The physiology of RET – the stimulation of inner brain mechanisms associated with neurogenesis – makes me lean toward a positive expectation.

According to new research released by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), pedophilia might be the result of faulty connections in the brain. MRIs and sophisticated computer analysis techniques compared a group of pedophiles with a group of non-sexual criminals. The pedophiles had significantly less “white matter” – which is responsible for wiring the different parts of the brain together.

The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatry Research, challenges the commonly held belief that pedophilia is brought on by childhood trauma or abuse. This finding is the strongest evidence yet that pedophilia is instead the result of a problem in brain development.

Pedophiles tend to have lower IQs, are three times more likely to be left-handed, have higher rates of head injuries in childhood, and even tend to be physically shorter than non-pedophiles.

“There is nothing in this research that says pedophiles shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for their actions,” said Dr. James Cantor, CAMH Psychologist and lead scientist of the study, “Not being able to choose your sexual interests doesn’t mean you can’t choose what you do.”

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Closing the eyes intensifies emotional intensity while opening the eyes tends to lessen emotion intensity.

A study out of Tel Aviv University’s Functional Brain Center provides some insight into how Rapid Eye Technology works. The study, lead by Prof. Talma Hendler, demonstrated that closing the eyes intensifies emotional intensity while opening the eyes tends to lessen emotion intensity when it comes to listening to scary music. The same conclusion might be made about scary sounds including emotionally evocative words and phrases (though this was not specifically studied).

In essence, the study showed that closing the eyes intensified the actions of the Amygdala, an emotional area of the brain associated with memory management. This association offers the possibility of creating therapies for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative memory conditions. It also could explain why RET seems to work so well.

“It’s possible that closing one’s eyes during an emotional stimulation, like in our research, may help people through a variety of mental states. It synchs connectivity in the brain,” Dr. Hendler says. “We don’t know exactly how or why this happens – it’s like a light switch gets turned off, allowing the brain to better integrate the highs and lows of the emotional experience when the eyes are shut.”

During RET, the client blinks their eyes as fast as they can while listening to emotionally evocative words and phrases provided by the RET technician through scripts, audio CDs, and discussion with the client. Based on the Tel Aviv University study, the eyes closed condition would tend to intensify emotions (positive and negative), while the eyes open condition would tend to calm or lessen emotional intensity. Repeated blinking (eyes open/eyes closed in rapid succession) may tend to even out at a lower level the emotional intensity of the issue at hand.

Experience with RET has show me that this rapid blinking along with rapid movement of an eye directing device (wand) suggests to the mind to “look” into all memories associated with the present issue and relieve them of emotional energy – a more holistic approach than one that focuses emotional relief onto one emotion for one issue at one time.

Prof. Hendler’s latest study with scary music is “just an example of how a small manipulation in one’s physical state such as eyes open or shut can change our mental experience,” she says.

Study source:
George Hunka – American Friends of Tel Aviv University. Dr. Hendler’s research was published in PLoS One and builds on her 2007 study published in Cerebral Cortex.

In a study appearing in the May edition of Research on Social Work Practice, Geisinger Senior Investigator Joseph Boscarino, PhD, MPH and his co-researchers examined psychological stress, job burnout and secondary trauma among 236 New York City social workers following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Secondary trauma includes experiencing symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress such as having nightmares or flashbacks, being easily startled and avoiding situations that remind one of the original trauma. Sometimes called vicarious trauma, it can seriously impact the mental health of counselors, first responders, critical care nurses and others in healthcare professions involved with treating those exposed to traumatic events, Boscarino said.

The study found that involvement in World Trade Center recovery effort was the primary reason why social workers experienced secondary trauma.

The research also showed that a positive work environment for social workers helped reduce secondary trauma and prevent job burnout. Read the rest of this entry »

A study, published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Psychological Science, “addresses the age-old question: ‘Do we see reality as it is, or is what we see influenced by our preconceptions?’” said study coauthor Piotr Winkielman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. “Our findings indicate that what we think has a noticeable effect on our perceptions.”

This should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. We’re talking about the relationship between what we believe and what we experience. Our thinking goes: “I perceive an event and the way I perceive it is THE way it happened. Further, the way I feel about the event has nothing to do with how the event went down.” Thinking error!!

“We imagine our emotional expressions as unambiguous ways of communicating how we’re feeling,” said coauthor Jamin Halberstadt, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, “but in real social interactions, facial expressions are blends of multiple emotions – they are open to interpretation. This means that two people can have different recollections about the same emotional episode, yet both be correct about what they ’saw.’ So when my wife remembers my smirk as cynicism, she is right: her explanation of the expression at the time biased her perception of it. But it is also true that, had she explained my expression as empathy, I wouldn’t be sleeping on the couch.”

You mean, if I change my mind about my interpretation of the data, the event changes for me? Whoa! That’s radical!

“It’s a paradox,” Halberstadt added. “The more we seek meaning in others’ emotions, the less accurate we are in remembering them.”

Oh, and, by the way – the less accurate we are at interpreting them, too!

“The novel finding here,” said Winkielman, of UC San Diego, “is that our body is the interface: The place where thoughts and perceptions meet. It supports a growing area of research on ‘embodied cognition’ and ‘embodied emotion.’ Our corporeal self is intimately intertwined with how – and what – we think and feel.”

Well, I guess we really do see (and hear, smell, taste, feel) what we believe! And at the root of it all is our body. We give lots of kudos to our magnificent minds, but when you really get down to brass tacks, our body plays a much bigger role than we give it credit – it has the starring role!

This adds significant credibility to my own theory about emotional healing – it’s in the body! Sensation is the language of the body. We ignore our body’s language at our peril – getting fatter, more stressed, and less resilient. I wonder what would happen if we were to focus emotional healing processes on the physical aspects of those emotions – the physical sensations that arise during the expression of our emotions. We might find the key to healing our emotions and our mental constructs that hold those emotions in place. Maybe my theory is worthy of study, too.

Study source: University of California, San Diego. Coauthors on the study are Paula Niedenthal and Nathalie Dalle, both at the Universite Blaise Pascall, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

You can’t possibly account for every possible patient treatment outcome.

During the years I worked with a local physician, I learned from him that physicians struggle with the same “insecurity” I did – that is, he often prescribed a course of treatment that did not appear to work. I spoke with him occasionally during those years about this apparent discrepancy between treatment expectation and actual outcome.

His basic philosophy, which he learned while at med school and during his internship and which I agree with, was that you can’t possibly account for every possible patient treatment outcome. Physicians deal in probabilities. It is probable that a specific treatment will work for a patient based on past experience with that treatment for those particular patient symptoms – but it is just plain unreasonable to think it will work for every patient exhibiting the same symptoms every time – or predict exactly how an outcome of treatment will appear in a specific patient.

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