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Given that this year in our training, our business consulting and through NLP Cafe and other forums we will be focussing on Modeling, it would be a good time to re-publish some of the defining articles on the subject. This entry is an article first published in The Model Magazine, Edition 3, 2005 – An Announcement to The NLP community from John Grinder (the Co-Creator of NLP) and Carmen Bostic St.Clair. It includes and Introduction by Robert Dilts.
John Grinder talks about the importance of unconscious signals in New Code NLP.
John Grinder was interviewed by Peter Salisbury in Paris November 2009.
Use this link if the embedded version doesn’t work for your browser.
Full atricle – neurophilosophy
Category: Neuroscience • Vision, Posted on: November 6, 2009 12:50 PM, by Mo
A novel temporal illusion, in which the cause of an event is perceived to occur after the event itself, provides some insight into the brain mechanisms underlying conscious perception. The illusion, described in the journal Current Biology by a team of researchers from France, suggests that the unconscious representation of a visual object is processed for around one tenth of a second before it enters conscious awareness.
Chien-Te Wu and his colleagues at the Brain and Cognition Research Centre in Toulouse used a visual phenomenon called motion-induced blindness, in which a constantly rotating background causes prominent and motionless visual stimuli to disappear and reappear, as demonstrated in the video below. Fixate on the flashing green spot in the centre, and you’ll notice that the surrounding yellow spots begin to disappear and reappear after about ten seconds. Then replay the clip and focus on any of the yellow spots; you’ll see that it is a visual disappearance illusion. Exactly how it works is unclear; according to one hypothesis it is due to the properties of neurons in area V1 of the visual cortex.
Motion Induced Blindness – The most amazing videos are a click away
or watch it here.
or a longer and differnet version here
Motion Induced Blindness – Funny home videos are a click away
The researchers first used a variation of these stimuli to test the occurence and duration of the motion-induced blindness effect. In these pre-test trials, seven participants were presented with a static yellow ring on a rotating background, and asked to report when the ring disappeared from and reappeared to conscious awareness, by respectively pressing and releasing a button. read more…
These are demonstrations surrounding Phantom Limbs. The concept is interesting for understanding our body and the subject of proprioception and how we perceive our bodies.
| Video: Derren Brown working with a man’s Phantom Limbs | Derren Brown works with a person’s Phantom Limb and demonstrates how he can touch limbs that don’t even exist. How he does this trick I do not know, the man shows some signs of being in a trance, and there might be some hypnotic language patterns used… After all, this is Derren Brown. |
| Demonstration of the Mirror Box as designed and developed by V.S. Ramachandran. http://www.23NLPeople.com Demonstrated by Andrew T. Austin. This video shows the box before it is used. | |
| Andrew T. Austin discusses the problems of contractures in treating phantom limb pain with Ramachandran’s Mirror Box. | |
| Andrew T. Austin (http://www.23NLPeople.com) discusses the phenomenum of “remapping” and the relevence to treatment with the mirror box. Also see: http://www.phantomlimbpain.org | |
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When Spc. Bryan Wagner is driving, he pushes the gas pedal with his right foot in spite of the fact that he doesn’t have a right foot.
“I drive with it,” the 23-year-old said, referring to the prosthetic limb that replaced the real one he lost in Baghdad on Dec. 17, 2007, when the Humvee he was a gunner on ran over an improvised explosive device. But Wagner, an Exeter, Calif. native with a military buzz and the burly build of an offensive lineman, says vehicular matters aren’t high on his to-do list. Neither is running a marathon, which he has somehow done, and snowboarding, which he still enjoys. What dogs him is the “phantom pain” he feels in the limb he lost, a common complaint among amputees dating back to previous wars and even showing up in literature. In David Guterson’s novel “Snow Falling on Cedars”, about the Japanese-American experience during and after World War II, the protagonist Ishmael Chambers complains of pain from his missing left arm. As of July 1, a total of 904 service members have undergone amputations resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therapy helps limbs “see” But a new technique called “mirror image therapy” is using the reflection of the intact limb to trick Wagner’s brain-in a good way. Wearing black shorts and sweating though a tan cut-off T-shirt, Wagner demonstrated the technique Thursday at a physical therapy hub for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dr. Jack Tsao, a staff neurologist at Walter Reed, oversaw the exercises. Removing his prosthetic limb and sitting up, Wagner places a mirror on its side facing his outstretched left leg. He then performs a number of exercises with his left foot, like rolling it in circles and imitating pushing the gas pedal. “It’s very weird,” Wagner conceded. Patients will typically do activities like these 15 minutes a day, five days a week for a total of eight weeks. If the pain persists, which according to Tsao it can even after two years without the therapy, they start the cycle again. The Army medical center has treated 652 of the total 904 service members who have lost arms, legs, arms and hands. It doesn’t count lost fingers or toes. The hand isn’t quicker than the eye There are two theories as to what causes phantom pain. The first deals with mismatched signals between a person’s vision and the intact neurons that dictated the movement of the missing limb. Eyes see one thing, neurons another. Another theory posits that proprioceptive-or muscle-memory retains certain positions of limbs, some of which are painfully distressing. Before working out with the mirror, Wagner said he often had the sensation that one toe was crossed over another or he felt like someone was stabbing him between his toes. Dr. Tsao suggests the mirror therapy is “like a computer wiping your memory buffer.” Starting in 2006, “mirror image therapy” has since grown into wide usage. Though it has had mixed results among amputees and hasn’t been very successful yet with arm or hand phantom pain, Wagner is a testament to its power. Channeling the theories behind the therapy, Wagner has turned it into his own motivational mantra. “Disability is only a state of mind.” |
Our question would be – what if there are alternatives to implants with NLP? This is not to say we should stop research or have any ill feelings to anyone who has already benefited from these devices, but if there is an alternative that we can provide through NLP or a related modality – then let us do it. We certainly have had clients who have had many pre-existing physical conditions healed or resolved during sessions.
