http://www.flexyx.com/articles/sNews CMSFri, 16 May 2008 10:10:00 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/main/new-guideline-for-smoking-cessation/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/main/new-guideline-for-smoking-cessation/Fri, 16 May 2008 10:09:00 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/main/antiobesity-drugs-may-affect-neural-development-in-children/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/main/antiobesity-drugs-may-affect-neural-development-in-children/Fri, 16 May 2008 09:51:41 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/thoughts/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/thoughts/Fri, 16 May 2008 09:47:35 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/deprcure/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/deprcure/Fri, 16 May 2008 09:46:15 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/mader/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/mader/Fri, 16 May 2008 09:44:16 +0000http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/earlyresearch/http://www.flexyx.com/articles/neurotherapy/earlyresearch/ protocols developed herein were completely unexpected. ADVERSE EFFECTS Adverse Effects: Since the discovery of seizure activity is a goal of the use of photic driving by neurologists, seizure activity cannot truly be considered a side effect of this kind of stimulation. However, seizure activity can be a side effect of being in a shopping mall, as well as a side effect of helicopter noise, television and video game raster, fluorescent light flicker, as well as commercially-available consumer entrainment devices. While there have been no published reports of adverse effects of popular commercial entrainment devices, there is current litigation concerning one alleged case. The issue here is whether unexpected seizure activity can be a plausible outcome of EEG-driven entrainment devices, a technology which will be described below. When one considers that medical photic stimulation usually persists a particular frequencies for some determinate length of time in the effort to evoke seizures ­p; at least a few seconds ­p; and considering that the length of time that live EEG-driven stimulation persists at any one frequency is rarely more than a half-second, the probability is smaller that EEG-disentrainment devices will cause seizure. This is not to say that the chance of seizure induction is impossible. Such a possibility should be screened for, and acknowledged in any informed consent procedure. Photohypersensitivity: Experience using photic driving has evoked photosensitive reactions in approximately 80 per cent of patients referred with post-concussive problems, normal, neurotic, and borderline diagnoses when the treatment was administered properly. These reactions have almost always been accompanied by observable jumps or other sharp movements, exclamations of discomfort, and alterations in breathing rate and motility. These reactions have almost always been accompanied by visible or audible expressions of discomfort although it is conceivable that a patient could have a reaction and not express it at the time. Duration of adverse reactions: All reactions have been observed to be transient, with the nearly none lasting more than thirty-six hours, and better than 90% lasting no longer than 30 minutes. Types of photosensitive reactions: The following types photosensitive reactions have been observed: Feelings of Irritability Feelings of Confusion Feelings of anger Feelings of fear Feelings of lightheadedness Headaches Anxiety Muscle control problems post head injury Speech interruption problems post head injury Sleep interruption Episodes of increased hypertension Photosensitive Characteristics of the light stimulus: Brightly strobing lights may evoke adverse reactions at any frequency, but have been observed to most frequently evoke disruptive reactions at lower frequencies (below 15 Hz), when the duty cycle of the lights is longest, and the lights are their brightest, and secondarily at higher frequencies (above 20 Hz). Flashing bright lights varying in frequencies have been more disruptive than lights at a constant or near constant frequency if the frequency is not in itself a problem. Characteristics of patients showing photosensitive reactions Head injury patients frequently complain that the lights are too intense, or much less frequently that they feel evocations of anger, fear, and rage; these can be very brief reactions lasting less than a minute. These photosensitivity reactions have always been deconditionable 80% of the time within three, 20 minute sessions, and nearly all the time with another 15 sessions. Borderline patients without head injury tend to react with the above-mentioned hypersensitivity reactions and fearfulness about returning to treatment. Such reactions have always been present, and may be desensitized in perhaps ten-to-fifteen sessions, in contrast to the three which may be needed with the head injured. Normals who use muscular tension, vasoconstriction, and awareness constriction to manage their emotions may suffer brief but strong reactions and disruptions, and find that their sense of control is interfered with if stimulation is not begun carefully. With continued treatment they later discover that these controls are unnecessary. The sudden loosening of controls can be quite alarming to them and result in strong somatic reactions, but is avoidable when this possibility is assessed in advance, and initial exposure is minimal in time and intensity, perhaps to as short an exposure as 2-to-4 minutes. Psychotics have not been exposed by me to photic stimulation. Caution