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New Light on Lights, Sounds and the Brain

Megabrain Reports, Vol. 2, No. 3. The history of EDS, and some of the lessons I have learned using the system with patients, and what I inferred about human functioning, dysfunction, and recovery.

From MEGABRAIN REPORT
Volume 2, Number 3 (Spring-Summer, 1994)

New Light on Lights, Sounds, and the Brain

by Len Ochs, Ph.D.

Light and sound machines-devices that combine rhythmic photic and auditory stimulation and seem to alter or "entrain" brain wave activity-have been available as consumer products for years now. These devices have been used to explore consciousness, relax, enhance performance and learning, explore altered states, and enhance sleep and energy, to name but a small selection of goals.

I am not aware of any reasonable scientific studies, much less controlled studies, of the therapeutic effectiveness of light and sound stimulation devices. However, if there's fire where there's smoke, formal studies or no, these devices must be doing enough to warrant their sharply increasing sales over the past few years. Reliable reports of significant benefit are few, but they are clearly frequent enough to sell increasing numbers of these devices in the context of enhanced functioning, as well as widespread desires to stay away from both drugs and the relatively poor efficacy of medical treatment for some chronic conditions. I have, on occasion, heard second hand stories of these devices producing effects that seem nothing less than miraculous.

My negative bias and disposition toward these devices showed clearly, even in the face of Marion Diamond's and W. Grey Walter's pioneering work on stimulation. So it is with a distinct sense of embarrassment that I must report my own observations of a light and sound device that produces reliable and important results with-in certain domains of problems.

EEG Entrainment Feedback In the process of working on one technical problem, 1 designed a sound and light system that would customize itself to the user's brain waves on a moment to moment basis. By using the individual's EEG to set and reset the stimulation frequency, the stimulation would always, then, be customized to the user's brain wave states. This system, which I called EEG Entrainment Feedback (EEF) would, I thought, constitute a non-directive psychotechnology whose course would be set by the person's brain, but which in turn would be influenced by the stimulation.

I had the biofeedback J&J I-330 EEG and the Synergizer light/sound device from Synetic Systems. EEG software was designed to link these two devices allowing the person's EEG to change the frequency of the lights and sounds, and the stimulation, in turn, to change the EEG. That covers the electronics and computer side of the system.

The clinical effects of this system were entirely unpredictable to me. This link had not been attempted before to my knowledge. There was certainly nothing in the literature which described the EEG-stimulation link, what the effects of it might be, what problems might be encountered, and how it might be used.

I tried out the EEF system and found it much more visually beautiful than I found the traditional sound and light stimulation. it seemed more alive and responsive to my brain waves than was the fixed-frequency or pre-programmed slowly ramping stimulation I had previously tried. Although only red LEDs were used at that time, the visible patterns and rich colors varied closely with the measured EEG frequencies.

Clearer, FASTER PSYCHOTHERAPY. Interested, but not especially aware of any unusual ability of the system, I introduced it to some patients who had a great deal of psychotherapy, biofeedback, and even EEG brainwave biofeedback, but who needed results that were clearer, faster, and more meaningful than brought about by these procedures. One man had 20 years of rages, many of which lasted two weeks at a time.

The family was threatened with divorce because of the unacceptability of his explosiveness. He was unable to work because of his temper. Another patient was a woman who worked for a major retail chain as an upper-level manger and had been expected to increasing work pressure over the past few years, capped by threats of bodily harm to her and her family by employees. She had been unable to go to work and was extremely depressed and anxious. Both of individuals were very highly motivated, and very bright Both wanted to work again; and both felt the shame of being out of work. The man highly valued his family and wanted to continue in it What follows are lessons I learned using EEF to work with these two individuals and others.

LESSON ONE: People can be hypersensitive to their own brain waves. Within two minutes of feeding back EEG-driven sound and lights the woman began to complain of back, neck, and head pain. I had set the system to lower her EEG by flashing the lights a little slower than her dominant frequency. Increasingly in the biofeedback field, brain wave biofeedback was being used to teach people with post-traumatic stress disorders to voluntarily lower their average brain wave frequencies. But this woman clearly experienced tension and muscle contraction pain when her brain wave frequencies lowered. If lowering her EEG produced pain, I wondered if increasing her EEG by flashing the lights slightly faster than her dominant frequency would keep her from pain. Contrary to the wisdom of conventional EEG biofeedback, it did.

