Enjoy the Silence-The Neuroscience of Socio-Emotional learning

"Words like violence break the silence

Come crashing in, into my little world

Painful to me, pierce right through me

Can't you understand? Oh my little girl."

Generation Xer's or anyone with an affinity for 80s music might recognize those words above.  Vivid are my memories of seeking solace alone on the bus after an exhausting day trying to scramble my way through high schools' toughest subject....a game I like to call "Social Snakes and Ladders".  Every time I thought I had made progress toward Square 100 at the top of the board, I'd land on a "snake" which would slide me down to lower levels of the pecking order, so to speak.  Battle worn, licking my emotional wounds, I'd head straight for my 5th row seat on the bus, whip out the Sony Walkman and get lost in the sounds of Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Simple Minds or Platinum Blonde. 

"Vows are spoken to be broken

Feelings are intense, words are trivial

Pleasures remain, so does the pain

Words are meaningless and forgettable"

So while the boys of Depeche Mode implored me to "Enjoy the Silence"........I couldn't.  Thoughts of insecurity, low self-esteem and the theatre company of woulda, coulda, shouldas used to perform at their "Vaudeville" best on the grandest stage of all.......my brain.  And my neuronal "audience" had no problems staying transfixed for this spectacular performance...."Encore! Encore!", they'd yell.  Assuming maybe some of you can relate to my youthful experiences (hopefully....or I really am pathetic), I use this entry to perhaps shed some insightful light on just how impactful those years of "Daze and Confused" really are to who you are today.

I don't think it's a surprise to many that most of our most important emotional and social learning occurs during our early years when our primitive brains are in control.  A great deal of learning takes place before we have the cortical systems for explicit memories (more on that in a bit), problem solving or perspective.  Ah, perspective.  There's a biggie.  Imagine having 30 pieces of a 100 piece puzzle and no cover box to refer to.  Consequentially, many of our most important socio-learning experiences are organized and controlled by reflexes, behaviours and emotions outside of our awareness AND distorted by our immature brains.  Think about the times when you've experienced an emotion for seemingly no reason at all or one that so does not fit the situation at hand (we'll call that an "over-reaction").  "Where in the hell did that come from?', you might ask yourself.  Enter implicit vs explicit memories.

A chart to peruse.  Please note those points in red.

Implicit Memory	Explicit Memory
Early Developing	Late Developing
Highly functional at birth	Matures later with the hippocampus and cortex
Sub-cortical/Amgydala bias	Cortical/Hippocampus bias
Emotional	Organized by language, visual images
Visceral/ Sensorimotor	Organized within episodes and narratives
Context-free and lacks source allocation	Conscious organization of experience
Procedural learning	Construction of Narrative to put Emotion into Context
Behavioural patterns

That emotional reaction or subcortical behaviour you couldn't put your finger on before? That's a triggered implicit memory.  Its key to remember that memory, whether subconscious or not, is an associational process where things that happen at the same time become linked to each other.  Implicit, subconscious memories, created in dysfunctional situations years before can repeatedly lead us to re-create unsuccessful but familiar patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour.  One only needs to see a chiropractic political meeting in action to see evidence of what we're talking about here.  

The two neurological structures involved here (with a little help elsewhere) are the amygdala and hippocampus.  The amygdala, which is the predominant limbic structure when we're young, loves to accentuate sensory inputs which heightens awareness of specific aspects of the environment and then generalize them.  Think, "Mountain out of a mole hill"...think, "Judging an entire book by its cover"....think, "Every thing bad always happens to me".  The hippocampus, on the other hand, can inhibit reactionary limbic responses, over active attention and stimulus response.  Its involved in the ability to discriminate and make distinctions without over generalizing.  When we can retrieve an implicit emotion from the "files" of the amygdala and transfer it over to the hippocampus, we can begin the process of weaving that emotion into a conscious narrative that puts context to that emotion.  Processing our emotions and behaviours this way offers us the possibility of writing a new story.  There are reciprocal connections between the amygdala and the hippocampus, so the activity of one can inhibit the activity of the other.  As a pertinent aside, stress hormones has been shown to damage neural networks of explicit memory in the hippocampus.  Ummm, well that explains a lot.

