Pet scans are frequently combined with radioactive glucose injections to monitor the neural activity.
Since "PET" scans have been mentioned frequently---the following link gives a quick description of how it works and what it is---It stands for "Positron emission tomography" and depends on "reading" positrons that must be introduced to the brain through injections of radioactive glucose as stated by New Haven.
http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n01/pet/pet.htm
Another very effective and "Safe" method of mapping the functions of the brain is through the use of the fMRI(functional magnetic resonance imaging) which actually can "read" the billions of tiny magnets in your blood. It maps the flow of blood during the actual introduction of stimuli by, for example,glasses that will produce pictures for the brain to study.
I am unsure of the comparative value of the PET scan versus the fMRI but I do know the fMRI does not require any injections and is therefore safe for multiple scans on the same subject. The following link provides a very detailed history and description of the fMRI which the participants of this very interesting thread may find useful. This link does state in the conclusions that it should permit useful study and analysis of the nature of consciousness.
http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fmri_intro/fmri_intro.htm
Interesting link.
If by the nature of consciousness one means the contents of consciousness then I agree that it can be a useful study.
But apart from that I don't think it is possible to study or analyse consciousness
Twyvel
I think any use of imaging regarding consciousness could only do so in terms of neural activity and perhaps eventually show the mechanism that turns it on and off. Consciousness means something different to each person and that discussion will be never ending in philosophical terms, IMO.
I don't have the link for this article, so I've copied it. Enjoy.
Managed care tried to kill off Freud
Can Tony Soprano help revive him?
By Joshua Kendall, 2/9/2003
FOR MOST OF THE 20th century, a schism split American psychiatry right down the middle. On one side stood the neuroscientists, who saw abnormal brain functioning as the cause of mental illness and relied on drugs, shock therapy, and other medical treatments. On the other side were the practitioners of psychoanalysis, the descendants of Freud who focused on the role played by childhood experiences and hyperactive superegos-and who proposed talk, talk, and more talk to heal ills ranging from arachnophobia to schizophrenia.
At the dawn of the 21st century, managed care companies seem to have stilled the debate by anointing drugs as the treatment of choice for most mental disorders. In her acclaimed book "Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry" (2000), anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann worried that "a combination of socioeconomic forces and ideology is driving psychotherapy out of psychiatry." Not just psychoanalysis but all the forms of long-term talk therapy that it spawned were in danger of extinction.
But now it seems Freud might not be relegated to a footnote in the medical literature after all. A new approach called neuropsychoanalyis, which integrates brain research with traditional psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious and transference, has been gradually restoring some of the luster to the 50-minute hour. Psychoanalytic therapy is becoming fashionable once again. Even America's favorite fictional mobster, Tony Soprano, is opting for the talking cure.
Neuropsychoanalysis traces its roots back to an early paper of Freud's
called "Project for a Scientific Psychology," in which he explored the
possible biological underpinnings of his psychological theories. Freud
abandoned this effort in the late 1890s, claiming that brain science wasn't
yet a mature enough discipline. But advances in brain imaging have allowed researchers to look inside the brain-and some say that what they are seeing is consistent with much of what Freud hypothesized.
Take, for example, the unconscious. Neuropsychoanalysis builds on a flurry of studies conducted over the past 30 years that provide a scientific basis for the existence of unconscious thoughts and motivations. Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Dr. Roger Sperry, working Independently of psychoanalysts, laid the foundation in the 1970s with his studies on so-called split-brain patients-epileptics who had had the connection between the two brain hemispheres surgically severed.
Sperry found that the behavior of split-brain patients could be influenced
without their conscious awareness. When he exposed a patient's right
hemisphere (which regulates emotion) to a pornographic picture via her left eye, she blushed and giggled. But asked about the source of her
embarrassment, she was unable to identify it. The part of the brain that
processes emotion, the right hemisphere, was not communicating with the part that produced language, the left hemisphere.
Dr. Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University, who has spearheaded a second wave of split-brain research, teases out its implications in his 1996 book, "The Emotional Brain." "People normally do all sorts of things for reasons they are not consciously aware of (because the behavior is produced by brain systems that operate unconsciously)," he writes. Likewise, neurologist Dr. Antonio Damasio of the University of Iowa has come around to upholding Freud's basic notion of the unconscious through studies of people who have suffered various kinds of brain damage. In his model of the mind, Damasio draws a critical distinction between feelings and
the consciousness of feelings. According to Damasio, our bodies often
produce feelings that our minds are not aware of.
LeDoux, Damasio and other prominent neuroscientists-including Nobel laureate Dr. Eric Kandel and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks-gave the new field their seal of approval in 1999 when they joined the editorial board of the flagship journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis, edited by analysts Dr. Edward Nersessian and Dr. Mark Solms. Solms, who coined the term
neuropsychoanalysis, is also the general editor of the "Revised Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud."
