A Symphony in the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback

By Jim Robbins

A “fascinating overview” of neurofeedback and its potential benefits for treating depression, autism, epilepsy, and other conditions (Discover).
 
Since A Symphony in the Brain was first published, the scientific understanding of our bodies, brains, and minds has taken remarkable leaps. From neurofeedback with functional magnetic resonance imaging equipment, to the use of radio waves, to biofeedback of the heart and breath and coverage of biofeedback by health insurance plans, this expanded and updated edition of the groundbreaking book traces the fascinating untold story of the development of biofeedback.
 
Discovered by a small corps of research scientists, this alternative treatment allows a patient to see real-time measurements of their bodily processes. Its advocates claim biofeedback can treat epilepsy, autism, attention deficit disorder, addictions, and depression with no drugs or side effects; bring patients out of vegetative states; and even improve golf scores or an opera singer’s voice. But biofeedback has faced battles for acceptance in the conservative medical world despite positive signs that it could revolutionize the way a diverse range of medical and psychological problems are treated. Offering case studies, accessible scientific explanations, and dramatic personal accounts, this book explores the possibilities for the future of our health.
 
“Robbins details the fascinating medical history of the therapy, tracing it back to French physician Paul Broca’s discovery of the region in the brain where speech originates. At the heart of this riveting story are the people whose lives have been transformed by neurofeedback, from the doctors and psychologists who employ it to the patients who have undergone treatment.” —Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9780802191533

Jim Robbins

Jim Robbins is an award-winning journalist and science writer, with frequent contributions to the New York Times, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Discover, and Psychology Today. In connection with his reporting, he has appeared on ABC’s Nightline and on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Book preview

A Symphony

in the Brain

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Last Refuge:

The Environmental Showdown in the American West

The Open Focus Brain:

Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body

(with Dr. Les Fehmi)

A Symphony

in the Brain

THE EVOLUTION OF THE

NEW BRAIN WAVE BIOFEEDBACK

JIM ROBBINS

Copyright © 2000, 2008 by Jim Robbins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Published simultaneously in Canada

REVISED EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robbins, Jim.

A symphony in the brain : the evolution of new brain wave feedback / by Jim Robbins.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978- 0-8021-4381-5 (pbk.)

eISBN: 978-0-8021-9153-3

1. Biofeedback training. I. Title.

RC489.B53 2000

616.8’046—dc21 99-086648

Designed by Laura Hammond Hough

Cover design by Rodrigo Corral

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For the children:

To my own, Matthew and Annika;

To Jake Flaherty and Brian Othmer, who helped show the way;

And to all who suffer needlessly,

this book is dedicated.

Contents

PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

The Symphony

CHAPTER TWO

That Special Rhythm

CHAPTER THREE

The Birth of Biofeedback

CHAPTER FOUR

Lazarus?

CHAPTER FIVE

Brian's Brain

CHAPTER SIX

EEG Spectrum Takes Flight

CHAPTER SEVEN

Paying Attention

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Return to Deep States

CHAPTER NINE

The Far Shores of Neurofeedback

CHAPTER TEN

Weird Stuff

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A Decade of Change

FOR MORE INFORMATION

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Acknowledgments

I knew little about the brain and even less about biofeedback when I started this book, so bringing me up to speed on those things required a great deal of patience on the part of those I questioned. I am especially indebted to Sue and Siegfried Othmer and Dennis Campbell, who indefatigably answered my questions and indulged my interest, long before a book was in the works. Barry Sterman, Joel Lubar, Michael Tansey, Margaret Ayers, Les Fehmi, and Susan Shor Fehmi also patiently fielded the dumb questions that journalists routinely ask. Gratitude is owed to Ray Flaherty, Lisa Larsen, and Jake Flaherty for sharing part of their lives with me. A thank-you is also due to the following: Bernadette Pedersen for hooking me to the brain wave equipment and buying lunch. Rob Kall was an intrepid guide through the labyrinth of personalities and protocols of brain wave training. Chris Carroll was extremely generous with his time and comments and suggestions, and helped me understand the intricacies of the scientific process. Anton Mueller was integral to the process of conceptualizing this book. My agent, Lisa Bankoff, took care of business. To my good friend Vaughn Sarkissian, CPA, for his excellent abilities to account. Morgan Entrekin for his commitment. Andrew Miller for judicious changes. Richard Krizan for his wise ways and manuscript review. D.D. Dowden for the right side of her brain. Thanks also to Jeanne Jiusto, Faith Conroy, David Spencer, and Florence Williams for their reads, and to Sara Luth and Randall Mann for a place to stay. Tony Jewett: for the photo; and my parents, Jim and Betty. And as always to Chere and Matt and Annika for putting up with the long work days and travel that it takes to research and write a book.

