One Brain's journey

Today I came across reference to a new therapy called the Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) that employs the principles of neuroplasticity to cure chemical sensitivities, Cronic Fatique Syndrome, Fibromialgia even Gulf War Syndrome. At first glance it looks a bit like snake oil but on closer examination it caught my interest.  The system was developed by Annie Hopper whose life was devastated by multiple chemical sensitivities that resulted eventually in the lose of her job, her family and even her home.  She began to educate herself in various approaches to treatment and in the process noticed that many of her symptoms were similar to those of persons suffering from Acquired Brain Injury (ABT).  ABT usually results from a blow to the head. She developed DNRS based on methods used to treat ABT and now conducts three-day workshops to provide participants with enough familiarity with the system to carry on treatment on their own. Her website has many testimonials attesting to its effectiveness.  At the time that her life was overwhelmed by these chemical sensitivities, Hopper had a therapy practice employing what is described in her bio as core belief counselling.  I experienced something known as Core Belief Reengineering (CBR) about 15 years ago with some success but nowhere in her bio does it say that the counselling Hopper did was based in CBR.  However, I did make this leap.  About 15 years ago many of my friends were going throiugh the process of CBR with the only practitioner in Eastern Canada. I became intrigued. At the time I was a sucker for anything except chemicals or pharmaceuticals to make me feel better. I had just exited a relationship that in many ways was the most normal I had ever experienced and I was about to turn 50. There were a number of other things going on but suffice it to say I was an anxious mess. I have had anxiety most of my adult life in addition to the other numerous mental health disorders I have made reference to in past posts but pn top of all that I began to experience symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)–probably because of the high level of anxiety. OCD is a devastating disorder and I count myself fortunate that I only had symptoms for a short time.  When my friends doing CBR started to report life-changing results I decided to do it.  I was also intrigued by the term reengineering. I was working as a management consultant at the time and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) was all the rage in the business world with huge global corporations, such as Ford Motor Company, were being transformed by it.  The idea of applying similar principles in a therapeutic model was most intriguing..  Towards the end of my therapy sessions a number of things happened. A chronic pain in my left hip, the result of a shortened ilioibial band, disappeared. The OCD symptoms also went away and then miraculously my asthma seemed to be cured. Now I’m a skeptic and in spite of what I was experiencing, I was hard-pressed to ascribe  these changes to CBR. The disappearance of asthma symptoms I thought could also be due to a new mattress, new pillows and new bedding. I knew, at the time, that one of the main causes of asthma is dust mites and with a new bed I would have been dust mite free.  Having both allergies and ADHD I have seen many different kinds of alternative treatments and most of them leave me cold to the point where am long past any interest in exploring any of them that don’t seem to be backed by solid scientific research such as Cogmed Working Memory Training. Having said this there are few alternative therapies rooted in sound science available to address mental health issues that exploit neuroplaticity other than Cogmed. In fact, DNRS is one for the first I have come across. Taking this into account plus my own experience with CBR and my rather grudging acceptance that some really benficial changes did happen, if not as a result of CBR, at least simultaneous with doing the therapy, I am intrigued and will write further about this in future posts.

A new study from the prestigious University of Oxford indicates that learning to juggle can lead to a sharper and better co-odinated brain.The study, reported by the BBC website here, was conducted by the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) and was designed to discover if learning a complex phystical skill could alter brain structure.  The test group of 12 subjects was given weekly training in juggling and asked to practice for 30 minutes every day.  The study lasted six weeks.  The control group of 12 simply continued on with their daily living.  Both groups were given MRI scans before and after the six weeks.  There were no differences before and after in the control group but the experimental group showed a five percent increase in white matter in the rear of their brains where the skills of reaching and grasping objects in peripheral vision are located.  One conclusion drawn by the researchers is that any complex skill would result in an increase in white matter in the brain but not necessarily in the same region as the study showed.  Dr. Johansen-Berg said, “This should provide some hope for those with neurological diseases such as MS where neural pathways have become degraded.”  One interesting sidebar of the study was that all the subjects in the experimental group showed increases in white matter even though the level of their juggling skills varied.  This was interpreted by the scientists as meaning that there were benefits to complex physical skills training that related to the time spent training and practising and not the level of skill attained.

