Research

Emotional Brain Training research began with a controlled clinical trial of obese adolescents in Northern California that was funded by the US DHHS Bureau of Maternal and Child Health that showed significant post-treatment improvements in weight, behavior, affect and knowledge. A two-year study of overweight adults, and a six-year follow-up of these subjects showed sustained improvements in weight, blood pressure, depression, affect and other variables. A study conducted by a University of Chicago at Illinois researcher of 134 program graduates showed the the same trends, including improvements in positive psychological variables and diabetic control.

Research on the effectiveness of Emotional Brain Training (EBT) has been promising. Several studies have been published and currently, a five-year grant funded by the National Institutes of Health to formally evaluate the effectiveness of brief interventions based on EBT is ongoing. Additional studies on short-and long-term effectiveness of the method are planned. Research is ongoing in a pilot project on EBT in conjunction with the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. In 2010, the EBT Practice-based Research Group for EBT Providers was formed to facilitate practice-based research.

The most important finding in the research that has been conducted is that EBT consistently has shown broad-spectrum sustained post-treatment improvements in a range of stress-related variables, including obesity, blood pressure, exercise, and depression. These findings are in contrast to the results show in 100s of studies in the literature of various treatments for each of these indices which show a "V" shaped result. After treatment ends the improvements abate and, in most cases, return to pre-treatment levels or worse. These initial studies suggest that EBT may be an effective treatment for improving the emotional set point (decreasing allostatic load) and rewiring the emotional brain.

Prior to the past decade, scientific thought held that the brain could not change. But in the last 10 years, research has shown that the brain can change, developing new nerve cells (neurogenesis) and strengthen or weaken neural circuitry. Emotional Brain Training draws on these understandings of neuroplasticity to provide repeated experiences to change neural circuitry to increase the strength and dominance of neural circuits that favor homeostasis and decrease the dominance of neural circuits that favor allostasis, in favor of establishing a new emotional set point outside the range of chronic stress, in order to prevent or improve stress symptoms and enhance well-being.

The brain is highly plastic and has the capacity to develop new nerve cells (neurogenesis) and create, strengthen, weaken and break neural circuits, thereby changing the physical structure and functional organization of the brain. Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge has in fact stated that neuroplasticity is "one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century." The term plasticity to describe changes in neuronal processes was originated by Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski. Until the last 10 years, the sub-cortical (limbic system and reptilian brain) was considered immutable in structure after childhood and other areas — such as the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex — were plastic after childhood, accounting for changes in explicit memory. Then UCSF's Michael Merzenich and Vanderbilt University's Jon Kaas as well as other researchers demonstrated that the brain is highly plastic throughout the lifespan. The brain change is use-dependent, so that the potential for a neuron to fire and wire to another changes with repeated experience. Neural circuits are the basis for all learning, including thoughts, feelings and behaviors, so the plasticity of the brain opens new opportunities in health care and education.

How neuroplasticity is applied in Emotional Brain Training

The method is based on rewiring the emotional implicit learning or the emotional brain. The emotional brain is comprised of the limbic system and reptilian brain, although the precise areas have been disputed. The processes of responding to daily life, self-regulation, the circuits that respond to internal and external stimuli to encode an emotional process, a neocortical process and a corrective response to the stimulus are stored in these primitive brain areas.

These circuits are encoded early in life before conscious memory systems mature and during stress, when the functioning of conscious memory systems is compromised. The use of the tools over time equips the prefrontal cortex, the seat of consciousness and oversight of the emotional brain with the pro. By rewiring the neuronal stress circuits that are maladaptive and strengthening the neuronal circuits that are adaptive people can create increased levels of persistent of well-being and resiliency. Adaptive and maladaptive circuits cannot fire at the same time, and the emotional brain only changes through experiences, so focusing on the present moment, and the next and the next and spending more moments of the day in well-being, switching the brain back to that state during stress, changes the emotional architecture of the brain. Positive emotional plasticity results are enhanced by creating sufficient stress to make the circuits fluid and open to change, but not excessive stress. Learning in increments also favors improved results, thus the six EBT kits. Being in an emotional environment in which there is support for using the skills effectively and often, giving opportunities to practice the tools with others who share a common goal – being wired at 1 – in consistent with research on positive plasticity.

Axiomatic physiology is based on the brain responding to stress by changing the brain state or dominant brain area. Neural circuits that give us the capacity to bring past experience forward to draw upon in anticipating stressors or responding effectively to current stress is state-specific. When the brain adopts a specific state of stress, then memories formed in that state of stress are "hot" and easily accessed and aroused and open to strengthening or weakening. Memories formed in other brain states are "cold" and not readily accessed, aroused and open to change.

It is normal for the dominant brain area to change throughout the day in response to periods of stress and relaxation, and positive and negative emotion, and approach and avoidance. Stimuli from the internal environment and external milieu flow into the limbic brain (emotional brain = limbic brain and reptilian brain) which perceives the level of threat based on previous experiences and arouses a circuit that is most similar to the current stressor. Once that circuit has been encoded, given a similar experience it will be aroused again easily in preference to encoding a new circuit. The circuits that are encoded in stress are an open looped system, without internal "shut off" and promote chronic amplified stress that is not productive and in most cases is deleterious. The circuits that are encoded in states or relaxation are a closed looped system, so that deviations in arousal are "flickering" rather than tending to be persistent.