Her responses suggested to me that she was hypersensitive to lower frequencies. So the strategy I next adopted was to gradually re expose her to her lower frequencies, but to do it so gradually that she would desensitize to them and be able to be comfortable with them. So I alternately reduced and sped up the stimulation by changing the polarity of the difference between her dominant frequency and the stimulation. The lights alternately flashed at slightly faster than her dominant frequency (thus entraining her brainwaves upward) for one minute, then slightly slower for the next minute, and so on, reversing the polarity or direction over the course of a five minute session, at first and gradually lengthening the session to 30 minutes.

As I continued exploring this non-directive psychotechnology, psychologist Jon Cowan's objection to the name EEF began to stimulate me to fit a new model to the phenomenon I was witnessing. EEG Entrainment Feedback still made sense in that the brain was indeed being entrained by the stimulation (as James Gleick writes in Chaos: Making of a New Science, "This phenomenon, in which one regular cycle locks into another, is now called entrainment, or mode locking.") However, in the larger sense this
entrainment was being used to disentrain the brain from being stuck in a destructive reaction pattern.

Disentrainment refers to the disruption of entrained patterns, patterns which have become in some way locked. Disentrainment is more a process which leads to the re-establishment of biological systems flexibility. As critical as the ability of a system in its ability to withstand shocks is, in Gleick's words, "how well a system can function over a range of frequencies. A locking-in to a single mode can be enslavement, preventing a system from adapting to change.... No heartbeat or respiratory rhythm can be locked into the strict periodicities of the simplest physical models, and the same is true of the subtler rhythms of the rest of the body" [italics mine].

The linked EEG and LS system I had developed had the effect of making more flexible a range of neurological and neurochemical systems from the largest to the scale, and consequently improve conditions of patients once thought to be largely hope-less. The success of this system rests on the integrity and ingenuity of the research toward this end. Thus I changed the original name EEG Entrainment Feedback to the more accurate EEG Disentrainment Feedback (EDF).

The previously mentioned man afflicted with uncontrollable rages, a Viet Nam veteran, had suffered these explosive episodes since his tour of duty. His temper had decreased ever so slightly over the course of 40 EEG biofeedback sessions, but clearly not enough to change his wife's mind about divorcing him. His sixteen year-old son was giving the patents increasing problems with temper, manipulativeness, and mixing with the "wrong crowd" at school. The mother was especially concerned that the son was beginning to imitate "big time" the father's temper, which was too much for her to handle, and which added to her sense of urgency. Over a span of two weeks of daily EEG-driven LS stimulation sessions, tears would show over the man's cheeks; he felt thermal hallucinations ("It's as hot as Nam.. whoops, its gone."); he experienced auditory hallucinations ("I hear the choppers."). In each of these instances, and in others like them, my only verbal intervention was a non-technical acknowledgment of what he said: "Uh-huh," or "Yup." In each of these instances he reassured me that he was all right.

The protocol I used with this patient was the same that I used with the woman: if the patient looked uncomfortable or sounded uncomfortable, I reversed the polarity of the leading frequency, i.e. alternating between slightly faster and slightly slower than the dominant brain wave frequency.

Over the course of two weeks not only did the father's temper recede, but the son could no longer trigger the father's temper outbursts (which dazed and confused the son the first times it happened). In addition, the father became a stable aid to the mother in the son's management, and exercised good judgment in the management of his own time so that the mother could at last depend on the father to show up for appointments, for example, even when things didn't go his way, or when traffic was especially bad.

With the progressively lengthening exposures to specific frequencies that made these individuals uncomfortable, their comfort with the presence of these frequencies in their spectrum increased, and their symptomatology decreased.

LESSON TWO: Those with psychological and physical trauma are much more frequently hypersensitive than normals are to stimulation. According to Robert Austin, the president of Synetic Systems of Seattle-a manufacturer of consumer sound and light stimulation devices-approximately 5% of their customers have complained about the brightness of the lights and the loudness of the sounds (even though the stimulation could be lowered to non-visible and non-audible levels). However, my continuing work with a heterogeneous head injury and mixed psychopathology patient sample has shown over 80% to be hypersensitive to the light stimulation to significant degrees.

"Hypersensitive" to stimulation means that the patients showed or expressed some degree of discomfort when the stimulation was present. Often the sensitivity was so great that the lowest levels of illumination of the lights were too bright. Non-verbal signs of over stimulation were tightening of the chest, restriction of chest motility, lifting or rounding of the shoulders, flexion of the neck, or tightening of the jaw. There were verbal expressions as well, ranging from "too bright" to "too much flicker" to "too much red" to cries and grunts of discomfort. In some cases I needed to mask the red LEDs embedded on the inside of the glasses with a sheet or two of manila file folder material in order to decrease the brightness of the lights low enough so that the patients could be comfortable with the stimulation.