needs to be exercised with them by reducing light intensity minimal, for this reason. Components of the EDS system Equipment: The current equipment consists of a commercially available J&J computerized single channel bipolar EEG feedback recording system, a Synetic Systems Synergizer PC board, and the two subsystems wedded together by software written specifically for that purpose. The software specifically permits control of the intensity (duty-cycle length) of the light stimuli, their flash frequency, a leading percent, and the sequencing of different exposure configurations, as well as maintaining a patient data base, session statistics, and options for auditory stimulation. Theory of operation: An ad-hoc theory of operation has evolved based on the following typical observation with a reasonably wide set of non-psychotic patients. Observations that make EDS interesting: 1. Of ten unselected heterogeneous head injured patients accepted in sequence, 9 were returned to their pre-injury affective status in an average of seven, 20-minute sessions. This means that all the patients were able to sleep through the night, and showed sudden, marked drops in irritability and depression along with increases in their patience and return of sense of humor. Some reported improvement in recent memory and ability to multitask. However in large part, no marked changes were seen in intellectual performance within the six-session average. 2. PTSD patients (without head injury) who had high levels of functioning prior to their trauma; litigation pending; and even workers compensation willing to support them have attained enough clinical relief from their symptoms that they have returned to work in a matter of weeks, or found major relief of symptoms within a week of daily brief (20-40 minutes) sessions. 3. Cases of PTSD, some with rages lasting 20 years, complicated with cocaine and alcohol abuse, have found relief within weeks of weekly sessions, after decades of group and individual counseling, neural feedback retraining, and chemotherapy. The cessation of rage reactions has lasted 9 months post termination of treatment and follow-up continues. 4. These therapeutic procedures themselves have been extremely simple, i.e., entraining, or driving, the dominant frequency upward and downward in a reiterative fashion, desensitizing the patient to frequencies and light brightnesses they dislike when necessary, individualizing the protocol for each individual, and managing abreactions when they rarely occur. 5. It was necessary to discard procedures that worked with less efficacy, such as single-direction leading, and lead the dominant frequency up or down for periods of 10 or 20 minutes at a time. Likewise, it was necessary to individualize many components of the treatment. 6. Some of the head-injured patients (13 %) have encountered severe problems becoming desensitized to the mid or lower frequencies. They have forced the redesign of the pulse width of the strobe's duty cycle short enough to allow desensitization. At times these problems have led to brief abreactive reactions similar to those encountered by Peniston, or brief exacerbation of the symptoms that occurred as a result of their head injury. 7. Patients with tremor from active pathophysiology (Parkinson's, for instance), show decreases in tremor and more of a sense of control. This can also be stated as an observed significant increase in both eye-hand, gross and fine motor coordination, as well as more energy to devote to the task involving motor activity. The results from those with active pathophysiology do not hold as well as those with trauma that has occurred in the past. 8. Symptom remission is often accompanied by both desensitization to the strobe lights (if there has been a problem of hypersensitivity), and more close following of the dominant frequency of the directional pattern of the leading per cent. In other words, if the leading per cent moves upward, the dominant frequency is expected to follow. 9. Two patients who have been five and seven years post stroke, respectively, within 6 days (two, 20-minute sessions per day) began to more freely move previously paralyzed limbs with much less spasticity to the extent that one, for the first time since the stroke, could walk up steps and flex her left knee and pick up objects with her left hand without the usual death grip; or in the other case, roll over in bed at night to snuggle with her husband, and raise a formerly totally paralyzed leg from a supine position and cross it over her better leg; right facial tone also was seen to recover completely. The handwriting of yet a third individual, seven years after a mild stroke, recovered completely to its pre-stoke legibility after two, 30 minute sessions. 10. A patient with a bruise on his lower spine, confined to a wheelchair for the past fifteen years unable to move his legs, was able within the first 20 minutes to show reduced spasticity in his left ankle, and within seven sessions, show articulated lifting of his left (worst) leg, and talked of markedly increased sensation in both feet. 11. Approximately 20% of the non-head injury patients have proven extremely hypersensitive to the lights to brief EDS and have required us to adapt the equipment to reduce the intensity of the lights to less than 1/200 of that tolerated by other patients. Systematic ways of assessing the effects of EDS needs to be undertaken; the effects of longer treatment times will be explored. 12. Significant for its absence was any sign of seizure activity from any of the patients receiving EDS, even from the one patient who did have seizures for a period after her injury