May their brain waves often be synchronous alpha.

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Ten years after I wrote my first article about neurofeedback for Psychology Today and eight years after the first edition of this book, neurofeedback has not exploded onto the treatment landscape, nor has the number of research projects grown exponentially.

Brain wave training remains a victim of the fact that it is outside mainstream concepts, is far ahead of the science of how it works, has a persistent but undeserved reputation as a softheaded new age idea, and is a model that—unlike the drug model—doesn't lend itself to astronomical profits.

The field, however, has gained a great deal of acceptance that it didn't have a decade ago. It has moved out of the small circle of dedicated practitioners who gave birth to it and nurtured it, refusing to let such a powerful technique disappear. Civilization is closing in on the lost tribe of brain wave trainers that I described in the first book. The argument that studies are lacking is becoming irrelevant: first, because there are more studies; second, because modern medicine is failing to deal effectively with emotional stress beyond the use of medication; and third, because a revolution is under way in which people are taking more responsibility for their own health. Many people are no longer passive consumers of health care but are thinking for themselves. They don't trust big medicine and big pharmacology to have their best interests at heart. Health care is being democratized. More people also believe that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: the fact that there are few rigorous studies of an idea doesn't mean the idea isn't powerful; it may mean that science refuses, for whatever prejudices, to study the concept. That is certainly the case with neurofeedback.

The evolution of the discipline continues. The technique is being used by a growing number of mainstream academics—for example, at UCLA, the University of Utah, and the University of Washington. Neurofeedback research and treatment have taken off in Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe, where they are unencumbered by flower child connotations from the 1960s. The 2006 World Cup champion Italian soccer team, L. A. Clippers center Chris Kaman, and the Olympic gold medal skier Herman Maier are among athletes who have benefited from neurofeedback. There are even brain hackers—technophiles who have built their own systems to play with their brain waves. What neurofeedback can do seems even more promising than it did a decade ago, especially in the areas of autism, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, chronic pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder. There is a new generation of faster, more modern, more powerful equipment and techniques. The technology is expanding beyond sensors on the scalp to functional imaging equipment and new sensors that read physiological signals at a distance. Siegfried Othmer, a founder of one of the first neurofeedback businesses, predicted ten years ago, Someday neurofeedback will be adopted and no one will ever remember that they opposed it. The day is not quite here, but there is a palpable sense that the time is much closer at hand. I predict that it will not take another decade for the rest of the world to catch up. Neurofeedback is simply too powerful.

The field, a free-for-all of equipment, ideas, and approaches, is still a free-for-all but is at the same time hardening into an orthodoxy of its own, for good and bad. One leading part of the field is solidifying the science, making the approach uniform. At the same time, some critics say, it is making some of the same mistakes as modern medicine. It sees the client's brain as a machine to be tuned up to a normal range, rather than as a human being with complex biological and emotional systems and the capacity for transcendence and transformation.

Neurofeedback is also starting to incorporate other modalities. Many in neurofeedback saw the brain as the way into all of it. Of late, there is ample evidence to show that an integrated approach is vital, and signals from the heart, skin, and breath are being integrated. Nutrition, toxicity, and the emotional environment are a few other factors that some people say need to be part of the approach.

The field is still embryonic. Neurofeedback—or more specifically what it makes possible, the operant conditioning of autonomic function—still has vast untapped potential to help millions of people, many of whom are unaware that they are functioning suboptimally, who think they cannot be helped or who simply maintain themselves on a regimen of drugs.