So how do we know which structure predominates in our life.  Well, I bring us back to my youthful days of listening to Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence".  Silence is an ambiguous stimulus that tends to activate systems of implicit memory in the undisciplined mind.  When there's silence between 2 people, many people (especially in new relationships)will automatically assume that the other person is thinking critical thoughts.  Now there's a high school flashback....."She thinks I'm ugly", "He thinks I'm fat".  Similar reactions occur during relaxation without distraction.  Emotions, images and thoughts that emerge in conditions of low stimulation or absence of distraction may hold clues to early implicit learning.  Those who need constant activity and distractions to "relax" have implicit memories that are driving them.

How do you like silence?

......Words are very unnecessary

They can only do harm.......

Single female seeking.......

This is a slightly edited reprint of a post I did on another forum.  Dug it up the other day and thought it worth posting here.- JW

I am looking to see what this site is all about and hoping to meet someone to chat with, become friends, meet, and who knows...? I am professionally employed in _______ and have lived here for about 5 years now. I am a curvacious woman with a pretty face.  I'm looking for a man with six pack abs, great sense of humor and great teeth. If you ask me for a picture I just might send you one! 


Ever seen an ad like this? Maybe you have. My guess is amongst all the single ads found online or in print, the burning desire for great alignment or posture as a pre-requisite for a mate is rare.....how bout "must have lightning fast nerves and a well integrated sensorimotor system"? No? Not quite up to par to "must have" six pack abs, sense of humour, money or great teeth?
A respected colleague and friend has stirred me to ponder that question which was posed based on his most recent Palmer experience....that is "if you were the last chiropractor living, would the profession still live? General consensus on BJ Palmer was, yes, he was the consummate self promoter and great marketer of our beloved profession. Given that the root meaning of profession is "to profess", I banter among the 4 corners of my brain this question, 

"Now, in 2013, how should we best promote our great profession? What niche? What point of interest? What appeal to today's dog eat dog vanity world does our underutilized profession (5-6%!!!)have to offer?!"

Surely, we can crack that anti-aging, salon-loving, botox-injecting, silicone-implanting, brazilian-waxing, butt-lifting, teeth-whitening hetero-, homo-, metro-sexual world.....phew, thats quite a mouthful. People buy what makes them look good for

THEIR "other",
SOME "other"
or in some cases just plain "others", that's for certain.

Gawd, I envy those dentists and their teeth loving ways. I've seen many a hot women be repulsed by a poor schlep's not so "pearly whites". Why can't they be just as repulsed by a C1 AILP inducing head tilt or a C2 PRS inducing lower shoulder....you should see my repulsion watching those TV anchors delivering the news. "I would never sleep with that anchorwoman", I say, "That is some ugly forward head posture on that beast." 

Tongue in cheek aside, the looking good business is big money. Even a beloved, fearless, self-admitting narcissistic mentor of mine owns up to not going cheap when comes to a day at the salon. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect nails...perfectly handsome married male no longer seeking....

As a side note I have had one patient (female) in my 15 years of practice who specifically came to me to reduce the "ugly" thoracic kyphosis that would absolutely ruin her wedding day. Pure aesthetics. No problem I say. I thought I had stumbled upon a brand new field of cosmetic chiropractic. 6 months later, success....she was very happy, she got what she came for and we haven't seen her since.

But what about making people feeeelllll goooood, you might ask. What about health, you might also ask? Well, you're right, its also big money. But the game is played a little different here. Are people coming in to feel good or feel better? Ummm...is that a difference, I ask my sulci? Less than 5-10% of new patients walking into our office come into our office for pure "wellness" check ups, and usually they've been referred to by a current patient and they came in to see what the buzz is all about. So that leaves 90+% coming in the door hoping to "feel better" from "something" that ails them. Do the spas own the market for feeling good and being pampered? Everytime I come out of one I have one of those huge, long drawn out "AAAAHS!"...... do my patients have one after every visit? Not likely.

