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 energy 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.”

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Dreaming and daydreaming, ruminating, or hearing traumatic keywords associated with a trauma can turn on enough noradrenaline to unlock the cabinet.

As I’ve discussed before in this blog, memories, particularly traumatic memories can be very inaccurate recordings of events. I think I’ve come across a good explanation for why that is so – and what can be done about it.

Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland explain how emotional events can sometimes lead to disturbing long term memories. During studies of the almond-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala – a region associated with processing emotions – Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) scientists uncovered a cellular mechanism underlying the formation of emotional memories – and it involves a well known stress hormone – noradrenaline, the brain’s version of adrenaline. Noradrenaline affects the amygdala by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for memory formation.

Think of this interaction between chemical and brain structure like a file cabinet.

When an emotional event occurs noradrenaline is released in the brain – the more emotionally traumatic the event, the more adrenaline gets turned on in the body and more noradrenaline released in the brain. This chemical is like the key to the file cabinet. Once open, the drawer assigned to that particular kind of event reveals many folders full of data – images, sensations, sounds and more that are similar in nature to the current event being experienced.

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An injection of cortisol shortly after exposure to a traumatic event could prevent the onset of PTSD.

Prof. Joseph Zohar from the Sackler Medical School, Tel Aviv University, has found that an injection of cortisol shortly after exposure to a traumatic event could prevent the onset of PTSD.

What a brilliant idea! Why wait for symptoms of PTSD to debilitate a person when prevention can address and effectively eliminate the problem altogether. Further, as inoculated trauma victims are returned to their families and societies, they are more likely to be more productive, better able to cope with their home environments, and quicker to adjust to later possible traumas.

Dr. Zohar’s idea of an injection shortly after exposure could backfire for those people susceptible to cortisol build-up or who’s bodies don’t process cortisol well. Many overweight people have difficulty processing the stress hormone and thus their bodies collect body fat instead of dealing with stress properly.

I propose that those exposed to traumatic events instead, use a quick de-stress process like RET or EFT to better utilize the cortisol they already have. In those cases where cortisol injections might be especially useful, I propose they be accompanied by RET or EFT sessions so that the cortisol is better utilized.

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If you’ve been experiencing “twisted intuition” – that is, your sense of things or your “inner voice” or “inner guidance” seems to be off or too often incorrect – maybe it’s time to reprogram.

Researchers at Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London have managed to image the brain while it processes subconscious subliminal cues. This is important because it demonstrates for the first time how our brain processes subconscious information. We often think of such information as intuition or inspiration from some external source when instead, it seems we develop these “signals” from within.

Dr. Mathias Pessiglione, lead researcher concludes, “We conclude that, even without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making.”

Decision bias?

I think I read that correctly. And just what is a decision bias? It could be thought of as that “still small voice” from your intuition that many think of as their “higher self” or even God. It is that “sense” we get when one choice “feels better” than another although we don’t know why.

My thought about this phenomenon is that we learn many life-important lessons BEFORE we develop reasoning circuitry in our brains. That period of development we call infancy is also when we connect reward with context – the basis of decision bias. This could easily explain why some people feel inspired by a piece of music while another person is totally turned off by it. Context cues that trigger to reward – leading to a decision bias. Read the rest of this entry »

Improve the odds of success with earlier rewards.

In a study published by Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers discovered that feedback given earlier in learning sessions tend to bring about better grades over the long haul and improve students’ performance overall.

I’ve found this same phenomenon in hypnotherapy and Rapid Eye Technology sessions. When clients discovered early on that the process I was using was working, they tended to get better results overall – achieving therapeutic goals quicker and with far less effort. When clients believed it would take several sessions to show improvement, they tended to go slower and often struggled to make progress. Conversely, when clients felt immediate results (positive feedback) they tended to feel more successful and confident with the processes we used.

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