The reward and stress circuitry are interdependent and in homeostatic (closed looped) states, the brain can focus attention and experience activation of the reward circuitry that is sustainable and adaptive (eudonic rewards). The rewards are natural pleasures (e.g., nature, music, art, companionship) and higher order rewards (e.g., authenticity, integrity, spirituality). In allostatic (open looped) states, the brain cannot focus attention and experience activation of the reward circuitry that is adaptive. The brain is reward driven. Without access to adaptive rewords, it defaults to artificial rewards that trigger abnormal highs and lows of chemicals in the reward circuitry. Although they are effective in the short term, they tend to become repetitive and deleterious in the long- term. These "hedonic" rewards can be emotions, thoughts or behaviors. In stress, addictive and compulsive behaviors are more common and more extreme, and in the stressed brain state, all domains of life are extreme, and amplify stress and maladaptive aspects of life.

The repeated activation of the stress response can cause wear and tear and adaptation of the mind and body in the long term. Allostatic load is the cumulative impact on the body and the brain that sensitizes the brain to stress and becomes an insult in its own right, contributing to a new set point of chronic stress outside the homeostatic range, which is defended by the organism. Although the alleviation of stress symptoms is important, the problem is the allostatic state of the brain, and without changes in that allostatic load and emotional set point, the individual is at risk of excessive dependency on medications, devices and procedures to treat stress symptoms. EBT suggests a new paradigm of health care in which medical services and pharmacologic interventions are employed, however, the primary focus of health care is to reverse allostatic load and change the emotional set point. Instead of a health goal that is narrow, such the amelioration of a specific stress symptom, the goal is to enhance health and happiness, to decrease the whole range of sources of morbidity and to decrease mortality without excessive dependence and misuse of unsustainable health care practices.

How stress science is applied in Emotional Brain Training

EBT is based on comprehensive care, using health care effectively, lifestyle change appropriately, and the rewiring of allostatic circuits and strengthening of homeostatic circuits. One cannot separate the brain and body, and the external and internal environments, so attention to health promoting environments in proximity and globally are a focus on EBT. EBT is not a quick fix and the orchestration by the individual of the skills and practice of rewiring the emotional brain from favoring allostatic states to favoring homeostatic states involves individual and system changes. However, the focus of the training is on the individual's power to effect positive emotional plasticity, to develop a practice of using the tools repeatedly and progressively until with the limits of their circumstance and genetics stress symptoms have faded and they have freedom from protracted and substantial drives for false attachments and external solutions. This new set point of homeostasis favors personal evolution, and the increasing reliance on eudonic rewards, the rewards that are associated with the long-term survival of the species.

Attachment theory is based on evidence that the connection between parent and child downloads into the neural circuits of the infant the tools to respond effectively to stress and support development. The Solution Method trains participants in the tools to respond to stress effectively and promote the experience of developmental rewards.

Attachment theory originated with the work of John Bowlby who explored that attachment between mother and child and developmental processes. Later Mary Ainsworth developed the concept of a secure base, a safe place for the infant to return to after disruption and an attachment "schema," a mental representation of the responsive parent. In a limbic/right hemisphere connection, the mother responds to the emotional state of the infant in an infant-led orchestration, with the mother returning the infant to homeostasis from the whole bandwidth of arousal states. In addition, that contact transmits basic expectations about self, others and life to the infant that are either adaptive or maladaptive. A secure, responsive relationship between parent and infant facilitates psychosocial development and favors resiliency. Repeated contact with a responsive parent regulates the infant's maturing regulatory systems and "programs" the emotional and behavioral responses of the offspring. A responsive connection between parent and child promotes a secure attachment and predictive of resiliency in adulthood and a permissive, neglectful or abusive connection between parent and infant is considered an insecure connection and promotes vulnerability to stress.

There is a 70 percent transmission rate of attachment style between parent and child which favors the intergenerational consistency in stress symptoms and developmental rewards. Later research by UCLA's Allan N. Schore and Daniel Siegel explored the effects of secure attachment on brain development, affect regulation and mental health, as well as the neurobiological basis for development.

How attachment theory is applied in Emotional Brain Training

Secure attachment is based on a parent focusing attentions, attuning to the child's emotional brain state, then finding the quickest, easiest way to return the child to a brain state that favors survival of the species. The work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has forwarded the idea that the goal of regulation is not mediocre states, but joyous states of balance and well- being. The child's experience of feeling seen, heard and felt, and then returning to a state of well-being which occurs repeatedly strengthen neural circuits of secure attachment and resiliency, which promotes health and happiness. The Check In Tool of the method is based not on the dyadic regulation between parent and child, but on the capacity of the prefrontal cortex (consciousness) to focus effective dyadic regulation and appraise the brain state of the child. The five skills of EBT mirror the authoritative parenting style associated with secure attachment for each level of stress. The brain integrates stress from psychological, metabolic and physical stressors, and EBT includes attention to good health care and self care, and health promoting lifestyles to decrease the frequency and duration of stress, and increase the brain and body's capacity for disease prevention and health promotion. The early encoding of false generalizations and false attachments associated with stress and the maladaptive stress processing associated with insecure attachment are seen as the primary sources of stress in daily life for most people, exacerbated by situational stress. The reconsolidation of those stress circuits is the primary focus of EBT.