The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis held a conference on "Psychoanalysis, Neurobiology, and Therapeutic Change" in Chicago recently, in celebration of its 65th anniversary. I was delighted with the theme, which attempts to bridge the usually separate realms of psychotherapy and the physical study of brain function, and had eagerly anticipated the conference. Three prominent researchers in neurobiology presented ideas from their work in understanding basic brain function and discussed some possible implications for understanding more complex mental processes, such as those therapists work with. Then three prominent psychoanalysts discussed the implications of understanding clinical work in psychoanalysis through the emerging neurobiology. One of the ideas emphasized at the conference is that we learn, and even recognize at the perceptual level, what has value or significance to us. So, what are highlights to me wouldn't be to others, and I undoubtedly missed a lot of important ideas and information that others will have perceived. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from what I did notice. Gerald Edelman, M.D., Ph.D., Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1972, Director of the Neurosciences Institute and Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the Scripps Institute in San Diego, and author of several books including the recent "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire," gave the keynote address, entitled: "Neural Darwinism: Rethinking Freud's Biology." He emphasized that there are a million billion connections within the brain, which organize themselves into functional groups in human beings based on the individual experience of each person. "Each individual life course happens once in the history of the universe." The individual develops "repertoires of circuits" within the brain, which may initially be established gradually, but which become much more rapid once established. Edelman used the analogy of a glacier coming down a mountain, melting and reforming as environmental conditions, such as temperature, change. As the melting water runs downhill, it forms rivulets, which then channel more down-flowing water into them, becoming deeper and deeper channels, until environmental conditions again change, resulting in new alterations in the pattern of the landscape affecting the channeling of the flow of meltwater. Something like such a process patterns our memory. The brain is continually reforming its neural interconnections, so what we remember as the past is in fact constructed in the present. Thus, "memory is not representational." The analogy of glacial meltwater running downhill over time is four-dimensional (with time as the fourth dimension), but the brain, with its 100 billion potential vertices--the "rivulets" of the analogy--is analogous to an n --dimensional space. Consciousness exists in different forms. A "primary consciousness" which is perceptual, not verbal, probably confers an advantage in learning, which would provide a selective advantage to a species in evolution. For example, by rapidly identifying certain scenes or situations, the organism could very quickly approach or avoid them, depending on "configurations of cues." Such a primary consciousness might help the organism "determine its next step without having anything to do with the current one." (I suppose this means that if you're walking through the woods and a bear jumps out at you, you don't necessarily continue toward your original destination and deal with the bear later.) Self-awareness is of a higher order. Giulio Tononi, M.D., Ph.D., from the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, spoke next about his work in neuronal selectivity and interaction in his talk on "Integration and Dissociation in Brain Function.". "In any selective system (such as that existing at the neural level within the brain), any stimulus affects the whole system in an unpredictable way, which nevertheless results in correct behavior. But if any part of the system is not functioning properly, it will affect the overall operation of the system in response to any stimulus." Tononi extrapolated this observation, about the behavior of networks within the brain in response to stimuli, to the brain as a system-as-a-whole: "In the brain, there is both functional segregation (of neural activity) and functional integration. Certain disorders, such as dissociation, may be disorders of integration." Tononi drew an analogy between healthy and dysfunctional activity in the visual system. If the visual system were unable to respond to stimuli, the electroencephalograph would show too little activity, and there would be a functional deficit; the organism wouldn't see correctly. At the other extreme, if all systems were firing away at once the EEG pattern would be epileptic. The healthy level of activity within the system is between the two extremes. This is "the proper integration of specialized groups (of neuronal systems), their modulation and interactivity." Mental illnesses may be deficiencies of interactivity within the brain, Tononi speculated. PET scan studies show that normal subjects have more interactivity within their brains than do schizophrenic subjects, when both normal subjects and schizophrenic subjects are given the same tasks. "So schizophrenia is a disease of integration (of networks within the brain), perhaps." The development of the nervous system depends on its selectivity in determining what to respond to. "Without value, no perceptual system can operate." This happens physiologically in the form of the release of neurotransmitters, which either facilitate or inhibit the firing of neurons, and thus the activation of the networks of which the neurons form a part. Thus, "value perception is involved in the release of neurotransmitters." Evan Balaban, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, and Associate Professor, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard, next spoke about "Exploring the Innate." Balaban is a linguist who has turned to experimental neurobiology to study ways in which brain and environment interact in development communication. He described how parts of the brain of a chicken embryo, still in the egg, were replaced with parts of the brain of a Japanese quail. The behavior of the developing chicken would be altered depending on which parts of its brain had been replaced with quail transplants. Midbrain transplants affected the song of the chick, making it more like that of a quail (though not completely). Brainstem transplants affected patterns of movement in the chick, making those more like the movements of a quail (though not completely). Balaban made a number of fascinating points about development, the most surprising one for me being that the idea of a "critical period" for development of certain functions has long been superseded in biology. This is the idea that there is a period during which a developing animal can learn a certain skill, which, if not learned during that