Ohhhh, process driven vs event driven experiences, you say. A day at the spa is an event. Multiple, seemingly similar visits to the chiropractor to <cue in Robin Leach> "fix" those "Lifestyle choices of the dumb and dumber" doesn't seem quite as appealing to our instant gratification world. And yet, some of us manage to eek out a pretty good living at it. WHY??!! And why not every single chiropractor? We seem to know the answer, but I'm not 100% sure.....is it really just as easy as perhaps providing a " not coveted, but necessary health care service sought out by a growing number of "disillusioned by traditional health care" despots who yearn to be "heard" and "cared" for...provided by those with a sprinkle of extraordinary clinical skill and a dash of superb soft skill." 

I don't know, you tell me......and tell me how I fit all that into a slick, knock em off their pants marketing campaign. I'm just a lowly blogger (read, by maybe, 12 of my colleagues who can stand me) hashing my thots and writing them, verbatim, on this medium.

If I were single again and I was looking for a potential mate, here's what my ad would say........

SINGLE HANDSOME (don't laugh) MALE SEEKING SINGLE FEMALE- MUST HAVE SYMMETRY AND BALANCE IN POSTURAL ALIGNMENT, UNIMPEDED NEURAL SENSORY SYSTEMS TO GENERATE ACCURATE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL REPRESENTATIONS OF HER OWN ENVIRONMENT AND PICK UP THOSE CUES OF MY OWN, UNIMPEDED MOTOR SYSTEMS TO GENERATE SKILLFUL USE OF HANDS, LEGS AND OTHER BODY PARTS FOR BEDROOM ACTIVITY, WELL SYNCHRONIZED HEMISPHERIC ACTIVITY TO ENGAGE IN WHOLE MINDED AND INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION WITH AFTER THE BEDROOM ACTIVITY, ADEQUATE AMOUNTS OF ACCESSIBLE DOPAMINE FROM THE VENTRAL TEGMENTAL AREAS FOR THOSE TIMES OF THE MONTH WHEN YOU MIGHT GET A LITTLE BIT BITCHY, A CAREER, PURPOSE AND PASSION FOR LIFE WOULDN'T HURT..............................................AND GREAT TEETH.

Stimulus-Bound vs Goal-Directed Behaviour Part 2

In our last post we alluded to, among many things, the importance of INHIBITION- the ability of the higher centres in our brain to wrestle control away from our lower (and more demanding) centres of our brain.  A brain which is under more subcortical control is one that is held hostage by more primitive drives such as sex, food, threat and instant rewards.  In this state, it is very difficult to develop the AWA skills of change management, particularly when well ingrained negative plasticity has developed in the CNS.

As a review, neuroplasticity is the ability to build (and maintain) a pathway in the CNS.  We can have;

Negative plasticity- which will produce negative outcomes such as PTSD or chronic pain.
or
Positive plasticity- which will produce positive outcomes such as mastering the guitar or healthy cortical modulation of sympathetic activity (via PMRF activation).

As doctors, we are exposed to the negative, and sometimes positive, aspects of neuroplasticity in our patients every single day.  They are reflected in our patients' pain syndromes, muscle imbalances, altered gait mechanics, postural distortions, autonomic imbalances and so on.  They are also reflected in our patients' return to normal function and resultant maintenance of that function via our interventions and recommended self-care protocols.  So does the same principle apply to our topic of Stimulus-Bound vs Goal-Directed behaviour and change management?  Is spending your money impulsively (and not paying down debt) to "keep up with the Jones'" a form of negative plasticity and therefore a reflection of the maturation of your CNS?  Well the short answer is yes.  For some reading this, you may have felt a little twinge in the gut just now.  But thats the first step to change.  The truth, however, is that we have examples of both negative and positive plasticity in our lives.  My advice.....don't change a thing with the positive plasticity thats working for you and change the negative plasticity that's not working for you.  Sounds simple but most people suffer from some form of  anosognosia, which is just a fancy way of saying that sometimes you don't know what you don't know.  And in the arena of negative plasticity, ignorance is NOT bliss!

Consider the physiological blind spot that we all have.  That small area on the optic disc of the retina that contains no photoreceptor cells.  Well guess what?  You don't know its there because your brain fills in the gap and literally makes things up to fill in the visual representation of that spot.   This can be measured and, to go a step further, used as an objective measure of brain function.  Our brains are incredibly adept predicting machines.  Starved of the necessary information that it needs (as in the case of a subluxation), it will make things up to account for the void.  Perception may not reflect reality as a result.

