From Neuroscience to 'Neuroart'

From neuroscience to ‗neuroart‘
Australian Somatic Psychotherapy Association
(ASPA)
Professional Development 2013

Werner Sattmann-Frese PhD

Werner Sattmann-Frese is a Senior Lecturer and CoProgram Manager at the Jansen Newman Institute (Think
Education Group) in Sydney.
Your feedback on this presentation would be appreciated.
Werner can be contacted at wsattmannfrese@jni.edu.au

Aims of this presentation
• To present recent neuroscience research findings
• To explore the usefulness of neuroscience in
underpinning somatic psychotherapy
• To explore in some detail why there is currently an
emerging tiredness in relation to neuroscience
among somatic psychotherapists
• To determine the capacity of neuroscience to act as a
driver for psychosocial and ecological change.

Questions
• Has neuroscience as a whole the capacity to drive
social, cultural, and ecological change?
• Is it really useful as a confirmation of the value of
psychotherapy?
• Which of the numerous aspects of neuroscience
can be used to support the necessary development
of socially, culturally, and ecologically aware
approaches to counselling and psychotherapy?
• Let us explore these questions in a discussion after
and during this presentation.

From the microscope to the ct-scan
• In 1818 Johann Wilhelm Heinroth coined the
term ‗psychosomatic medicine‘.
• Shortly after the microscope was discovered,
scientists started to look for and destroy the
microscopically small enemies of humans rather
than seeking to understand their roles in an
ecological universe.
• We are still trying to destroy microorganisms
almost 200 years later.
• Will neuroscience turn out to be another
postponement of ecological consciousness?

Neuroscience is socially constructed
• Neuroscience is not a unified approach to
generating understandings on mental and
physical health and wellbeing.
• It differs both in terms of perspectives and
worldviews.
• The next slide briefly outlines the wide range of
perspectives.

Neuroscience areas
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Molecular and cellular neuroscience
Affective neuroscience
Cognitive and behavioural neuroscience
Neuropsychiatry
Developmental neuroscience
Social neuroscience
Cultural neuroscience
Critical neuroscience

Neurobiology Scholars
o Candace Pert
o Alan Schore
o Louis Cozolino
o Jacques Fradin
o Jaak Panksepp
o Daniel Siegel
o Colin Trevarthen
o Ed Tronick
o Humberto Maturana

Neuroscience at a glance
• In the past few decades, researchers have learned
much about the fundamental workings of the brain,
with tremendous gains in knowledge about the
molecules that make it run. Scientists identified
genes for receptor proteins that detect smell and
taste. They determined that the stuff of memories is,
literally, a cascade of biochemical changes at the
connections, or synapses, between neurons. And
belying an old view that the nervous system is
hardwired from birth, experts found that its cells
retain some capacity to adapt and reorganize in
response to experience.
• http://www.kavliprize.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=27481

In a nutshell:
• Neuroplasticity
• New neurons grow and create connections
throughout the lifespan
• The whole body works like a highly complex selfregulating system
• The brain is continually driven by our genetic
blueprints and experiences via neuropeptides and
by the integration of differentiated parts
• Emotions (expression, mirroring, and sense making)
are highly important factors in human development
• The brain is programmed to be social

Brain hemispheres
• The left brain is responsible for logic and is in charge of
verbalizing internal thoughts and feelings. The left
hemisphere is also responsible for creating our life story,
our autobiographical narrative.
• The right brain is predominantly non-verbal and is
largely responsible for our perception of emotion, as well
as mediation of the body's physiological and emotional
state. "Retrieval of autobiographical memory appears to
be mediated by the right hemisphere" (Solomon, 2003).
Without this coherent narrative, we are less likely to be
able to make sense of past traumatic experiences.
• http://www.positivehumandevelopment.com/interpersona
l-neurobiology.html

Frontal Cortex

Corpus Callosum

Planning, Strategizing, Logic,
Judgment

Connects Hemispheres
Creativity and Problem
Solving

Source: Neurobiology
of Addiction (2009)
The University of
Sydney – Faculty of
Medicine

Cerebellum
Coordinates muscles/
movement and thinking
processes

Thalamus
Nucleus
accumbens

Extended Amygdala
Emotional responses: fear
and anger

Ventral
tegmental
area

Locus
coeruleus

Hippocampus

Forms Memories
Coordinates thinking processes

Affective neuroscience
• Emotions are thought to be related to activity in
brain areas that direct our attention, motivate our
behavior, and determine the significance of what is
going on around us. Pioneering work by Paul Broca
(1878) James Papez (1937), and Paul D. MacLean
(1952) suggested that emotion is related to a group
of structures in the center of the brain called the
limbic system, which includes the hypothalamus,
cingulate cortex, hippocampi, and other structures.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_neuroscience