Prejudices remain. Since this book first came out, Dr. Barry Sterman, whose pioneering research at UCLA on neurofeedback is unimpeachable, and who has published more than 150 papers in top journals, has applied for numerous grants to continue research. But the National Institutes of Health will not give us grants, he said. We've written solid grants but the minute you use the term neurofeedback certain people's minds snap shut. Sometimes I feel like Galileo.

* * *

This edition of A Symphony in the Brain, just like the first, is not meant as a manual to persuade people to visit a practitioner. It is a journalism study, undertaken without fear or favor, to swing a spotlight onto this remarkable phenomenon and show how much the field has accomplished, which is far more than enough to have science take a serious look at and enhance and explain the approach. There is no reason neurofeedback should not be taken seriously, save the rivalries and prejudices of science. The literature suggests that EEG Biofeedback Therapy should play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas, wrote Frank H. Duffy, MD, a Harvard-trained neurologist and associate editor of Clinical Electroencephalography, a peer reviewed journal not associated with the field. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy it would be universally accepted and widely used.

It's amusing and a little frustrating to watch neuroscience beaming over the discovery of neuroplasticity, the fact that the brain and central nervous system are malleable—a discovery from the decade of the brain, the 1990s—because in fact brain wave biofeedback practitioners discovered and harnessed this trait half a century ago.

It's never been a problem for me that neurofeedback doesn't, according to critics, have enough double-blind controlled randomized studies to show it works. There are plenty of treatments used by mainstream medicine that have no such studies. Instead, what concerns me now is what precisely neurofeedback is doing to the nervous system. It is powerful, often beyond belief; and though I think it is safe—far safer than most prescription medications—I would like to know more about what is taking place. For whom does it work best? For whom doesn't it work at all? What is the downside? And which neurofeedback is best for ADD, for example? Which is best for peak performance? Which is best for autism? Is there a material difference between healing by beta training and the healing that comes from the deep states of alpha?

Moreover, I would like to see the field integrate a more holistic approach to the human condition—body, mind, and environment. I've continued to write about neurofeedback for the last several years. Among other things, I researched and wrote a book with Dr. Les Fehmi on the original neurofeedback, alpha training called The Open Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body. As old as alpha training is, its effects remain fascinating and powerful and are still waiting to be discovered.

Open Focus not only offers life-changing experiences but also offers a new way of thinking about attention, awareness, and the place of human beings in the world. It is not only an alternative to prescription drugs and self-medication but an alternative to the way mainstream neurofeedback is going, the tune-up model.

Still, all neurofeedback takes us in the right direction. Since I wrote the first edition, even more doubt has been cast on the research behind antidepressants and stimulant medication, and suicide warnings are now required on these prescriptions. As biofeedback evolves, the aha moment will come when we as a culture realize we have a great deal of control over our nervous system and accept that responsibility. There is no reason for humankind to suffer from widespread anxiety, depression, ADD, ADHD, chronic pain, or a host of other ills. Most human beings—and this may be the most profound lesson of all from neurofeedback—are simply not inherently or irrevocably flawed. Instead, many—perhaps most—of the problems that plague humankind are a case of operator error. We own our central nervous system to a far greater degree than we imagine. We can get our hands on the steering wheel and deal with anxiety, depression, ADD, and a range of other problems. Neurofeedback shows us how powerful we are.

Introduction

We have not been informed that our bodies tend to do what they are told if we know how to tell them.

—Elmer Green

When I heard that there was a new kind of biofeedback that amplifies your brain waves and allows you to make your brain stronger, I thought, wasn't biofeedback something that came and went in the 1960s and 70s? I had never tried it, but I associated it vaguely with the seventies, the Beatles, and transcendental meditation. Biofeedback had a New Age whiff about it. Add the words brain wave and it sounded even wackier. Yet I was hearing interesting things about it, and I've always believed that the human mind is the last great frontier. I was battling chronic fatigue syndrome and had exhausted the traditional medical route, so I sold an editor on a magazine story about the new biofeedback and traveled to Santa Fe to test this neurofeedback and a variety of other technologies designed to enhance the performance of the brain at a weekend symposium put on by Michael Hutchinson, author of a book called Megabrain.