So now the question is, do we have cognitive or emotional blind spots with regards to our behaviour?  What things do we "make up" in an effort to provide a rationalization for our own "blind spots"?  Better yet, can we measure it, change it and then measure it again?  Yes and yes.  Neuroscience suggests that psychology is a reflection of physiology, specifically neurophysiology.  This may come across as a deterministic (which is distinctly different from mechanistic) concept but it is not, because there is no room for change in determinism.  On the flip side, emergent vitalism (or neo-vitalism) allows for the limitless confounding variables that shape and mould who we are now AND who we can become.  We truly are greater than the sum of our parts since, as epigenetics has proven, our environment plays a role in that evolution as well....but I philosophically digress.

I promised in the last post to address this idea of assessing and changing our own inhibitory skills so that we can shift our behaviours from more stimulus-bound to the goal-directed kind.  Let's use the backdrop of a nice little scientific review written by Douglas Munoz and Stefan Everling in Nature (2004)entitled "Look away: The anti-saccade task and the voluntary control of eye movement".

As an aside, I think many chiropractors are missing an opportunity to improve their assessment of the nervous system by not becoming trained in the examination of the eyes.  The eyes and the spine are embryological homologues and therefore stayed wired together for life.  Therefore, from a neurological perspective, what happens in the eyes....happens in the spine.  And the eyes are not buried underneath 5 layers of muscle, adipose tissue and skin so it makes for an easy qualitative, and with the right technology, quantitative evaluation.  So for me, those two little globes are like vertebrae to assess.

First line of the article.  "The anti-saccade task has emerged as an important task for investigating the flexible control we have over behaviour".  In this task, participants must suppress the reflexive urge to look at a visual target that appears suddenly in the peripheral visual field and must instead look away from the target in the opposite direction.  Ladies, think of this test as a measurement of your husband's ability to not gawk at a well-endowed woman walking towards you as the two of you stroll past holding hands.  Get the picture.  A simple way to perform it is to hold out both your thumbs approx 40-50 cm apart and randomly wiggle one thumb and then instruct the person you are testing to dart their eyes in the opposite direction of the wiggling thumb.  Can they inhibit the reflexive urge to look towards the target stimuli (wiggling thumb) known as an automatic saccade?  Disorders or dysfunction in the executive centres of the brain (namely the frontal lobe) find it difficult to suppress this urge revealing a deficit in top-down inhibition.  There are several other tests you could do to test frontal lobe maturation but beyond the scope of this blog.

Frontal lobe and eye exercises such as pursuits, saccades and various other brain "gym" activities therefore become great ways at building plasticity for the inhibitory skills necessary to develop goal directed behaviours.  There is a caveat, however.  You must be specific to the hemisphericity, or under-connected side of the brain otherwise exercises or activities that target the wrong hemisphere or are too bilaterally general will not create that positive plasticity in flexible behaviour control and can in fact, worsen an already existing negative plastic state.  This, of course, must be skillfully assessed.  Targeted plasticity after a skilled assessment is the key to rubbing the neuroplastic genie.  Be open to being checked by someone trained in a comprehensive functional neurological assessment.

You never know, you might just be cured of your anosognosia.

Stimulus-Bound vs Goal-Directed Behaviour

A good friend and mentor of mine wrote a book about achieving Chiropractic Affluence (book is called DC Money and I highly recommend it).  This simply and brilliantly written book lays out an effective and proven system (proven by myself personally) for managing finances and achieving debt-free wealth.  In it, he writes about AWA- Awareness, Willingness and Ability- and the need for people to adopt this acronym.  Change Management, he writes, is the key to achieving your financial dreams and he's right.  For this blog entry (and maybe more) I'd like to delve deeper into the neuroscience of AWA and Change Management and perhaps suggest some ways we could help ourselves adopt a system (or any other financial system) such as his and be more able to actually implement it and not just read the words.  It starts with knowing ourselves- our behaviours, how our brain works, the things we say to ourselves, why we sabotage our "spoken" goals.....you know, the goals we declare with our voice but don't commit with our hearts.  As sophisticated and complicated (or are we?) creatures of movement, we have no choice about the fact that we have a brain that allows us to either move toward a goal or away from it.  So everything we do is either about Approach or Avoid.  It only gets "complicated" when we confuse the behaviours with the goals or the desires or the wants we declare.  You know.....when we say we want one thing but our actions say we want something else.
The obvious shining examples,
Goal- "I want to lose weight."
Behaviour- Then why are you eating a Whopper?