Here is the article to think of the opportunities we have.
Business Week March 2005
Rewiring The Body
First came pacemakers. Now exotic implants are bringing new hope to victims of epilepsy, paralysis, depression, and other diseases
Rewiring The Body - First came pacemakers. Now exotic implants are bringing new hope to victims of epilepsy, paralysis, depression, and other diseases
The Body Electric
Devices emitting microshocks and electrical signals are helping patients with more and more kinds of ailments:
EPILEPSY AND DEPRESSION
Electrical pulses hit the vagus nerve in the neck to treat both of these disorders. They’re generated by a device implanted in the chest, with wires running up the neck. (Cyberonics)
BLADDER INCONTINENCE
A device in the abdomen pulses the sacral nerve as it emerges from the lower spinal chord, causing the bladder to tighten. (Medtronic, Advanced Neuromodulation, and Boston Scientific’s Advanced Bionics unit)
CHRONIC PAIN IN THE BACK OR LEGS
Electrical stimulation of the sacral nerve as it emerges from the lower spinal cord overrides pain impulses. The source is a device implanted in the abdomen. (Medtronic, Advanced Neuromodulation, and Boston Scientific’s Advanced Bionics unit)
DEAFNESS
Cochlear implants transmit electrical signals from the inner ear to the brain, which interprets them as sound. An external apparatus is also worn behind the outer ear. (Boston Scientific’s Advanced Bionics unit)
MIGRAINE HEADACHES
Electrical pulses are directed to the occipital lobe of the brain. The implant site is at the base of the skull. (Medtronic and Boston Scientific’s Advanced Bionics unit)
POST-STROKE PARALYSIS
Embedded in the chest, a device stimulates part of the fibrous membrane surrounding the brain. The voltage is delivered by wires running up the neck and through the skull to a site directly above the area damaged by stroke. (Northstar Neuroscience)
PARKINSON’S DISEASE
Electrical stimulation of the thalamus, deep within the brain, halts otherwise uncontrollable tremors. The device is placed in the chest near the collarbone, with wires running up the neck and through the skull. (Medtronic) See also Most people with Parkinson’s disease in Europe are being denied a treatment hailed as the most significant advance in more than 30 years. BBC report Suitable patients receiving the therapy each year, Switzerland 29.4%, France 9.8%, Netherlands 9.3%, Spain 8.4%, Italy 5.3%, Germany 5.2%, UK 4.6%
The potential is great. Unlike most drugs, these implants produce few side effects. The devices also are aimed at prevalent diseases that can’t always be treated with drugs. As a result, medical-products executives and their surgeon partners predict that such implants could one day become as common as cardiac devices, which are currently helping 2 million Americans.
Little wonder, then, that some of the biggest names in health care are in a scramble to get into the market. Most recently, in December, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ ) bought implant-maker Guidant Corp. (GDT ) for $23.9 billion. “Any organ that a nerve can influence — and that’s every organ in the body — can be affected using this technology,” says Dr. Ali R. Rezai, who is director of functional neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic. “It’s a new era in neurology.”
The use of implantable mini-generators is more widespread than you probably think. Already, 190,000 patients are wearing electrodes in their heads to control Parkinson’s disease tremors or spinal-cord stimulators to relieve pain or prevent urinary incontinence. Some 30,000 have wires threaded to the vagus nerve in the neck to treat epilepsy, while 60,000 have microtransmitters in the inner ear enabling them to hear. These numbers are likely to grow — and quickly. One of the most promising devices is a $15,000 neurostimulator for chronic depression from Cyberonics Inc. (CYBX ), which the Food & Drug Administration conditionally approved on Feb. 2.