I hooked up to a neurofeedback instrument for my first session. After training for a half hour, my mind was tired, my thoughts muddled. But an hour or so after I finished, I experienced what is known as the clean windshield effect. The world looked sharp and crystalline, and I had a quiet, energetic feeling that lasted a couple of hours. It was the first time I had felt that way in years. And it convinced me to look a little deeper. This new biofeedback was something very different, I was told, a technique that could treat attention deficit disorder and closed-head injuries and depression and a long list of other problems. I looked into the research and found that the technique had been spawned by solid laboratory research on epilepsy in the 1970s and 1980s.

Still, the claims being made for neurofeedback seemed far too good to be true. If it was such a good thing, why hadn't I heard of it? Why hadn't it swept its way into the health care system? I've been blessed with a healthy streak of cynicism, however, and as a reporter, I know that the systems that surround us—science, health care, government, even journalism—function far less perfectly than is generally believed. Things fall through the cracks, get overlooked and ignored. It was no great leap to believe that something like neurofeedback could have been missed. And so I persisted, knowing from experience that these oversights are where some of the best stories dwell.

What I found is a small subculture of people who enthusiastically practice brain wave biofeedback: the simple science of quantifying subtle electrical information from a person's brain, amplifying it, and sharing it with that person, who can then control the information in a way that makes the brain more vigorous and able to do a better job of managing body and mind. Many of those who work in the field of biofeedback are passionate about what they do because they believe biofeedback is very effective, and will change the world. The more people I met in the field, the more impressed I was with their intelligence and commitment. Many had been using it for years—in some cases, two or three decades—and some of the results were astounding. At gatherings of neurofeedback practitioners, the stories of people who have had their memory restored, seen their child's hyperactivity or autism or epilepsy significantly improved, and had their lifelong migraine problem disappear are legion and routine. The effects of neurofeedback are not subtle. They are extremely robust. There is nothing else like it, not even other kinds of biofeedback. That's one of the reasons it has languished. There is nothing to compare it to.

Yet neurofeedback is neither miracle nor panacea. It is science. But because the science is young and relatively unknown, because it turns the way we have categorized and thought about illness upside down, because it functions outside of most frames of reference, it seems like mumbo jumbo. It works on a sound scientific principle, though one that was abandoned by the powers that fund science before it was fully investigated. A limited analogy can be drawn to acupuncture. There is no Western medical model to explain the technique, and it has long been dismissed in the West. But it works, and works well, and now Western medical science is grudgingly coming to terms with it and searching for a biological explanation. And many insurance companies pay for acupuncture therapy.

So I decided to tell the story of brain wave biofeedback. It is a journalist's dream. A sprawling, dramatic, multifaceted story, filled with controversial figures and tales of discovery, about a new technique that performs what most of us have been conditioned to think of as miracles. It has slumbered for more than thirty years, under everyone's nose. The most exciting thing is that it is only beginning to come into its own. I feel like someone has given me a grand piano and I've learned to play a couple of keys, said Sue Othmer, one of the field's pioneers. I don't know if all of what practitioners claim will prove to be true. But there is enough evidence to know that neurofeedback has changed and will continue to change lives, a great many of them. It can treat serious problems that many people believe they must suffer with for the rest of their lives, without drugs or side effects.

The big question about neurofeedback is no longer whether it works. The questions are why it is as effective is it is, for whom, precisely, and how it can be made more powerful. There is something profound at work with neurofeedback. If the brain's multifaceted effort to create mind and run the body can be compared to conducting a symphony orchestra, its choice of music, its volume, and its tempo are all things we believe we are forced to accept, largely without question. That may no longer be true.

CHAPTER ONE

The Symphony

For an eight-year-old named Jake the rest of the world has disappeared as he sits quietly in a darkened room and stares intently at a computer screen with a yellow Pac-Man gobbling dots as it moves across a bright blue background. A soft, steady beeping is the only sound. Jake is not using a joystick or keyboard to control the cartoon character; instead, a single thin wire with a dime-sized, gold-plated cup is fastened to his scalp with conducting paste. The sensor picks up the boy's brain waves—his electroencephalogram (literally, electric head picture), or EEG—and as he changes his brain waves by relaxing or breathing deeply or paying closer attention, he also controls the speed of the Pac-Man.