One woman was so sensitive that she found the lights too bright even when they were shielded with file folder material and placed on her lap. Individuals may not even be able to see the lights when they are so dim; some can, however, feel that the lights are on, and feel this as apparent changes in blood flow inside their head, in their scalp, or in their eye lids. If they are sensitive to vascular pain, stimulation at the lowest levels may begin to elicit vascular pain as a fraction of that which they usually experience-and rarely pain of their usual full intensity, although full intensity pain has been known to occur and the patient should be prepared medically to manage it with the cooperation of his or her physician.

LESSON THREE: The people with the worst symptoms are the most hypersensitive to LS stimulation. It is astonishing to link sound and light sensitivity to symptom intensity. It is astonishing because we are not used to documenting central nervous system status with peripheral problems, or brain irritability with consciousness, motivation, mood and energy problems. It is much more typical to think of psychological reasons for these problems. Examples of those with extreme hypersensitivity problems are people unable to tolerate the flashing at all, even with the lights taped over with black electrical tape; they may object to the brightness, the flicker or the color. These people may not begin to respond for 20 sessions, while most of those with less sensitivity can begin to respond with symptom relief after the first session.

LESSON FOUR: The people who desensitize get better. Not all patients show hypersensitivity. However, of those that do show hypersensitivity, 100% of the over 50 patients I have worked with showed a decrease in symptoms as they desensitized. Examples of this hypersensitivity are someone saying that the lights, colors, or flickering are making them uncomfortable. Several kinds of symptoms reliably improve for those that have suffered psycho-logical or mechanical head trauma: lack of clarity, lack of energy during the day, sleeping problems at night, depression, irritability, temper, and explosive episodes, inability to absorb information auditorily or visually, difficulty prioritizing, poor short-term memory, difficulty making decisions related to focused and directed activity, and obsessive thinking.

A 24-year old man with a pre-birth family history of alcohol abuse and physical violence, multiple head injuries as a young child and a long history of psychotherapy (along with continued family addictions, violence, and parental psychiatric hospitalizations), came in to me for treatment on the referral of his therapist He complained of a life-long history of depression, suicidality (thoughts and attempts), obsessive thinking sleeping problems, and the shooting of a family member. His skepticism about the possibility of change was immense, as was his distrust of me as a psychologist and therapist Within the first 10 daily half-hour treatments (given in 1-hour ses- sions) he noticed a decrease obsessions and suicidality. At his 22nd session he was in his own words "90%" free of depression, irritability, temper, and obsession. He declared himself to be reliably not suicidal, and was focused on how he might mobilize himself vocationally to move out of social security disability. At this time he his completed 45 daily sessions and his work, energy, productivity and attention have stabilized. He will begin once weekly sessions for about six weeks to taper from treatment

There was a clear direct relation between the amount of light stimulation he could comfortably tolerate and his sense of well being. It took him twenty sessions to be able to comfortably tolerate full light intensity. To someone hypersensitive to stimulation it seems impossible that they will ever be able to be comfortable with strongly bright lights. However if the desensitization is managed carefully, skillfully, and with patience, patients are able to be comfortable with brightness levels they once thought impossible.

LESSON FIVE: After desensitization, the lower the intensity of the stimulation, the more reliable the improvement. After a woman who had been doing well suffered another trauma she relapsed. And alter the trauma she appeared to be making no progress toward recovering the gains she had made, although she did not appear to be uncomfortable with bright stimulation. Since she was showing large amounts of very low frequency activity, I wondered if the strong stimulation was itself mimicking the effects of trauma and perpetuating her problems.

I decided to lower the lights to levels barely visible to her, and once I did, she began making progress again others using EDF have found the same improvement effects in work with stroke victims: those who appeared to have plateaued once again made progress once the stimulation levels were lowered.

The advisability of lowering the stimulation levels also flies in the face of the way many use commercial sound and light devices. People seem hungry for experience and sensation, and often speak of "blasting" themselves with light and sound stimulation. In fact, patients frequently ask me to raise the brightness of the lights in the belief that more is better; if they can just "take" a little more, they may get through the treatment faster. Unfortunately this may provoke a relapse and overdose, and lengthen their treatment at best, it can lead to no improvement.

