One Brain's journey

For the last few weeks I have been engaged in writing a proposal for a television series about traffic of all kinds:  automobile, bicycle, pedestrian, airplane.  A few days ago I came across the story of the town of Drachten, in The Netherlands  where they have taken down all the traffic signs and traffic signals and reduced both traffic deaths and accidents.  Why?  Well it seems when the roads might be shared by bicyclists and pedestrians people drive more carefully.  Drachten has been such a success story that there are at least six other communities in Europe that are trying out the idea. I like stories like this because they indicate a success that is counter-intuitive or, put quite simply, goes against the flow.

It seems that there is another community in New Jersey where, in the 1920’s, the community leaders decided to design the town to be car friendly.  There were no traffic engineers back then (there was hardly any traffic) and so the idea was turned over to, well ordinary engineers.  They went about building a system that mimicked the flow of water and in hydraulics, if you want the water to flow nicely, yoiu remove any obstacles that might slow it down.  You know–things such as cyclists, animals or people.  Hence the idea of sidewalks elevated just a bit above the roadway where the pedestrians could carry on whatever they wanted to: walking, sitting, eating along with their dogs and whatever other encumbrances they might want but where it would not hinder the progress of automobiles and trucks.  Of course, at certain points these pedestrians might want to get to the other side and since they were tax-payers you had to at least pretend to accommodate them, traffics signals were developed to allow them across the streets (quickly) and then the cars could go back to racing on to their various destinations unimpeded.

In Drachten, the only accommodation to making a change in direction whether you are a driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian, is a roundabout in the middle of town.  Cars must enter from the left but cyclists and pedestrians can enter wherever they want.  It would be chaos right?  Well that’s the point.  Since it is chaotic drivers tend to be more mindful and to drive more cautiously.  I have a number of friends who are fire-fighters.  They  hate speed bumps.  Some of them are paramedics and they tell of back injuries made worse by speed-bumps.  Studies now show that speed-bumps actually cause drivers to speed up, almost as if they were making up the time lost going over the bumps.  So why do homeowners still insist on having them installed on their streets?  Because intuitively they understand that the bumps will slow traffic even if they don’t.

Why is this discussion taking place in a blog that is primarily about neuroplasticity?  For one thing if you want to get your brain to change a habit, you must first get it to break the routine, to know what it is you want to accomplish.  Vision is absolutely essential to changing habit.  So is perseverance and so is thinking it through with all the facts you can find.  But there is another reason I have written about this.  I don’t like control freaks.  I particularly don’t like control freaks that haven’t thought it through where the issue is not getting you to do something differently but getting you to do it there way.  And then were are back to neuroplasticity again because almost everything we know about this topic has been discovered in the last ten years, where most of the knowledge in this fields is still undiscovered, we must question everything.  This consumes both time and energy and beyond that…it is just hard.  But if you want to change, successfully, you have to do it just as the people in Drachten had to do it.  But if you do do it, the results might just amaze you.

Recently, I came cross a reference to the Mozart effect and, although the term sounded vaguely familiar, I really didn’t know what it meant and had to read a definition. That was illuminating as it lead back to a reference to a physician named Alfred A. Tomatis and his work with children  with learning disorders and some other crippling neurological problems by improving listening skills.  I was quite familiar with Tomatis. But first to back to the Mozart effect which says that listening to Mozart’s music will increase intelligence by eight to nine points–even if just temporarily. This caused quite a stir in the educational community when it was first revealed some years ago. One State Governor in the U.S. even had each pubic school student in his state supplied with a CD containing classical music. Okay, you run into claims like this on the general topic of education almost every day. However, when I found out much of the original research (actually clinical experience) was performed by Alfred Tomatis who was an ear, nose and throat specialist and used listening therapies (some involved listening to Mozart) to improve learning disabilities in children I became quite intrigued. Some 15 or so years ago when I was working as a management consultant, my firm was contacted by The Listening Centre in Toronto to request some pro bono consulting. I was chosen and went for an initial meeting with the two people who ran the centre. I have forgotten what services they required but I do remember how impressed I was with them as people and the passion they had about their mission to treat children with learning disorders using methods developed by Tomatis. Soon after I left the firm and performed the work for them as an independent consultant waiving any fees. Some time later, a friend came to visit, a man I had shared a flat with many years previous in London. He had become quite a famous actor (instantly recognizable in Dublin if not Toronto or New York) and had actually been passing through Toronto on his way from Vancouver back home to Dublin. Ray suffered from Tinnitus and I knew this was one of the disorders The Listening Centre claimed to be able to treat so I called them and asked if they would see Ray.  They agreed to do the assessment for free but since Ray did not live in Toronto and there were no Tomatis practitioners in Dublin they could only recommend alternative treatment to the “electronic ear” that was at the heart of their regular program.  Well to cut to the point it worked.  Ray went home to Dublin, did the things they recommended (most of which I don’t remember save some things about diet) and got relief from a disorder that had been plaguing him for years.