This is more than a game for the boy. Jake was born in crisis: he arrived more than three months before his due date, in July of 1990, and weighed just over a pound. He required open-heart surgery when he was three days old and spent the first two months of his life in an intensive care unit for infants. He survived, but with serious damage to his brain. The most severe symptoms showed up at the age of four when he entered his parents’ room one evening drooling and unable to speak. He went into a grand mal seizure and fell unconscious on the floor. After that, the seizures came frequently, usually at night as he was falling asleep. Antiseizure medications blunted the severity of the seizures but could not prevent their onset. His parents, Ray and Lisa, kept an overnight bag packed for frequent trips to the emergency room, where the slight boy received injections of Valium to arrest the seizures. The sight of the needle going into their son filled them with apprehension. He also had small absence, or petit mal, seizures throughout the day, when his mind would go elsewhere, when he could neither hear nor speak for five or ten seconds. He was diagnosed with a speech problem and cerebral palsy, which diminished his fine-and gross-motor skills. Even at age seven, when I met him, he had not learned to tie his shoes, zip his zipper, or button his shirt. His learning disabilities were numerous and included attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity. He had speech problems and ground his teeth together constantly, something called bruxism. His sleep was troubled, and he often woke up ten or eleven times in the night. Despite this list of problems, there is a bright little boy inside of Jake, with a wonderful and sometimes peculiar sense of humor.

At the age of five, Jake started taking two heavy-duty antiseizure medications: Depakote and Tegretol. Both are depressants, both control seizures, and both have serious and worrisome side effects. The boy seemed logy and often tired. We felt Jake was losing his personality, Lisa told me. He was zoned out all the time.

I have known Jake's family since he was born; the incredible story of his birth made him something of a celebrity in our town of Helena, Montana. A local insurance company put his smiling baby picture up on billboards with the line Baby Jake will always be special to Managed Care Montana, and talked about how its coverage had paid almost all of the approximately $350,000 in medical bills. On assignment in Santa Fe for a story about different technologies designed to enhance brain performance, I had heard about neurofeedback and the fact that its first and most effective use was with epilepsy. (Neurofeedback works on the same principle as other kinds of biofeedback except that it provides information about the brain, hence the prefix neuro.) At a Christmas party, I mentioned it to Jake's parents, who were eager to investigate an alternative to drugs. They researched the therapy on the Internet, made a series of appointments over a week, and drove three hundred miles to the nearest neurofeedback site in Jackson, Wyoming. They turned the week into a vacation, swimming in the motel pool, hiking in the Grand Tetons, watching elk at a wildlife refuge, and taking Jake to the local hospital for two one-hour brain training sessions per day on the computerized EEG biofeedback program.

Jake's brain has places where the electrical activity is not as stable as it should be. Research shows that the brain's electrical signals are subject to change and that people can be taught how to change them. All neurofeedback does is help guide the client to a specific frequency range and help him or her stay there. The brain does the rest. A technician has set the computer Jake is playing Pac-Man on so that when Jake spends time in those hard-to-reach frequencies, the Pac-Man gobbles dots and beeps like crazy. When he is not in those frequencies, the Pac-Man stops gobbling and turns black. Jake knows nothing about brain waves or his EEG, he simply knows that when the Pac-Man is gobbling and beeping, he is winning, and so he has learned how to adjust his brain waves to make the Pac-Man gobble dots all the time. It was easy: he caught on in just one session. As he spends more time in those frequencies his brain has trouble generating, his brain learns to function there on its own. This exercise makes the brain more stable.

It didn't take long for changes to begin to appear in Jake. It took care of the teeth grinding within two sessions, Lisa told me when they returned from Jackson. It took care of the sleep problems immediately. As the sessions continued, Jake became more settled, more centered. We could carry on a conversation in the car on the way home for quite a while, the first time ever that we could carry on a two-way conversation for any length of time. His fine-motor skills improved, and he wanted to cut and draw and zip and button. He could never do any of that, Lisa continued. Unprompted, friends and relatives remarked that Jake seemed calmer and more centered. Later, Jake's parents repeated the protocol for another week. Again they noticed dramatic improvement. Jake went to see his pediatric neurologist, who had been skeptical at the outset, though he had signed off on the treatment. He examined the boy alone for twenty minutes. When he was done, he told Lisa and Ray that the treatment had indeed been effective. Jake seemed more focused, Dr. Don Wight, the neurologist, told me later. He could do things cognitively he couldn't do before the training. There was a qualitative and quantitative improvement in the way he was functioning. It was very real.