The importance of emotions
• Biobehavioral scientists are increasingly recognizing the
importance of emotion for the fundamental tasks of survival
and adaptation (Damasio, 1994; Ekman & Davidson, 1994;
Pinker, 1997). Emotion facilitates decision making, has
significant influence on learning and memory, and provides
the motivation for critical action in the face of environmental
incentives. Emotion is also the stuff of individual differences. It
is a key component, if not the major ingredient, for many of
the fundamental dimensions of personality and vulnerability
factors that govern risk for psychopathology.
• http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2000/Emotion_Plastici
ty.pdf

Child maltreatment and the developing brain
• http://neur2201.unsw.wikispaces.net/file/view/maltreatme
nt+brain+develop+neuro+look.pdf
• Maltreatment during childhood is viewed as experience
that contributes to brain development, potentially leading
to differences in brain anatomy and functioning.

Attachment
• Early interpersonal experiences influence
interpersonal functioning and methods of regulating
emotional distress via ‗attachment working models‘
(Bowlby, 1980).
• Secure attachment
• Intergenerational attachment styles
• Insecure attachment styles
▫ Avoidant attachment
▫ Ambivalent attachment
▫ Disorganised attachment

Attachment and affect regulation
• In the last two decades, attachment theory (Bowlby,
1982/1969, 1973) has become one of the most
important conceptual frameworks for understanding
the process of affect regulation. Bowlby (1982/1969,
1973) highlighted the anxiety buffering and physical
protection functions of close relationships,
conceptualized proximity seeking as an alternative
to instinctive ﬁght–ﬂight responses, and emphasized
the importance of interpersonal experiences as a
source of individual differences in affect regulation
over the life span.
• http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Shaver/site/Publi
cations/mikulincerpere03.pdf

Complex trauma
• Complex trauma can be caused by childhood
abuse in all its forms as well as neglect and
growing up with family violence or dysfunction.
• Any form of violence experienced within the
community – civil unrest, war trauma, genocide,
cultural dislocation, sexual exploitation or retraumatisation of victims later in life can also
cause complex trauma.
• http://www.asca.org.au/displaycommon.cfm?an=
1&subarticlenbr=350

Trauma and brain integration
• Traumatic experiences are associated with reduced
―cortical and sub-cortical areas‖ as well as reduced
connectivity of left and right brain hemispheres
(Perry, 1997). Research indicates this separation as
being due to hindered growth of a brain structure
called the corpus callosum, which connects the two
hemispheres and enables neural integration to
occur (Teicher, 2002; De Bellis et al., 1999a,
1999b). If the corpus callosum is unable to
adequately integrate the left and right brain, a
person‘s ability to achieve a coherent narrative of
their life story is compromised (Solomon, 2003).
• http://www.positivehumandevelopment.com/interper
sonal-neurobiology.html

Making sense of trauma
• Research has demonstrated that it is not the traumatic
events in our lives that determine resiliency so much as
how we make sense of those events that determine our
ability to experience resiliency (Siegel, 1999). For
example, if I were physically abused as a small child and
my way of making sense of the abuse was that I was to
blame, I might expect similar traumatic abuse from
others when I make a mistake. However, if I were to
make sense of the abuse by viewing my abuser as
having anger issues that are not related to me ("They
are the jerk, not me!), I might not expect others to abuse
me in a similar manner.
• http://www.positivehumandevelopment.com/interpersona
l-neurobiology.html

Dysregulation and the right brain
• Disorganised-disoriented insecure attachment, a pattern
common in infants abused in the first 2 years of life, is
psychologically manifest as an inability to generate a
coherent strategy for coping with relational stress. Early
abuse negatively impacts the developmental trajectory
of the right brain, dominant for attachment, affect
regulation, and stress modulation, thereby setting a
template for the coping deficits of both mind and body
that characterise PTSD symptomatology. These data
suggest that early intervention programs can
significantly alter the intergenerational transmission of
posttraumatic stress disorders.
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11929435

Making sense of the reduced growth
• It makes sense to reason that the compromised
integration between the two hemispheres
actually protects a person from constantly
feeling the full impact of the trauma he or she
experienced. In this view it may be viewed as
the neurological manifestation of neurosis.