It may be that gradually raising the lights in intensity serves to reorganize the brain in some way. However while many of the symptoms do decrease as this happens, as noted above, some others, typically the finer thinking, organizing, memory, and sequencing skills seem to need something else. It may also be that lowering the intensity of the stimulation produces a much milder local stimulation at the site of the EEG electrode without the global brain reorganization. Keeping the stimulus intensity high may interfere with the return of function by overloading the cortex, an effect seen by large amounts of low frequency activity and a failure of the cortex to inhibit that activity and integrate it so that the person can function at "higher" levels. This cortical overload may serve as a model by which trauma can be studied. (This also suggests that there may be two phases to EDF treatment: global and local. Global reorganization appears to require desensitization to bright stimulation, while local reorganization, responsible for the recovery of specific skills, seems to require dim light.)

LESSON SIX: There is more than one kind of hypersensitivity. Although the woman I mentioned above appeared comfortable with brighter lights she did not resume making progress until their brightness was lowered significantly. This implies that she was still hypersensitive to the lights even though she felt no need to complain. The loss of the sense of hypersensitivity in the midst of continued impairment suggests that the brain is capable of reacting differentially.

Because her sense of hypersensitivity was lost, there his been a need to develop other objective ways to alert the clinician that the patient is hypersensitive. This remains a problem today, and one that is receiving top attention.

LESSON SEVEN: There appears to be such a thing as optimization of one's EEG. As a patient becomes progressively more functional-that is mood, energy, motivation, memory, attention, sequencing, prioritizing, etc., become more present and reliable-there are predictable changes that appear in the patient's EEG patterns. As the patient learns to "cruise the frequencies" and do "nothing" under the stimulation of the lights and/or sounds, i.e., gets better at not directing or processing consciousness but instead lets go and permits it be pulled however it goes, the activity observed in each of the bands becomes minimized, equalized, and reduced in variability.

While there initially appears relatively enormous amounts of high amplitude EEG in the lower frequency hands, this activity is minimized and stabilized in response to properly applied stimulation

I have seen no instance in which symptoms were worsened or even fixed at high levels as these patterns became more prominent. The opposite is true, in fact: I have only seen improvement as the "idling" EEG was minimized and stabilized when measured from the front of the head.

As these EEG patterns become increasingly prominent, the EEG will increasingly follow (or be entrained by) the stimulation if it is deliberately varied. EEG following has not been evident early in the treatment when the EEG appears disorganized. In addition, movement artifact, often a consideration in EEG measurement, becomes much less prominent as the treatment progresses, and may almost be another indication of discomfort which improves with treatment.

LESSON EIGHT: We appear to have subcortical as well as cortical intelligence, fortunately. Once our functioning begins to deteriorate, our ability to be ourselves also deteriorates. We begin to experience the frustration that we can no longer do the things we used to do. We have trouble reading, following conversations, following (understanding), remembering and executing sequences of instructions; remembering what we need to do, what belongs to whom, and what still needs to be done (whether it was already done, or whether we or someone else needed to do it). We often have problems driving or riding in the car, fuming at apparent slights and stupidities of others and the impossibility of arriving at the intended destination on time (especially if we are having troubles admitting we can't remember where we are going or how to get there). The frustration and shame of not being who we were in our former competence is pervasive in nearly everything we do, and nobody can really understand why we can't "snap out of it" and "grow up." We lake normalcy the best we can.

If we try to use regular EEG biofeedback, which follows a conscious learning model, our incompetencies interfere with our ability to learn brain wave discrimination, association, and control. EEG biofeedback, that is, sometimes places us in a Catch 22 situation in which the very skills we have lost are those which are required to expeditiously learn brain wave control!

Fortunately EDF does not require conscious learning-except for the need to learn to "idle" and drift with the stimulation pat-terns, as we both influence and are influenced by the lights. In fact, any attempts to "help" the stimulation, engage in constructive thinking, meditate, and so on, usually lengthen the treatment process, at least in its initial stages.

We are used to thinking of our intelligence as an attribute associated with focused attention, discrimination, associative linking, memory, sorting, and discerning our way through sequences of possibilities and problems. The application of intellectual skills is often associated with effort. Those receiving EDF treatment, however, are asked to do as little effortful focusing as they are able. They are asked to drift, or let their minds wander as much as possible without direction. Patients often spontaneously report at the end of the treatment that they no longer resist the stimulation, that they just watch the colors and patterns and let them take them wherever they go--which is largely a reflection of what their brain activity is inclined to do.

