Theoretical Implications of Neurofeedback Integrating Bowen Theory
Andrea Maloney-Schara, LCSWA
11/4/97
Simple statements often conceal a great deal of complexity. The
notion that the brain learns from experience is one such statement. The
brain develops the internal connections by fitting with the external
world. Learning then can be defined as the struggle to make sense of
human interactions. The efforts to integrate feeling and thinking, or
values and impulses, are what gives each person their own unique self.
Reflecting on much of life’s experience, furthers one’s goal and thereby
enables humans to escape a deterministic world.
PET scans, MRI and EEG look at evidence that the brain does reflect
the nature of relationship sensitivity, physical and emotional
challenges and eons of evolution. For the EEG one arena, sleep states;
have been very well documented. Eventually waking states of conscious
will be as well investigated.
As in many areas of medicine much has been learned from symptoms.
Diseases have taught us about the functioning of the different parts of
the brain. Neither of the brain’s two information systems, chemical nor
electrical has a one to one correspondence with functional states in the
human. Rather the state of the body reflects the overall adaptation
that any individual has made. Certain areas bind anxiety, and no one
area can reflect a life history. An EEG may give us more insight into
the overall way that feelings and thinking have been integrated and how
we pay attention.
In 1929, Hans Berger measured the brain’s electrical activity. The
activity was recorded in the form of line waves and now these same waves
can be fed back to the brain as information. EEG Neurofeedback is a
relatively new discipline that enables us to understand how the brain
functions and also promotes the brain’s ability to learn from observing
itself.
Neurofeedback has been documented to be useful for serious symptoms.
People have been able to function after sever head trauma. Epileptics
have been taught to reduce the severity and numbers of seizures.
Headaches, and other types of physical pain, have been reduced. In
addition to physical symptoms, emotional and physical symptoms, such as
ADD, have been reported to decrease by Lubar, Tansy and others. There
are a wide number of manufactures of equipment and most have reported
positive results in working with various symptom groups.
Bowen Theory can go beyond symptoms to look at the relationship’s
system and promote a larger systems view of EEG and the role of learning
in an emotional system. Symptom reduction may simply be the evidence
needed to show that EEG has merit. In the future EEG may in fact be a
window to open the door to a broader systems perspective on the way in
which relationship energy impacts of functioning.
Bowen Theory points to the fact that an individual function as a part
of an emotional system. The fact that anxiety can be spread from one
individual to another testifies to the increasing interest in
self-regulation and self help. Individuals realize that anxiety is part
of being alive in a relationship’s system and that altering the tendency
to absorb others anxiety for the pleasure of being in positive
relationships with another is often not worth the price that will be
paid
The thesis would be that relationship’s systems organize the
interplay of physical and emotional energy so that individuals within
that system can live and work in some degree of harmony. The EEG is a
tool, which can momentarily promote an increase in functioning in one
individual. The relationship system will adjust. The individual must be
strong enough to manage the resistance to change within the system. If
this can be accomplished over time then other people who are emotionally
linked will also be able to do better. The family as an emotional
system maintains certain patter of relationships, which then reinforce
broad patterns of brain wave activity.
At the most basic level EEG neurofeedback teaches motor skills and
mental flexibility. Individuals can learn a variety of focused states
plus enhance the ability to reflect on the consequences of particular
thinking patterns. The training teaches the individual to enhance or
inhibit certain brain wave patterns. Learning occurs through feedback
which rewards increased self-control. The brain waves are seen as waves
or as bars or graphs on a computer. Sensory feedback teaches the brain
faster than the conscious mind can learn. Just watching and noticing how
what one thinks or does effects the feedback this type of leaning
appears to remain after one session. Leaning in this case may mean that
the individual has less pain or more energy.
The individual who has a positive mental/physical experience may be
learning to pay attention at multiple levels of awareness. For example,
the thalamus may have received new messages and the basic rhythm of the
system may be altered. New peptides may be produced. New information
will be circulating. No one has the necessary evidence, the blood work,
gene testing, pet scans, etc. to say for sure just what systems are
changed by the EEG experience. Over time the individual has a greater
ability to change automatic reactions to stimulus in the relationship
system. For many people just this experience is enough to make a
significant functional change possibly.
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