Oakland Tribune
by Scott Johnson
30 March 2011
An experiment was designed to track what happens when human brains take in new information. The lead scientist, Bessel van der Kolk, president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, wanted to track differences between chronically traumatized and otherwise normal brains.
The brain, he surmised, held the key to both the roots and the treatment for severe trauma….
Van der Kolk knew that a normal brain does two things with new data. It generates a filter-like impulse called an N½'200, an "inhibitory wave" that allows the brain to focus on the most important things. Then it creates a P½'300 impulse that allows the brain to learn from the experience.
He soon discovered that traumatized people do not generate the N½'200 inhibitory wave, nor do they generate a good quality P½'300.
"This study changed my whole understanding of what trauma is about," van der Kolk said. "Trauma was no longer about something that happened a long time ago, it was about being unable to fully engage with the present. Nothing new was coming into the brain."
….
Trauma can even affect the brain's ability to know where it is in physical space. One Canadian study found that the posterior cingulate -- a part of the brain that confirms your physical existence -- wasn't active in traumatized people. "Trauma is the residue of what those experiences leave in your body," van der Kolk said. "People's brains change because of trauma." [This could account for DP / DR in w/d.]
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Traumatic experiences like shootings, rapes, robberies or emotional abuse leave an imprint in the central part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, which helps regulate our relationship to ourselves -- to self-reflect and self-observe, and to establish social relationships with others.
Trauma also muddies the connections between the left and right sides of the brain, affecting speech and cognitive abilities
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van der Kolk has had positive results among traumatized people using neuro-feedback, in which patients are "fed back" images of their brain activity that correspond to their mental states. With training, they can learn how to access the deep theta brain waves that correspond to states of emotional calmness and rational thinking.
van der Kolk is working with about 50 children at the Trauma Research Center in Boston. He said he believes that treating one traumatized person in a traumatic environment is akin to creating "an island of stability" around which others can congregate and from whom they may learn to cope better.
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Ruth Lanius, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario, has been studying emotional awareness and mindfulness in complex PTSD for several years, and has found direct correlations between mindfulness and brain activity. Using MRI scans, she found that the more mindful her subjects were, the more activation showed up in an area of the brain called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex -- a brain region involved in reflective awareness.
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Secondly, a consensus is emerging among many therapists that far too many traumatized kids are being overmedicated. Last year alone, American children consumed $16.3 billion in anti-psychotic medication. Researchers like van der Kolk and others say these medications are destroying children's capacity to engage in the world.
"I bet half the kids on these medications will never be functional members of society," he said. "It's a national catastrophe."
[Full article talks more about EMDR and mindfulness ]
http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_17...nclick_check=1
Originally Posted by Sheila