Those who were brightest consciously before their trauma often do the best, as if their intelligence is a quality that permeates the brain subcortically as well as cortically. While they often feel stupid in the conscious world of complex tasks, instructions, and cues, watching and listening to the stimulation seems to allow it to work without the need to overcome what are apparently useless efforts to direct their consciousness.

It has been apparent that more than just the visual or auditory parts of the brain are involved in this treatment process. Reports of "a golden globe slowly rotating before my eyes," "strange smells that I can't place," "smelling the horses on screen at the movie," or "my God it's hot! as if I'm back in Nam," are not uncommon. These appear to be signs of the brain's interconnectedness, intelligence that is at work to automatically heal the individual.

The floating relationship between stimulation and brain activity becomes the program. It is important to say that except for the skills involved in desensitizing the individual and remaining comfortingly present and yet unobtrusive, it is the interaction between the EDF system and the individual's brain that is most intelligent. That is, the therapist does not need to pick out helpful frequency stimulation strategies:

LESSON NINE: High functioning people who are truly injured and handicapped will do almost anything to get better if there is a reasonable chance that they will show relatively rapid significant improvement People who are used to high functioning are intolerant of impaired functioning, even if there is secondary gain to be had from their impairment. They will travel hours each way each day; they will pay cash regardless of whether insurance will pay; they will keep their appointments except m unusually difficult circumstances at which times they will call to keep the connection; they will ask questions about their experience; they will ask for reading material if there is some reasonable assurance that what is being offered to them will make a real difference in their lives. Formerly high functioning individuals who have been financially impoverished, who are living on disability and welfare, will stop at nothing to obtain and accept free treatment and will get well if possible, and go back to work or back to school. These people hate their lives.

LESSON TEN: Research, Research, Research. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between wishes for dramatic breakthroughs in medicine and knowledge of the mind, and actual discoveries that change our knowledge and our lives. Research starts with observation and moves on to controlled testing of hypotheses with increasing degrees of stringency, all to make sure we are not fooling ourselves and each other. In case the reader thinks I am advocating stodgy academic publishing to enhance a knowledge of basic science, the reader is only partly correct I am as well concerned with marketing and being able to make the grandest justifiable claims. However, these claims should acknowledge the product's limitations as well as its areas of applicability. The makers of the claims need to recognize the desperation of those afflicted with head injuries, strokes, spinal cord problems, depression, obsessions, rages, enormous fatigue, emotional and environmental hypersensitivity. Only research can define a product's limitations and capacities.

It has taken us three years to study how EDF might be studied, and to begin to develop tools so that neuroscientists can begin to evaluate its safety, efficacy and mechanism Research is the only way to ascertain the system's assets and liabilities.

Furthermore, there is no reason not to subject even the standard light and sound technologies to controlled studies. They lend themselves perfectly to such investigations. The programs may be changed inside them without the knowledge of either the study personnel or the subjects under some conditions, and then changed again to be sure that each subject receives the real and placebo programs at specific times during the study. Fully informing both staff and subjects that such switching will be taking place, and reassuring them that each will receive the best treatment known at the time will safeguard the interests of all. 1 believe that the extent to which the manufacturers of these devices have confidence that they are useful will be seen in their willingness to conduct good research on them. Again, this is not just research, but potentially superb marketing.

Many questions remain to be answered, such as:

Is the inclusion of the EEG really necessary? I suspect so, otherwise there would have been much more frequently reported successes from the already existing LS stimulation devices. However this really needs to be tested methodically.
Is the desensitization to the stimulation all that is necessary?
Are there particular protocols that are much more effective than others?
Only research will advance our knowledge of the potential here.

LESSON ELEVEN: Move to other sites to monitor the EEG. One site most probably won't be enough. An individual's EEG may be optimized at one site and problems still remain. it is possible that the job may not be completed satisfactorily until the EEG from the entire scalp is examined for high signal levels and great variability. The therapist may proceed systematically around the head following the standard 1O-2O electrode site system, or look for electrode sites on the basis of neuropsychological research. One patient was doing rather well throughout the sites on the left side of his head. However when electrodes were placed toward the back of the scalp on the left, and working around the back of the scalp from left to right, and again across sites on the right side of his scale, he began to have emotional reactions, powerful dreams, and changed from not feeling bad to feeling occasional clear happiness. His inner life has become unstable, bat extremely intriguing and satisfying in its diversity.

