Theory

In 1970 I had a vision of what brain training could be in the future: a simple, powerful, and safe way to self-optimize that is so easy and intuitive that anyone can use it. NeurOptimal version 3 is that elegant vision and it’s here now From https://neuroptimal.com/no3-landing-page April 17, 2018. Why am I starting with this? Because that vision has animated all of my work, as well as the work my wife, Susan Brown, Ph.D., and I did to co-develop NeurOptimal. That work has now been determined by the FDA to involve a General Wellness Product, and that means anyone can use it –no special training, knowledge, expertise, certification of licensure required or needed. This orientation has been one of the most distinct contributions I have made, and it brought enormous animosity from many others in the field of neurofeedback. So what went into developing our “Dynamical Neurofeedback, and what makes it so different from every other approach to neurofeedback? And, I emphasize here that my specific contributions did couple with Dr. Susan Brown’s work with the evolving system.

The CNS is primarily designed for two purposes: To detect differences and to reduce its own discomfort

Scientific and popular lore have promulgated a connection between emotion and the limbic forebrain. However, there are a variety of structures that are considered limbic, and disagreement as to what is meant by “emotion”. This essay traces the initial studies upon which the connection between emotion and the limbic forebrain was based and how subsequent experimental evidence led to confusion both with regard to brain systems and to the behaviors examined. In the process of sorting out the bases of the confusion the following rough outlines are sketched: 1) Motivation and emotion need to be distinguished. 2) Motivation and emotion are processed by the basal ganglia; motivation by the striatum and related structures, emotion by limbic basal ganglia: the amygdala and related structures. 3) The striatum processes activation of readiness, both behavioral and perceptual; the amygdala processes arousal, an intensive dimension that varies from interest to panic. 4) Activation of readiness deals with “what to do?” Arousal deals with novelty, with “what is it?” 5) Thus both motivation and emotion are the proactive aspects of representations, of memory: motivation, an activation of readiness; emotion, a processing of novelty, a departure from the familiar. 6) The hippocampal-cingulate circuit deals with efficiently relating emotion and motivation by establishing dispositions, attitudes. 7) The prefrontal cortex fine-tunes motivation, emotion and attitude when choices among complex or ambiguous circumstances are made