Not Paul Hope ([info]paulhope) wrote,
@ 2008-11-01 17:58:00
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Entry tags:art, neuroscience

Art / EEG Biofeedback
This week I rediscovered (again...) the joy of making art. I warmed up earlier with a late evening of pen/brush and ink before launching into a big Halloween costume project involving chicken wire and cloth.

I have had a fitful history with respect to creative manual work. Distraction and something like humility prevents me from trying it very frequently, but the combination of the (often prolonged) intensity of the creative act itself and the affirmation that often follows it is enough to tilt my universe a few degrees. "Maybe," I think to myself, "I could be an artist."



About a week ago I met with a friend in Providence who revealed to me that his idiosyncrasies--which had always been forgiven--we due to his suffering from OCD but that he had recently become essentially cured of it through EEG biofeedback therapy. Under this treatment, patients recondition themselves by "playing a game" that rewards them for particular kinds of brainwave activity that, for example, accompanies a normally-functioning corpus callosum or whatever. The result is a kind of direct intervention of the patient on their own neural plasticity for the purpose of altering psychological symptoms over which they would otherwise have little or no control.

This was exciting for me for a few reasons. First, I was obviously overjoyed that my friend was doing so well--he was a changed man. Second, I've had a lot of people close to me with OCD in the past, and the news of a successful treatment that didn't involve what amounts to psychological shock therapy was awesome.

I was also happy to see such a potent vindication of the reductionist program in psychology. Any misgivings about the pollution of psychological discourse and methodology has to answer to the efficacy of intervention on the neural level for causing psychological change. Pharmaceutical therapy has always been a little sketchy for a lot of reasons, but this is a case of an agent being empowered to literally transform themselves through a technical understanding of their own mind. That is awesome.

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[info]unnamed525
2008-11-01 11:53 pm UTC (link)
I wonder if schizophrenia is curable through this method.

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[info]paulhope
2008-11-02 02:13 am UTC (link)
I would investigate it if I were you. This was obvious anecdotal evidence, but it sounds pretty miraculous. This guy has gone off any kind of medication, has totally gotten a grip on his life, etc.

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[info]anosognosia
2008-11-06 10:36 am UTC (link)
No, or at least there's nothing in the science or clinic to support such a claim. There are a variety of other psychological interventions being used to treat schizophrenia. The US chapter of the International Society for the Psychological Treatments of the Schizophrenias and other Psychoses may be able to direct interested people to relevant resources in their area.

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[info]everabridged
2008-11-02 05:03 am UTC (link)
my therapist told me about this for ADD, and i wanted to try it, but it is not covered by insurance last i heard and thus not worth it for me. but it sounds so cool!

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[info]paulhope
2008-11-02 06:35 pm UTC (link)
Obviously a personal question, so feel free to ignore it, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on ADD some time.

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[info]booksoverbombs
2008-11-02 06:21 am UTC (link)
this is a case of an agent being empowered to literally transform themselves through a technical understanding of their own mind. That is awesome.
Not to tie this around the neck of a dog you don't necessarily have in this fight, but this is exactly the kind of thing proponents of eliminative materialism have been pointing to/prophesying as instances of our lives made better through the abandonment of the view the mind as an arena of beliefs, desires, intentions, &c. Good for him.

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[info]paulhope
2008-11-02 06:49 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, eliminitivism isn't my dog. I don't think my friend has abandoned the conception of his own mental states either. One of the things he said to me, which I thought was quite powerful, was,

"I experience non-crippling anxiety for the first time the other day."

I don't think this is something you can say if you're an eliminitivist.

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[info]booksoverbombs
2008-11-03 01:37 am UTC (link)
Well, I had meant that as acknowledgment of the fact that I had taken the mention of your friend's recovery as grist for the Leibnizian mill, as it were.

But why can't an eliminativist say that? Good heliocentrists can still speak of sunrise and sunset, though the sun proper does no such thing. Maybe a better example would be feeling sanguine: the term remains even after we discovered that there was no physiological basis, at least in terms of humors, that unified all the instances in which we would call someone sanguine.

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[info]paulhope
2008-11-08 04:49 pm UTC (link)
But why can't an eliminativist say that? Good heliocentrists can still speak of sunrise and sunset, though the sun proper does no such thing. Maybe a better example would be feeling sanguine: the term remains even after we discovered that there was no physiological basis, at least in terms of humors, that unified all the instances in which we would call someone sanguine.

Hmm. Ok, just reeducated myself about the eliminivist thesis. Point conceded.

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