Solms's first book, "The Neuropsychology of Dreams," published in 1997,
responds to the influential attack on Freud's dream theory launched by
Harvard psychiatrist Dr. J. Allan Hobson a generation ago. In the mid-1970s, Hobson authored two famous papers that single-handedly ended Freud's stranglehold on the subject. According to Hobson's compelling hypothesis, dreams derive from randomly generated stimuli originating in the brain stem, which higher parts of the brain then "interpret" by means of bizarre imagery. The further interpretation of dreams carried out by the waking person (and the analyst), Hobson argued, was based on the false belief that the dreams are complex texts whose emotional significance must be deciphered. As he writes in his new book "Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep," it is "crystal clear that many aspects of dreaming previously thought to be meaningful, privileged and interpretable psychologically are the simple reflection of the sleep-related changes in brain state."
But Solms claims that dreams are not as "mindless" as Hobson would have it. In one recent paper, Solms cites a spate of neuropsychological data to support the conclusion that the forebrain, which is directly linked to the formation of desires and so-called higher thought processes, plays a central role in dreaming. "New brain research shows that dreams are not motivationally neutral," says Solms.
Neuropsychoanalysts like Solms are not trying to demonstrate that all (or
even most) of Freud's ideas were right. A dream doesn't necessarily
represent a repressed wish, and no one thinks brain imaging will find
evidence for penis envy or even the existence of an ego, id, and superego locked in an unending tug-of-war. But neuropsychoanalysts contend that Freud's view of the mind, despite its many flaws, remains the richest one yet developed. And even as they welcome advances in neuroscience, they are also wary of the field's impact. Like psychotherapists of all stripes, Solms is worried that brain research is encouraging a biological reductionism in which psychiatrists focus exclusively on neurotransmitters and drugs. "The structure of the human personality has not traditionally been on the agenda of most neuroscientists," says Solms.
Neuropsychoanalysis so far is mainly theory. But slowly, it is helping to
produce a new breed of analyst who heals both mind and brain, in an
intensive treatment that goes beyond the here and now to address issues like early loss or trauma. Surprisingly, the public face of this 21st-century
analyst is not some gray-bearded sage but the actress Lorraine Bracco, who plays psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO's wildly successful series "The Sopranos." In fact, Bracco is giving psychoanalysis such a good name that in December 2001 she received a special award before a packed house at the American Psychoanalytic Association's annual convention.
Many episodes of the show revolve around excerpts from Melfi's twice-weekly sessions of psychoanalytic therapy with Mob boss Tony Soprano. "Dr. Melfi's treatment is an excellent example of this new integration of psychoanalysis with biology," says Dr. Glen Gabbard, co-editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the author of "The Psychology of the Sopranos: Love, Death, Desire, and Betrayal in America's Favorite Gangster Family." In contrast to the many distorted depictions of psychotherapy in movies and on TV, Gabbard praises the unprecedented "psychiatric realism" of the show. In fact, he even uses videotapes of it to teach medical residents at Baylor University.
Tony Soprano is drawn to therapy because he suffers from panic disorder, a common form of anxiety. Dr. Melfi initially prescribes a drug regimen of Prozac and lithium. "Although pills can treat Tony's biological symptoms, they can't address the sources of conflict and suffering that trigger his panic attacks," says Gabbard. As the couch in her office attests, Dr. Melfi is an analyst, so she is eager to address the root of the problem-his conflicted relationship with his manipulative mother, Livia. As therapy proceeds, Tony begins to have flashbacks of childhood traumas, including a disturbing scene where Livia threatens to gouge his eyes out.
Melfi's treatment plan for Tony relies heavily on another pillar of
neuropsychoanalysis, attachment research. A half-century ago, based on
observations of infants and their caregivers, psychoanalyst Dr. John Bowlby identified early abuse and neglect as key factors in adult psychological problems. "In Tony Soprano's case, his mother's emotional abuse-presumably in combination with a genetic predisposition-left his brain hardwired for a host of behavioral and interpersonal problems. But, as research now shows, the analytic relationship itself can help to heal the brain by establishing new neural networks, " says Gabbard.
Neuropsychoanalysis has yet to make much of a dent in mainstream psychiatric practice. And while HBO may have embraced neuropsycho-analysis, your HMO is still reluctant to pay for any kind of long-term talk therapy, whatever the brain research says.
But the new integrated perspective is slowly making inroads into the
psychiatric curriculum. Boston analyst Dr. George Fishman, for example,
includes it in the course on Models of the Mind that he teaches to
third-year psychiatric residents at Harvard Medical School. "Students used
to think that those of us who practice psychoanalysis were stuck in
Shangri-la. But they are now enthusiastic about my course because they see its relevance to what they are learning in psychopharmacology," says
Fishman.
Five years ago, Fishman along with fellow analyst Dr. Toni Greatrex
cofounded a workshop at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute on the relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. These monthly meetings have fostered a lively interdisciplinary dialogue between the institute's analysts and area psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and neurologists.