Goal-"I want to be debt-free."
Behaviour- Then why are you leasing a Mercedes when you still have a $250,000 student loan?

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that in the first example the person's behaviour is bound by the  stimulus of a juicy, tasty Whopper. Not by the "future" svelte, thinner, healthier version of themselves which doesn't derive any immediate satisfaction of such a sinful delight.  Are there a whole lot of "complicating" emotional "baggage" such as addiction, self worth issues, body image problems....blah, blah, blah.  Maybe.  Not really.  I'll explain in a moment.

The same understanding is clear for the second example.  This person's behaviour is bound by the  stimulus of driving a "status" symbol that says "they have arrived".  Not by the "future" debt-free, worry-free, option-plenty version of their financial selves which doesn't give a rat's ass about what their friends think because they are driving a Civic and paying off their student loan.

Now, think about the timeline of the rush you get from a Whopper....5 minutes......maybe.  What about the rush of driving a brand new Mercedes......1 month....maybe.   How long do the benefits from being thinner and healthier last?  How many options, benefits and opportunities do you get from being debt-free?  What potential doors and accomplishments lie ahead when you're both healthy and wealthy?  And how long does that last?  Well, if you're really forward thinking........generations, if you are into leaving legacies.

So, in summary,
Stimulus bound behaviour= Temporarily gratifying, driven typically by non-conscious, limbic, automated actions.
Goal directed behaviour= Longer lasting fulfillment, driven typically by conscious, prefrontal, planned and intentional actions.

Is it realistic to always be goal-directed and have no "fun"?  No, and nor am I implying you have to.....but more on that later (Part II).

Awareness, Willingness and Ability (AWA), from a neuroscientific point of view, comes down to one simple concept- INHIBITION.  Ever heard of the saying, "Growth lies in the ability to shed the things that prevent us from Growing".  That is about INHIBITION.  Are we able to inhibit the fixed action patterns and motor programs that we have moulded, shaped and neurologically ingrained all our lives but no longer serve us?  Are we even AWARE of these habits, or WILLING to change them, or even developed the ABILITY to inhibit them.  Some of us, as we say about "old farts", are really "set" in our ways.  So, as you can see, the concept is simple, as I promised it was......but, in practice?......well, that depends on how you've developed and continue to use this thing you have, called a brain.  Because from a brain's point of view, inhibition is a "top down" phenomenon....but you don't develop strong top down inhibition until you generate robust "bottom up" growth.  When you learn to vertically integrate and then horizontally integrate your own brain....inhibition becomes much easier and what follows is a life more dominated by goal-directed behaviours, more success and more fulfillment.  Most successful people do not realize this neuroscientific phenomenon.  While they preach "hard work" and "belief in oneself" as the cause of their success, they are unaware that "hard work" and "belief in oneself" is a product (or effect) of their brain's ability to exert top down inhibition and shed the things that get in the way of achieving their goals.  Especially when they're surrounded by the lure of the stimuli around them....think, former gambling addict walking through a casino and not compelled to place a bet. Better yet, think former people pleaser delivering a report to a pushy patient and not compelled to acquiesce to their demands to keep them around to potentially sabotage their practice.  For those that did not get "lucky" enough to develop strong inhibitory skills, don't despair, the gift of neuroplasticity is always there to serve you.  It is the genie in the bottle.  Literally, rub (train) it enough times and your wish is your brain's command....so what's the best way to train your brain and take advantage of this neuroplastic genie?

Stay tuned for Part II.