period, won't be. Balaban said that no such critical periods have been verified by research. There are "sensitive periods," biologically, during which learning is easier, but not "critical periods" as such. Birds deprived of hearing the song of their species when young can, in fact, learn it when they are older; but "they may need a more potent stimulus," such as hearing the song of a real bird, not just a simulation. "If something makes an animal devote attention to it, an older animal can learn something that it didn't learn earlier." (Most encouraging, this, both for patients in psychotherapy and for aging psychotherapists!) I found this particularly encouraging, since the implication, obviously, is that we can develop skills in managing our feelings, being in relationships, even physical movement, that we could have learned in childhood but didn't, perhaps because we weren't taught, or were mis-educated. Balaban also emphasized that there are not clearly delineated "stages of development," as was previously thought. Even among sparrows, "song development does not occur through the same stages for all birds; that is, there are individual variations in developmental path leading to the same goal." Important implications here are that children growing up, patients in psychotherapy, adults learning new skills, perhaps even, by extension, groups and communities adjusting to new challenges, may go through different stages or processes to attain the same final goal. When Balaban reported that baby chicks with certain Japanese quail brain transplants prefer maternal quail calls, I recalled the story of the Ugly Duckling. Perhaps, like the duckling, some of us develop in families--or schools or communities--that we don't completely "belong" to, for whatever reason. Then, we may need other sources to provide the necessary cultivation, in order to ripen properly. Psychotherapy provides an example of one such situation. Certain friendships and working relationships also cultivate latent skills beyond those called forth by prior experience, and the literatures of realms as diverse as war and experiential mysticism are full such examples. Ultimately, life itself may be such an "incubator," if we are properly attuned. After their morning presentations, Edelman, Tononi and Balaban then formed a panel and took written questions from the audience before lunch. In reply to a question, Edelman discussed "selectivism and logic" as "two modes of thought," which were different, complementary, and necessary. "The content of the environment is so large that attempting to (process) it with only one method (that of logic)" is doomed to failure. This echoed Balaban's earlier comment that "sources of information and stimulation are unlabeled," with the implication being that it is up to the organism to determine which sources of stimulation are significant without either having to be told or arriving at a decision through a logical process. As Edelman said, "Try telling a computer (to) imagine a giraffe." Tononi commented that an "old part of the brain has neurons that are connected to all other neurons and fire when something significant to the animal happens. They are dormant when the animal is asleep," and only fire when the animal is awake. They fire in response to stimuli from the environment or from within the person's body, but only if that stimuli has significance, triggering the release of neurotransmitters. Interestingly, "they also fire when previously value-free events begin to acquire value," that is, when events which had formerly not been meaningful acquire meaning of some sort. "What acquires value differs for every individual." Edelman commented that even an antibody has a "system of value," in that it selects targets which it then signals the immune system to suppress. Tononi commented that psychoanalysis "cannot be superseded," because of the unique nature of "each individual's value system." "Value," here, is used in a technical sense, meaning what makes a percept, stimulus, or way of perceiving and responding important enough to be selected by the neurological system. "For each individual person, you must ferret out what the individual events were." I was very pleased when Thomas J. Pappadis, M.D., Director of the Institute for Psychoanalysis and a Training and Supervising Analyst there, selected my question to put to the panel: "Often there is a gap in learning. Learning in psychotherapy may take a long time, and we often learn from an event long after the event itself happened. How might we understand this gap in learning?" This was on my mind because, just the day before, while driving out to do a learning disability consultation at a suburban school district, I had listened to a tape recording of the great microbiologist and experimental pathologist Rene Dubos discussing the role of faith, self, and adaptation in healing. Now, I had attended the lecture at which this recording was made, 22 years before. At that time, Dubos' thesis that most healing is a process of adaptation had seemed rather obvious to me, not very remarkable at all. Yesterday, it had seemed prescient, totally on the cutting edge of our contemporary understanding of healing, both physical and mental. It was as if I had, without realizing it, completed a journey to find someone at the end whom I thought I had left behind. I reflected, with a peculiar combination of awe, gratitude, remorse and self-reproach, on how much of my life I had wasted in the gaps between when I first heard (or felt or thought) something important and when I later appreciated what it really meant. I hoped that the panelists could shed some light on this for me; and so they did. Edelman referred to "a kind of curious consolidation effect in learning," using the example of learning to play the violin, at which you try and try to learn something, and can't for awhile, and then you can. An accomplished violinist, Edelman told the story of being stung as a boy by his teacher's criticism of he played a piece which Edelman thought he had played adequately. After weeks of hard practice, however, he learned to play it correctly, and received his teacher's approval. "But," the young Edelman complained to his teacher, "it hurts." His teacher replied, "You didn't feel the pain before, but you were giving it to others. Now you do." Well, I suppose that said it all, but this was a rich environment, and I got even more than that. Tononi pointed out that REM sleep is necessary to consolidate certain kinds of learning. He was referring to simple tasks here, and emphasized that, while it is not possible to learn new things during sleep, certain kinds of learning can only be consolidated if REM sleep is allowed to occur afterward. Balaban commented that "Learning isn't from ground zero. You may have to unlearn something before you can learn something new." When there are emotional issues around what is being learned, or unlearned, "affect-laden (material) may have to be disentangled before you can learn something in a new way." End of Part 1. To Be Continued |