While the influence of psychoanalysis has declined steadily since its heyday in the 1950s, many analysts think the pendulum is destined to swing back in their direction before too long. "It's odd that just when the theory is more powerful than ever, psychoanalysis plays such a minor role in mental health care,'' says Dr. Allan Schore, a Los Angeles analyst who serves on the editorial board of Neuro-Psychoanalysis.
Neuroscience, the very discipline that kicked Freud off his pedestal in the
last few decades of the 20th century, may eventually return his brainchild,
the talking cure, to prominence in the 21st.
Joshua Kendall is a writer who lives in Brookline.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 2/9/2003.
C Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
In making a purely personal observation, whether we talk of the somatic based nerologists, the couch based analysts, the ratomorphic behaviorists, NLP manipulation, etc etc etc, we seem to always come back to the underlying assumptions of the Platonic/Aristotelean Forms/Ideals. The all encompassing pathologic/physiologic conundrum. As long as we have the goal of "self-actualization" we can only define and defend the arbitrary and capricious paths to an elusive destination. I could be wrong.
mind
Dyslexia. Since you mentioned "self-actualization", it comes to me [and pardon the length of this sentence; I don't have time to make it shorter]that while an obvious function of psychological therapy is to deal with dysfunctional behavior and incapacitating anxiety, which can be dealt with at the level of the mind or of the body (not to mention that even "mental" phenomena have their physiological correlates; hence fMRI and PET scans for understanding emotional states), it seems that psychological therapy might also have more than ameliorative functions. I would like to see psychology work also/more on ways to help people grow, to self-actualize. A life without neurosis is not quite a self-actualized life. Hence in the Orient people (at least used to) practice their religions for reasons of personal fulfillment, as opposed to the West's emphasis on "saving" a fabricated soul from a mythological Hell.
"A life without neurosis is not quite a self-actualized life." but here we are again, that bugaboo pathology model rearing its ugly head.
Pathology is simply a name for a method that doesn't work as well as others might, according to a certain set of criteria. So if you want to get up tight about the word, we can, but really I think we should define the concept in practical terms and go from there. The criteria are, for me, that any method I use to manage affects should allow enough gratification to make it worth while, it should not involve too much anxiety or depression, should not hurt myself or any one else more than is necessary for shared personal freedom, not involve too much guilt and generally result in a sense in me that I'm doing well, most of the time. Anything less is pathology. Strictly speaking.
It's true, Dyslexia, that our pathways may vary, which isn't a problem, as far as I can see, as long as each of us finds someone who is varied in the same way we are at least some of the time. The destination to me is irrelevant, as long as the getting there is good. And the trip can be better or worse, depending on none other than me.
mind
Dyslexia. I am not saying that the pathological model is a bugaboo, by and in itself--after all, there IS pathology in the world. I'm just saying that by itself it's not enough. We need, IMHO, a dual system: one to keep people from shrinking and one to promote their "spiritual" growth.
lola: we all bring to our understanding the events of our histories, when i was first working at a treatment center for chronic schizophenics there was a young man i was talking to one day and the radio was on playing a Stone's song, this young man turned to me and said "i used to play drums with the Stone's) at that moment a staff pyschiatrist walked thru the room and responded that "delusional episodes were indictative of inadequate medication and would alter his medication" then left the room. I then asked the young man what he meant and he responded that he "used to put on the Stones records and play the drums".
mind
Ouch! And if the doctor had only talked to him.
dyslexia wrote:In making a purely personal observation, whether we talk of the somatic based nerologists, the couch based analysts, the ratomorphic behaviorists, NLP manipulation, etc etc etc, we seem to always come back to the underlying assumptions of the Platonic/Aristotelean Forms/Ideals. The all encompassing pathologic/physiologic conundrum. As long as we have the goal of "self-actualization" we can only define and defend the arbitrary and capricious paths to an elusive destination. I could be wrong.
The day the earth stood still---dyslexias pronouncement to the world----my heart nearly stopped))))))))
the doctor was defining the pathology not the person. ( its the medical model)
Dys,
It's true. Some people have a definition of pathology that goes something like this: "If you don't agree with me, and I can't talk you out of it, or into it, or if I can't conceive of it, then you must be sick." But, of course one must assess this orientation to the world by the same criteria as we assess our own. We all see the world in some way, each with our own fantasies. It is notable that in psychoanalysis, understanding is not limited or defined according to the pathology of the patient. What works, as well as what doesn't work, are equally subjects for study.
Lola wrote:
"If you don't agree with me, and I can't talk you out of it, or into it, or if I can't conceive of it, then you must be sick."
Lola can I borrow that for use on the political forum? I love it.
mind
Lola:
"what works as well as what doesn't work, are equally subjects for study"
Does this indicate the dual model (fulfillment/recovery) that I referred to above?
It is now a property of the public domain, perception. But it does of course, as I know you know, apply all the way around. Don't forget the next sentence that goes along with it. Those guys in politics, you included, in my humble opinion, just like to fight. It's fun. And I must say, I myself agree.