The Pre-servation of Life...for Humanity's sake

A man puts a syringe filled with heroin in his vein and is prepared to squeeze.  He has done this before, a thousand times maybe.  The action is rote.  It is automatic.  Yet on this day, at this moment, something happens.  Perhaps he read an inspiring book.  Pictured a loved one in his mind.  Looked out his window and saw something beautiful.  It doesn't matter.  Right now, he is beyond thought.  He is moving on impulse.  An impulse within him that has decided to serve Life itself before it serves the Little Self.  Without thinking, the man removes the unsqueezed syringe from his forearm.  He releases the rubber band.  He is suddenly clear that he will not shoot up again.  This clarity has come to him without thought.  It is simply a knowing.  His long struggle with heroin is over.  His "Push-Pull" battle is over.  Some would say that the power of his "Push-Away" conscious mind won out over the power of his "Pull-Towards" subconscious addiction....but is it that simple?

I have been giving some thought lately to the concept of instinct.  Is the above scenario a smaller, less obvious example of the woman who jumps in the water to save a drowning child despite not being able to swim?   Or, the man who runs into a burning house to save those trapped inside with no regards to his own life?  And what causes the person to freeze and do nothing in those situations?  What powerful forces overrides their instincts? Is it difficult to conceive that from another level of creation, one that is beyond the conscious or subconscious (perhaps super or supra- consciousness), preserving Life itself is the First choice before anything that you would consciously choose?  In other words, built somewhere in the Totality of our being, both physical and non-physical,  our first instinct is to preserve Life.  Now, let's make a play on words.......That which you pre-serve, you preserve.  Meaning, in order to preserve "it", you must serve it first.

I wrote earlier in the year that Life has 3 objective principles- principles which could not care less about how we feel about them.  Functionality, Adaptability and Sustainability.  Regardless of our agenda or our relative judgments of right or wrong, those 3 principles will assert themselves with or without Humanity.  Life does not care about morality, justice and ownership......we do.  You cannot destroy this system called "Life", it was here before us and will continue long after us.....if we choose.  We can also choose, as humanity, to stick around and not leave the party.  But in order to do that we must pre-serve it.

We, chiropractors, often scream and shout how we intend to "save the world" with our Life-giving adjustments.  Truth is, the world doesn't need saving.......Life doesn't need saving.  Humanity?  That's another story.  The sooner we realize we are a part of the system, not a product of it, the sooner we can act in ways that sees us in relationship with everything around us and not separate from it.  I'd like to think we, as chiropractors, pre-serve Life by saving Humanity from itself, one human at a time.  Removing obstacles to another person's built-in Instinctual (not automatic)Response to pre-serve Life is no small task, regardless of the methods you choose to do that.  The important result lies in our abilities to function, adapt and sustain......yes?

We can all unite around that concept, can't we?

As a huge Dr. Seuss fan.........

I would be remiss if I didn't post this..............

PS.  A New post is a-brewing.....stay tuned for some fresh insight on Chiropractic science and philosophy.

The Physics of the Brain- Part 3

In the previous post, we discussed the importance of the temporal component in the functioning of the brain.  That neuronal synchrony (or binding) of the seemingly endless bombardment of sensory stimuli reaching our nervous system is achieved via an underlying "beat".  It therefore behooves us to take an exploratory journey into the wild and wacky world of brain research to try and piece together what the source of this "beat" is.  It is here that I reveal to you, what I opine, is one of the greatest and most relevant studies for our profession ever...... and it hasn't gotten a glance by most.

But first, some background and some arousal (not sexual).

Over the years, functional and anatomical studies of the brain has identified the thalamus as the principal relay centre for all sensory information (except olfactory) to the cortex.  It is proposed that the series of networks and circuits which make up the thalamocortical system is responsible for cognition and perhaps even be the foundation for consciousness itself.

The nuclei of the thalamus are subdivided into 2 distinctively different functional units- the specific thalamic nuclei and the non-specific nuclei.  In other words, there are 2 simultaneous systems functioning at the same time:  A baseline non-specific arousal system (via intralaminar and posterior thalamic nuclei) and a sensory specific system (via ventral and lateral nuclei) which is superimposed on the baseline activity.  When we observe lesions to each of these sets of nuclei, we get a clear understanding of their distinct functions.  If, for example, there is a lesion to the specific nuclei there exist a loss of a specific sensory modality (i.e.-visual, auditory etc).  However, if there is a lesion to the non-specific nuclei, patients are unaware of any input by the specific nuclei and even though those pathways still exist and are intact, they cannot  perceive or respond to them.