In the last post, I promised to write more about a recent study on mindfulness and its effect on mind fitness. They study was conducted by Amishi Jha of the Department of Psychoogy and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and Elizabeth Stanley of Georgetown University.  Their conclusion was that mindfulness training made a measurable improvement on mood and working memory in a Marines training for deployment in Iraq.  The program called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) was designed to produce protective results on the psychological health in individuals who were enter into situations that would produce extreme stress (read combat) and was incorporated into pre-deployment training. Study participants included 48 males with an average age of 25 from a detachment of Marine reservists. The experimental group comprised 31 Marines with 17 in the control group. The MMFT group attended an eight week course. The effect of the training on mood was measured by the Positive and Negative Schedule (PANAS) while working memory improvement was measured using the Operation Span Task. Working memory capacity degraded and negative mod increased over time in the control group during training. The MMFT group, on the other hand, experienced improved working memory capacity and a decrease in negative mood. You can read more about the study in the journal, Emotion as well as the latest edition of Joint Force Quarterly, the advisory journal of the Join Chiefs of Staff.

I have been a fan of natural health products since I managed to lower my blood pressure with Omega 3 capsules and so am a little more friendly to reports such as this one from a study conducted at the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Guosong Liu, the center’s director, found that magnesium, “led to significant enhancement of spatial and associative memory in both young and aged rates.” Magnesium is found in some fruits and most leafy vegetables but the study made use of a new magnesium compund–Magnesium-L-threonate (MgT)–but the new compound was just a more efficient way of delivering magnesium to the brain. Mr. Liu said, “Half the population of industrialized countries has a magnesium deficiency which only worsens with age.” He went on to say, “If normal or even higher levels of magnesium can be maintained, we may be able to affect cognitive function.” Mr. Liu is a former professor at MIT in Boston and is co-founder of Magceutics, a California-based company developing pharmaceuticals for the prevention and treatment of age-dependent memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease. He claims that if you consume less than 400 milligrams of magnesium per day, you could be at risk for allergies, asthma and heart disease.

Just last week, I was telling a friend about this research and he mentioned that he had been told by a natural health practitioner to take a magnesium supplement for Restless Leg Syndrome, (RLS) a condition in which, legs at rest, usually when you are just lying down to go to sleep, feel as if they are twitching. I have RLS and thought that perhaps a magnesium supplement would improve my cognitive functioning as well as my sleep if it could stop that dreadful sensation of leg twitches. I would love to report at the end of this post that I immediately went out to the health food store and got some but…I forgot.

Once again a study, this time at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, examined role of working memory, and some other cognitive functions, in the development of schizophrenia. This time they were studying the pattern of cognitive disorders schizophrenics exhibit as children long before they have symptoms of schizophrenia. Duke researchers drew on the results of a long-term study conducted in New Zealand with more than 1,000 participants and found a consistent pattern of developmental difficulties starting at age seven. Co-author of the study, Richard Keefe, director of Duke’s Schizophrenia Research Group said, “These kids are lagging behind to begin with and they continue to fall behind.”

There were two patterns emerging:

1. Children who later developed schizophrenia had early deficits in verbal and visual learning, reasoning and conceptualization and these remained as they grew older

2. They also developed more slowly than their peers in processing speed, attention, visual-spatial problem solving and working memory

How all this ends up as schizophrenia is still unknown but another co-author in the study, Avshalom Caspi, who is the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychiatry at Duke, speculates that a child who struggles to make sense of the world becomes more socially isolated or more delusional.

Keefe said that eventually he hoped that they might be able to intervene, perhaps with anti-psychotic medication, in childhood and head off the adult psychosis. The study suggests that adult psychosis doesn’t just emerge fully formed but has early roots in the developmental process.

I have thought for a long time that schizophrenia is one of the saddest disorders as it seems as if one’s mind turns against oneself but there is another disorder that it is even sadder where one’s mind does something quite similar. That disorder is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). One of the required symptoms for a diagnosis of OCD is that the person must be conscious of their obsessive or compulsive behavior but be helpless to do anything about it. I know at least one person who has OCD and my heart goes out to her. Many times when she is exhibiting symptoms, she is in tears. I have, for a brief time in the past, had OCD symptoms and so have some understanding of how this plays out. In my case the behavior was checking and it was like I had forgotten whether I had locked a door again and again and again. I had, as a child, seen my father do this (so maybe it’s a family trait) and at the time a part of me marveled at the fact that I was repeating this simple action so many times. In my case it passed and has not returned. It happened at a time of great stress so I do have a worry that it could, at some point, return but the person that I was describing earlier has it most of the time and spends much of that time locked in her apartment because it is so painful for her to go outside. Her behavior is also checking but it involves looking at every scrap of paper she comes across to see if one of her friends or family has left her a personal message. A mutual friend who was trying to help her by walking with her one time asked her, “Do you really think that a friend would leave a note for you on the street in the gutter.” The friend with OCD just looked down and cried.

I am so glad that my own symptoms were so short lived but I also hope that this new study will lead to the possibility of earlier intervention and perhaps head of the disorder–at least for schizophrenia.