Candy Bradshaw can testify to the power of neurostimulation. She had a gastric pacemaker implanted in her abdomen in 1999 at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston as part of an early-stage trial sponsored by Transneuronix Inc. Today, Bradshaw, 47, weighs 200 pounds, down from 280 before surgery. She still has to watch her diet and exercise regularly. But the device makes her feel full sooner than before, so she eats less. “What it has done is fantastic,” says Bradshaw, an office manager in Worcester, Mass. Executives of Transneuronix in Mt. Arlington, N.J., say the implant, now in a pivotal trial, could be available as a less-invasive alternative to stomach stapling within three years.
At Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, researchers hope neurostimulators might enable paraplegics to walk again. Their device beams microvolts of electricity through six surgically installed electrodes to the site of a spinal cord injury. The electric field reverses direction, or oscillates, every 15 minutes. In a just-completed experiment on 10 volunteers, oscillating stimulation helped nerves regenerate after 14 weeks of treatment, say doctors in the study, a joint venture between Indiana University and Purdue University. Two patients even recovered some movement in their legs, and one man who had been impotent regained sexual functions. Doctors, fully aware that earlier efforts in this area failed to achieve results, now are screening paraplegics for a second round of trials.
As neurostimulators get even smaller and their microchips more powerful, researchers foresee new uses for these implants. Advanced Bionics Corp., a startup that Boston Scientific Corp (BSX ). acquired in 2004, is testing a rechargeable device so tiny that it can be injected almost anywhere in the body to treat pain or muscle dysfunction. Implants also could act as sensors, telling a miniature pump when to deliver a drug or customized protein to a precise location in the body. “The body is on fire with electricity,” says Dr. Stephen N. Oesterle, chief medical officer at Medtronic Inc (MDT )., the No. 1 maker of implantable electrical devices. “If you start with that concept, then all you need is imagination.”
The neuromodulation market is potentially enormous. There are up to 3 million Americans with chronic migraines and 4 million with depression who do not respond to drugs. The number of morbidly obese American adults is also estimated at 4 million. An additional 5 million Americans have been crippled to some degree by stroke, and the number grows by about 750,000 each year. Most of these people won’t rush out and have surgery. But if only a fraction get an implant, executives at medical-device companies project that overall sales of noncardiac pulse generators should balloon from $1.6 billion today to $10 billion in 10 to 15 years, depending on how quickly the FDA approves new uses. “Ultimately,” says Todd K. Whitehurst, vice-president for emerging indications at Advanced Bionics in Valencia, Calif., “this is going to be as big as cardiac-rhythm management.”
The returns for investors may also be substantial. Today, most neurostimulators don’t make money because years of research and development and marketing outlays overwhelm what are, in the beginning, only trickling revenue streams. Still, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc. (ANSI ), of Plano, Tex., averages gross margins of 70% on its spinal-cord device for chronic pain. Houston’s Cyberonics, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific — the other companies with FDA- approved neuromodulators — all boast even fatter margins.
As sales grow, device makers will be able to spread their expenses over a wider base and become more efficient manufacturers. If the FDA approves their new treatments, says Jan D. Wald, a medical-device analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. (AGE ) in Boston, pretax earnings at the smaller companies should rise to 20% to 30% of revenue, equalling the return on more established products such as pacemakers. “The market is close to an inflection point,” he says. Mark Landy, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., also sees the market growing by 20% for the next several years. For now, though, he cautions against buying these stocks, saying the share prices are already based on outsize returns.
Over time, however, these devices may restore more than lives; they could save money, too. In a comprehensive review of spinal-cord stimulation, a doctor and an economist at Maastricht University Hospital in the Netherlands reported in 2002 that the cost of implanting the device was offset by savings on physical therapy and other expenses in 2 1/2 years. The study’s authors, who tracked 54 patients over five years, also extrapolated that over a lifetime, each patient would save $60,000. CMS and most major private health plans such as Blue Cross Blue Shield Assn. cover implants for FDA-allowed devices, although reimbursement rates and prerequisites for surgery vary.
Neurostimulation has another selling point: Because the implants alter tissue only at their points of contact, side effects are generally negligible. Most say they can’t sense the stimulation at all. Contrast that with the most common drug treatment, Dilantin, which can cause dizziness and nausea and can lead to liver damage. “Think of the device as a smart bomb“says Advanced Neuromodulation (ANSI ) CEO Christopher G. Chavez.