LESSON TWELVE: Trauma, both psychological and physical, may be a lot more treatable than formerly thought. A great deal of pain has been endured by the traumatized; a great deal of human resource has been lost as well. Trauma's impact on someone's life can convert it from exciting, satisfying, and productive, to one that is empty of hope, or financial and social independence in a second.

LESSON THIRTEEN: Dead may not be so dead. The traditional wisdom is that head injury symptoms are the result of dead or destroyed brain tissue. While there is undoubtedly structural and tissue dam-age in head injury, including stroke and spinal cord injury, the inevitable linking of that damage with the subsequent loss of function may be premature and largely based on the treatment resistance of the subsequent, problems using conventional methods.

EDF has most certainly had its treatment failures. However in each case these failures are characterized by the patients being disappointed that the particular functions they wanted did not return, while other functions did. The functions that did return, such as the ability to remember without making notes all the time, or clarity of consciousness, were each devalued. One patient did not recover from her post-traumatic headache of five years when I was just beginning to under-stand the phenomenon of photic and auditory hypersensitivity Her treatment may have been terminated prematurely.

Another, who suffered both a massive stroke and an attempt to surgically repair his cerebral circulation during a cardiac bypass operation had major portions of dead tissue removed from his brain. The clarity EDF brought him drove home to him even more the significance of his losses. which intensified his frustration

However the range of problems that were helped, from mild traumatic closed head injury, to limbs paralyzed by stroke, to loss of emotional control, to depression, to loss of balance and equilibrium, to loss of sight, to fatigue in chronic fatigue, to arthritis, to allergic cracking of the skin (post head injury), etc., implies that finding a structural anomaly does not necessarily mean that the person won't recover. In fact, I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the medical (EEG, radiographic, nuclear medicine) ability to predict capacity for recovery once EDF is applied to problems, especially since most of the patients I have worked with have been better than two years since their injuries.

LESSON FOURTEEN: We ain't seen nothin' yet. Once more it appears that we really don't know what we thought we knew: former truths about human limitations to recovery from terrible trauma are beginning to show themselves as inadequate pictures of reality. There may be a good deal of institutional, personal, and professional resistance to the recognition that commercial IS stimulation technologies may have a valued place in the hallowed halls of medicine and psychology. Here are some of examples of resistance I have already encountered.

1. Congratulations from some medical and psychological professionals followed by quickly walking away.
2. Accusations of cruel fraud and deception, offering false hope to the truly hopeless.
3. The attribution of success to either the personality of the therapist or the placebo response of the patient.
4. Expressed fears that therapists will lose their jobs due to the success of EDF.
5. Statements that the patients really didn't have the previously diagnosed problems, but psychological ones that were much more easily curable.

None of these forms of resistance are unusual. Certainly controlled studies, even double-blind studies, are required to offer the highest level of commonly-accepted evidence of efficacy and safety.

I have not speculated about how EDF works. It may be premature to do so. There is a great deal of research to do which will answer questions as it is conducted.

There is no telling what electronic miniaturization will bring, ranging from the possibility of widespread and rapid improvement to many "hopeless" patients, to performance enhancement to many less severely afflicted. Procedures need to be developed to automatically adjust the intensity of the lights so that those who believe in macho treatment don't make themselves or their patients too spacy to operate a motor vehicle or other heavy or potentially dangerous machinery. Of one thing I am certain, and I underscore it for those who think that everything has been discovered: as long as people are alive, creation has a chance of being a continuous process. Just as this EDF process couldn't have been anticipated and just as the beneficial consequences of this process couldn't have been concretely forecast (disregarding the slogans about the brain being only 10% used, and therefore capable of anything), openness to surprise has helped many who were condemned to a hopeless life.

Len Ochs, Ph.D. has applied the principles of simplicity, directness and obviousness to such diverse endeavors as the design and development of the Orion biofeedback system and its Apple II-based predecessor, psychiatric aftercare facility merger, psychotherapy issues and techniques, and behavioral medicine. He has worked extensively with the physically injured, teaching them to rapidly and purposefully direct their blood flow for pain control, and with the chemically dependent, to alter their brain rhythms to relieve addiction. He is a past president of the Biofeedback Society of New York, and was recognized by the AAPB for his pioneering contributions to biofeedback instrumentation. He has a private practice in northern California. Phone 510-906-0422

16.05.2008. 09:31

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