Jake's parents bought one of the $10,000 neurofeedback units from Neurocybernetics, a California biofeedback manufacturer, and have made it available to the community. Dr. Wight has been trained in the technique and has incorporated it into his practice. Jake has regular sessions with the local neurofeedback technician, Bernadette Pedersen, and continues to improve. In 1999, he received a three-year evaluation for his individualized education program in the public schools. He had some phenomenal gains, said his mother. He was an emergent reader going into second grade and after a year of steady training, he was reading at a fourth-grade level. One of the teachers called Jake's rate of improvement explosive, and I think it was.

Had Jake been born twenty years earlier, he would have had to live with his problems. But in the last decade this new treatment—called, variously, neurofeedback, neurotherapy, or EEG biofeedback—has dramatically changed the prognosis for Jake and thousands of other people. It is being used to treat not only epilepsy and learning disabilities, but also a long list of other problems that defy conventional treatment: cocaine, alcohol, and other addictions; vegetative states; serious and mild head injuries; autism; fetal alcohol syndrome; discomfort from menopause and premenstrual syndrome; chronic pain; the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease; stroke; post-traumatic stress disorder; wild hyperactivity; Tourette's syndrome; depression; cerebral palsy; and much more.

All of this raises huge questions. What is neurofeedback? Where did it come from? What are brain waves? How can one tool treat so many disparate problems? How can something that works so well, and seems to perform miracles, not be in widespread use? Answers to those questions begin with an understanding of the three-pound organ known as the brain.

The history of efforts to unravel the source of human consciousness goes back thousands of years. Hundreds of ancient skulls with carefully drilled holes have been found in a variety of places around the world. Anthropologists have documented a belief by some native peoples that trepanation, or drilling a hole in the skull, combined with prayer and ritual, could relieve certain physical problems, perhaps epilepsy. At one archaeological site in France, one hundred and twenty skulls were found, forty of them with human-made apertures. Some people apparently survived the operations, for new bone grew at the edges of some of the holes—which ranged from the size of a dime to nearly half the skull. In Peru, anthropologists examined well-preserved, three-thousand-year-old mummies found near Cuzco and found that 40 percent of them had trepanned skulls. Stanley Finger, a neurologist who has looked at the finds, has estimated that there was a 65 percent survival rate. Whether the holes were made in a ritual or a de facto medical operation is unknown, but the mummies provide the earliest known record of making a connection between a person's head and his or her behavior.

In Egypt, a painted papyrus illustrates that three thousand years ago Egyptians recognized that a blow to the head could impair one's vision or coordination. A blow to the left side of the head, according to the papyrus, affected the right side of the body, while a blow to the right side of the head affected the body's left side, a description that proved to be fact. It was the heart, however, that the Egyptians revered, as the dwelling place of the human soul. (For most of human history, in fact, a cardiocentric view has dominated.) After death, the Egyptians, practitioners of an elaborate funerary ritual, removed all of the organs from the deceased and stored them in specially made ritual jars, except for one: the brain was simply pulled through the nose and discarded. The Aztecs also believed the heart was the superior organ and that it governed feeling and emotion, though they believed the brain was important for remembering and for knowing.

Hippocrates, writing between 460 and 379 B.C. may have been the first persuasive proponent of the idea that the brain is the source of human intelligence. Building on the work of two of his teachers, Alcmaeon and Anaxagoras, he had the prescient idea that epilepsy was the result of a disturbance in the brain. He believed that the gray matter was the source of many other things as well:

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports and sorrows and griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are

Reviews for A Symphony in the Brain

[junipersun · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Training brain waves to treat autism, seizures, speech, etc.Reviewing this 12 years later, I see I have this starred as an good book, but I never figured out how to put this into practice for my son.