Now, I know that there are a lot of treatments out there they looked like quackery even a few decades ago that utilize neuroplasticity to effect cures, or at least relief, for ailments that were thought to be permanent.  Why am I writing about this in this post on this blog?  The Mozart effect did not really go anywhere and I’m sure that almost no one now remembers Alfred Tomatis.  The Listening Centre in Toronto fell on hard times, could not pay their rent and closed.  One of the practitioners took up another career while the other followed some interest in the method to Mexico where there was a supportive clientele.  But these days I read daily about miracles involving neuroplasticity. There are people blinded by strokes who can see again, Alzheimer’s patients that have no neurological symptoms, schizophrenics who improve their working memory and become symptom free.  We are on the frontier of many great discoveries but to get there we might have to put away our skepticism and allow ourselves to experience awe and wonder without the dash of skepticism so many of us have developed as adults to prevent disappointment in chasing down blind channels or after miraculous cures.  I say us and I mean me and if I write it hear perhaps I will be a little more likely to follow the advice of Herbert Spencer who wrote:  “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance–that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

I was eating alone in a fast food restaurant some years ago, not too long after I was diagnosed with ADD and at the next table a little girl of perhaps five was acting out horribly and noisily. A mentor of mine had a saying that to someone who is good with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. She would be just appearing to settle down and then burst into tears, loud enough to disturb my meal. It went on for at least 15 minutes while I plowed on not wanting to do the logical thing and move to a table further away. Or, complain. Finally, her father picked her up, to her protests, and took her outside the restaurant. The mother looked over at me and with a face full of tears she said, “I’m so sorry for the behavior my daughter.”

I replied that I was okay with it and then she began to tell me this was not an isolated incident and about how frustrated and defeated she felt. I asked if she had considered an assessment. (Shouldn’t everybody?) She said she wanted to but her husband insisted it was just a phase and that she was just like any othen child of her age.   She seemed to be without hope and then suddenly the two returned and I turned back to my meal with a new perspective on what was actually going on and the drama of what had been to me, just minutes before, just an annoyance.  I left the restaurant much saddened and perhaps a bit ashamed of my inital reaction.  I’ve thought often of that day and that sad woman and how utterly without hope she seemed and wondered how many of the situations that annoy me at the time have a similar kind of back story. In my last post I wrote of the artist getting his paintings blown around by the wind, to his annoyance and then giving up trying to control the situation and going to the beach where he welcomed the same wind as a cooling breeze.

I get angry far more than I’m comfortable with but, as best I can, I now try to pause and ask myself some questions. Is my brain trying to wake me up? Do I have all the facts? And perhaps the most important question, do I really want to feel this way? Most of the time I don’t want to be angry but occasionally I let it spin out a little and then die of it’s own lack of inertia and try to return my brain to a more beneficial state.  If it isn’t late at night, when I should be in bed, and my brain is trying to wake itself up, I ask if there is a better way to accomplish that.  Can I go for a workout or even a walk?  Am I hungry?  Have I taken on too much that day?  Do I need a nap?

There was a Seinfeld episode where the running joke was about a book supposedly entitled: War–What Is It Good For? I was reminded of it tonight in a discussion about anger with a group of friends. A continuing theme in our talk was about perspective and one participant told a story about living in Miami Beach some years ago,  making a living as an artist.  He wasn’t doing the  fancy gallery stuff.  He was selling his paintings on the street. One particularly blowy day, when he really needed money to pay the rent, he was getting angrier and angrier at the wind that was gusty and was blowing his paintings around causing him to scramble to keep from losing them. He described how he would just seem to get it under control and then another gust would come and he would have to start all over again. Finally, he called a friend that suggested he call it quits and he did.  Arriving home he decided, since he couldn’t really sell any of his work that day that he might as well go to the beach.  He did and when he got there, he found a nice secluded spot, spread his towel out and sat down. Just as he did so, a breeze came up and he thought to himself, “Wow what a lovely breeze?” Then, in a flash he realized it was the same breeze…the one that had been tormenting him less than an hour before.

For people like myself, with ADD, anger can have a purpose.  It can wake up the brain.  So does worry and my brain can be like a guided missile, looking for something to either get mad about or to worry over.  I don’t like it but I know it works that way.  Sometimes when I stay up late to watch television, I can feel myself getting angry at some item in a documentary or a newscast and I realize that it is one o’clock in the morning.  I then have a choice.  I can continue with the anger and wake myself up in which case I’m done for going to sleep for at least two hours.  Or I can go to bed.  These days, usually, bed is my choice.

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.