Medical-device executives and surgeons point out that today’s implants are not generally intended to be a first-line treatment. Someone with heart trouble, for instance, would start off on a cholesterol-reducing drug and a stricter diet before getting outfitted with an implantable defibrillator. The same goes for neurostimulators, which are meant for patients with illnesses or disabilities for which there are no other treatments. People like Judith Walsh of Elmwood Park, Ill. In 1999, when Walsh was just 54, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. Thanks to aggressive physical therapy, she recovered the ability to speak — and also learned how to walk again. But her left arm remained atrophied, with her left hand permanently clenched in an almost-useless fist.
Last February, Walsh began electrical-stimulation therapy. In a clinical study sponsored by Northstar Neuroscience Inc., doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago implanted a pacemaker in her chest and tunneled wires up her neck to her head. They drilled through her skull to place an electrode patch about the size of a postage stamp on the protective membrane surrounding her brain, close to the swatch that had been killed by the stroke. The surgery took 90 minutes. For the next six weeks, even though she couldn’t feel it, the device bathed the target site with electricity as she willed her left arm and hand to move during 3 1/2 hours of supervised rehab every day. Then the implant and electrodes were surgically removed.
Today, Walsh can make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and grip the steering wheel of her car with her left hand. More gratifying, she says, she can feed and dress her five-month-old granddaughter, Emma, things she couldn’t do with her three older grandchildren when they were babies. “It’s hard, as a grandmother, not to be able to hold the grandchildren — and now I’m able to do that,” she says. “It’s the thrill of my life.” Executives at Northstar, a Seattle startup financed by J&J and Boston Scientific, among others, are now negotiating the parameters of a final-stage clinical trial with the FDA.
On Feb. 2, the FDA cleared Cyberonics’ vagus-nerve stimulator for chronic depression, pending some clarification on the labelling of the device. Chairman and CEO Robert P. “Skip” Cummins says Cyberonics analyzed results from 240 people with long-term depression after two years of neurostimulation. All of the subjects had failed to respond to drugs. The analysis found that half the patients were markedly better, with 18% reporting they were no longer depressed. With the FDA’s go-ahead, Cummins says, Cyberonics will begin pilot studies on Alzheimer’s disease, headache, anxiety disorders, and bulimia. Medtronic also may be closing in on a number of new therapies. Its products are in clinical tests to pulse the thalamus to treat epilepsy; another region of the deep brain to treat migraines, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; the hypoglossal nerve in the neck to treat sleep apnea; the sacral nerve to treat bowel disorders; and the stomach to treat obesity. Medtronic may have a deep-brain treatment for epilepsy in two or three years.
New treatments may become feasible as device sizes shrink and rechargeable batteries evolve. Advanced Bionics, for example, has developed a rechargeable implant that is about the size of an ink tube from a ballpoint pen cut to a one-inch length. Its first use, already permitted in Europe, is to prevent bladder incontinence by stimulating the organ directly, rather than through the sacral nerve. The Boston Scientific subsidiary also has begun a stage-one trial to see whether the device can alleviate chronic headaches by injecting it into the base of the skull to stimulate the brain’s occipital lobe. And soon, company executives say, they hope to start testing the device in the leg and arm as a therapy for pain or carpal-tunnel syndrome.
The leading cardiac-device makers are packing their newest implants with enough computing power to sense the environment around them and alter a patient’s treatment as needed. A next step would be to link sensor-laden neurostimulators to miniature drug pumps. In this way, a patient could be dosed exactly when needed and at the precise site where the medication is most effective. Researchers say this could reduce dosages by a thousandfold and avert side effects. Such systems would also enable a patient to be treated with bioengineered drugs and proteins too large to be absorbed by swallowing a pill. The combined therapy seems most promising in the brain, where many disorders might be tackled with protein drugs complemented by electrical pulses.
As these new therapies move closer to reality, the medical-products companies are putting down their markers. Last June, Boston Scientific paid $740 million in cash to acquire Advanced Bionics. Boston Scientific also holds a 14% stake in Cyberonics. Then in December came J&J’s megadeal with Guidant. Although Guidant does not have any neurostimulators in clinical trials, the Indianapolis company has been earmarking an increasing share of its R&D budget for these devices. Some medical-products executives predict J&J or Boston Scientific could buy Cyberonics or Advanced Neuromodulation next.
Some thoughts about the learning process…
Typically people think that success is good and confusion is bad. In our workshops we’re always telling you that success is the most
dangerous human experience, because it keeps you from noticing other things and learning other ways of doing things. That also means that any time you fail, there’s an unprecedented opportunity for you to learn something that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. Confusion is the doorway to reorganizing your perceptions and learning something new. If you were never confused, that would mean that everything that happened to you fit your expectations, your model of the world, perfectly. Life would simply be one boring, repetitive experience after another. Confusion is a signal that something doesn’t fit, and that you have a chance to learn something new.
Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ and the Transformation of Meaning by Richard Bandler and John Grinder