The perception of any specific sensory stimulus from our environment is absolutely dependent on the constant input from non-specific nuclei.   When measured, via EEG, this constant activity has been observed to occur in bursts or oscillations (~40hz).    When sensory stimuli are presented, these oscillations show a "phase locking" which allows for the cognitive processing and temporal binding of  such sensory stimuli.  Like receiving a "beat" count before beginning to play.

So while we know that there are brain regions with a high degree of localized function and control, we also know that there is no single region responsible for the integration of perception and memories.  When researchers first hypothesized the solution to the binding problem, they discovered thru their experiments that when subjects, for example, recognized faces the electrical activity of different regions of the brain became synchronized for a moment.  The synchrony appeared to be established by brain regions firing in a similar manner, as 40hz gamma oscillations.

This discovery explained that neurons are not only linked in space (as in actual physical synaptic connections) but also time. The brain can now have virtually unlimited possible combinations of neurons with a resultant limitless capacity for retaining information.  There now exists a logical and rational explanation to the mechanisms by which multiple sensory events come together into a single experience.

So what is the source of these thalamocortical oscillations which is so vital for us binding all our sensory information together?  Well, at first it was thought that they were an intrinsic property of the thalamus which was genetically programmed.  But in 1992, two scientists named Pinault and Dechev (published in the journal of Psychological Resarch) found that when they transected the dorsal column of the spinal cords in rats, the rhythmic depolarization of 40hz oscillations in the thalamic nuclei could no longer be recorded.  They showed that the source of this baseline activity was not an intrinsic property of the thalamus but pre-synaptic to the thalamus.  That, in fact, the source of the oscillations were a product of the neurons of the dorsal column and deep midline cerebellum.  Ultimately, they arise mainly from the muscle and joint afferents of the SPINE.

So, in summary, baseline arousal activity, signal to noise ratio and synchronization of the cerebral hemispheres (and hence high level perception) is thought to result from non-specific thalamic nuclei which trace back to the subcortical oscillations originating from the dorsal column and cerebellum, which ultimately receive their input from the non-stop gravitational transductions derived from postural spinal muscles and joints.  This, as we chiropractors know, can be globally deficient and/or specifically decreased in specific areas.  What a unique and powerful set of lenses through which to grasp the impact of our adjustments.  Brings another level of clinical clarity and sense of awe to just how powerful a well delivered and precise adjustment can be- an approach that is rational, scientific and still embraces the time honoured wisdom of our original principles.

So when I first stumbled upon these concepts, this research and this level of understanding of the brain and nervous system, I wondered to myself what would it look like?  If I could peel away the skin and tissues of a living organism and be left with just a bunch of endless activated synapses and circuits lighting up endlessly like an overly lit up Christmas tree, what would that look like?  Well I'm watching a TED talk by Dr. Henry Markram, director of Blue Brain, a supercomputing project that can model components of the mammalian brain to precise cellular detail and simulate their activity in 3D, and he shows a computer simulation of a living rat's brainstem.  See if you can pick up the bursts of 40 hz oscillations responsible for the binding and therefore perception of sensory stimuli....I was stunned.  

So now for a new twist to the Harvey Lillard story as put forth by my Neurology Instructor, Dr. Melillo.  As you know, Harvey Lillard was a janitor who worked in the same building as Daniel David Palmer back in 1895.  Harvey was deaf and D.D. inquired of the man how this came to be.  Harvey proceeded to explain that it happened all of a sudden while lifting something, he heard a pop in his spine and from that time, he could not hear.  As the account goes, D.D. went to the area of the spine pointed out by Harvey and he performed the first chiropractic adjustment.  Harvey's hearing returned and the rest, as they say, is history.  Palmer, at the time, explained that the hearing returned based on the hypothesis that there was a connection between the spine and nervous system...a segmental connection emphasizing interference to the sensory pathways for hearing.  But what if by increasing the movement of spinal joints and allowing those postural muscles to stretch against the forces of gravity on a continuous basis, Harvey's baseline arousal levels was allowed to increase through the cerebellar, thalamic and spinal pathways.  This, in turn, resulted in an increase in the signal to noise ratio such that the same level of sound that could not be perceived previously, now is better able to summate and be processed.  

Food for thought.