioned. This makes the whole project stink of 21st century panopticon. But that’s not the important part.

Using a human as a coprocessor, literally as a brain rather than as a person, is new. I imagine it doesn’t matter too much which brain you use, aside from some that are very good or very bad at recognizing images. It’s also likely that this isn’t fun “work.” Just looking at rapidly changing images for a long time is tiring, and if you aren’t able to do anything else but sit in the chair and let your unconscious processes do something, the boredom would be awful. From my own experience doing EEG biofeedback, the side effects of directly EEG-linked activity can be very unpleasant and unpredictable. I doubt anyone knows yet what the effect would be of long-term work as a rent-a-brain.

A Philip K. Dick dystopia looms, in which “braining” is something the poor do, like plasma donation or prostitution. Maybe it fucks you up pretty bad, but the Wal-Mart hasn’t been hiring in a while and you need cash. Too bad about the week-long psychoses a person gets after doing the hookups for a couple of weeks of 12-hour days…

Plate O’ Voles

Today I was looking up information on the web about this vagus nerve stuff and the Polyvagal theory and kept running across information about Prairie Voles and monogamy. This was worth a good laugh partly because it’s a lot of fun to say “monogamous prairie vole”. Apparently the research into the psychobiology of monogamy is often done with these critters because there are monogamous and non-monogamous variants of them with different biology.

So tonight my mother went to the UCI Neurology of Learning and Memory class and the speaker talked about prairie voles, monogamy, the branching of the vagus nerve, and polyvagal theory.

I have vole synchronicity. Who wants some of this lovely plate o’ shrimp voles?

Interesting news from the phrenology ward

Today in a psychotherapy session I was discussing my problems with relationships, and more specifically my lack of intimate relationships. The working theory is that my own emotional life is too intense to communicate to others and that I shut them out in ways I’m not consciously able to control, mostly nonverbal.

This is particularly true if I have an attraction to someone, because my feeling of attraction is tightly coupled with unacceptably strong fear, shame, and self-hatred so that I become exceptionally false and not “present”.

Okay, interesting theory. But what’s the mechanism here? One theory is that the problem lies in the 10th cranial nerve. This is the vagus nerve, which goes to both the gut and the lungs from the brain. The “polyvagal theory” holds that separate branches of the vagus nerve, when stimulated, produce strong and opposed feelings: either you feel very safe, or not at all safe.

This has implications for a number of problems, including some autistic spectrum disorders, PTSD, panic attacks, and social adjustment problems. If the two systems become, as my therapist puts it, “overcoupled”, then it can be impossible to make a serious connection with someone without being overwhelmed by unpleasant emotions. The result is a kind of neural shutdown, which makes people like me seem distant or standoffish when we’re feeling exactly the opposite.

Stephen Polger, the originator of the polyvagal theory, has had some promising results at the University of Illinois treating autism with sound. There are also some suggestions and tips for dealing with these problems in this interview with Polger, which is intended for a lay audience. The other information I’ve found about this so far has been much more technical.

In my own case, since I am not autistic, PTSD, or suffering from panic attacks, the goal is to get the neural function more normal through a combination of neurofeedback, EMDR, somatic therapy, and medication. It’s kind of a science project though, since some of these ideas are very new and raw and will undoubtedly be further refined later.

mesmeric neurobonkular electrozapulation report

Brain Lady seems to have figured out a regimen for the neurofeedback that does not cause me to veer between flailing depressive self-hatred and near-paranoiac rage. This is a good thing.

I’m also experiencing a more even temperament generally. The same problems are there, but the amplitude is reduced, as are the swings. In simpler terms: I’m still upset about a lot of things and have some pessimistic opinions, but I’m no longer staring at the wall thinking about them for 9 hours straight.

I’m also sleeping between 12 and 14 hours a night, which is both therapeutically deemed to be “good” and pleasurable.

So far my rating for neurofeedback as a therapy is a conditional positive. I’ve got improvements that are good and important, but getting there was disagreeable in the extreme.