Impact on cortex and limbic system
• Research shows that children and adults with
histories of child abuse can respond to minor
triggers with a range of catastrophic reactions. This
is because traumatised children (and adult
survivors) become increasingly responsive to
relatively minor stimuli as a result of decreased
frontal lobe functioning (learning and problem
solving) and increased limbic system (amygdala)
sensitivity (impulsiveness) (Streeck-Fischer & van
der Kolk, 2000).
• http://asca.org.au/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subart
iclenbr=194

Emotional learning
• Some of the most impressive evidence for brain
plasticity is emotional learning (LeDoux, 1996).
Plasticity in the neural circuitry underlying
emotion is also likely to play an important role in
understanding the impact of early environmental
factors in influencing later individual differences
and risk for psychopathology (Meaney et al.,
1996). http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2000/Em
otion_Plasticity.pdf

Effects of relational trauma (1)
• Early traumatic attachment takes place when infants
and toddlers repeatedly encounter massive
misattunement from caregivers who trigger (and do
not repair) long-lasting intensely dysregulated states
in the child. The growth-inhibiting environment of
relational trauma generates dense and prolonged
levels of negative affect associated with extremely
stressful states of hyper- and hypoarousal.
• http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/__SchoreDissociati
on09.pdf (p.114)

Effects of relational trauma (2)
• In self-defense the child severely restricts overt
expression of attachment need and significantly reduces
the output of the emotion-processing, limbic centered,
attachment system. When the child is stressed,
defensive functions are rapidly initiated that quickly shift
the brain from interactive regulatory modes into long
enduring, less complex autoregulatory modes. These
patterns are primitive strategies for survival that remain
online for long intervals of time, periods in which the
developing brain is in a hypometabolic state that is
detrimental to the substantial amounts of energy
required for critical period biosynthetic processes.
http://www.allanschore.com/pdf/__SchoreDissociation09
.pdf (p.114)

Let us briefly explore schizophrenia as
an example:

Neurological features of schizophrenia
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Significant loss of grey matter
Enlarged amygdala
Neurological abnormalities
Enlarged ventricles in the brain
Impaired cognitive function
Decreased prefrontal brain function
Impaired awareness of illness

Schizophrenia
• Significant Loss of Brain Gray Matter: Individuals
with schizophrenia, including those who have
never been treated, have a reduced volume of
gray matter in the brain, especially in the
temporal and frontal lobes. Recently
neuroscientists have detected gray matter loss
of up to 25% (in some areas).
• http://www.schizophrenia.com/disease.htm#hist
ory

Symptoms suggestive of frontal lobe
dysfunction
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Emotional dullness
Impaired judgment
Poor initiative, motivation, drive
Lack of insight
Difficulty in planning
Impaired problem-solving/abstract reasoning
Decreased concern for personal hygiene
Social withdrawal

•

Source: Neurobiology and Schizophrenia, Godfrey D. Pearlson, Neuropsychiatry
Research Center, Institute of Living, Yale University School of Medicine

11.05

Neurotransmitter involved in schizophrenia
Dopamine-hypothesis of schizophrenia
Clinical observations:
• Conventional antipsychotic drugs inhibit D2
receptor.
• Schizophrenia-like symptoms occur in
amphetamine abusers, due to excessive DA
release.
• Baseline DA levels and stimulated release
of DA are abnormal in mesolimbic systems
of brains from schizophrenic patients.
DA system plays a role in schizophrenia.
However, it is likely not to be the only
and/or main neurotransmitter system
implicated.
(Freedman 2003 N Engl J Med 349:1738)

Source: www.
mercaz.info/pclection/SCHIZOPHRENIA.
ppt

Dopamine imbalances
• Thus, the current predominant view is that DA
systems in schizophrenia might be
characterized by an imbalance between
subcortical and cortical DA systems: subcortical
mesolimbic DA projections might be hyperactive
(resulting in hyperstimulation of D2 receptors
and positive symptoms) while mesocortical DA
projections to the PFC might be hypoactive
(resulting in hypostimulation of D1 receptors,
negative symptoms and cognitive impairment).

Questions:
• Have these findings helped us in understanding
the psychosocial causes of schizophrenia?
• Are these findings useful for the therapeutic
work with individuals afflicted with this condition?
• Are dysfunctions of brain structures the causes
of problematic perceptions or useful responses
of the bodymind to organise survival in the face
of high levels of trauma?

Proposed causes of schizophrenia
• Research done during the past decade has
revealed that schizophrenia is caused by a
combination of genetic or biological
predisposition as well as other factors such as
prepregnancy factors, pregnancy stress, other
prenatal factors, social stress, family stress or
environmental stressors during a person's life.
• http://www.schizophrenia.com/disease.htm#hist
ory

Epidemiological features of schizophrenia
• Individuals with a schizophrenic parent are about 10
times more likely to develop the condition than
individuals with a parent without the condition (50
times when both parents are affected).
• People born in spring have a 10% higher risk and
people born in autumn have a 10% lower risk than
people born in other seasons.
• Individuals born and raised in big cities have a
higher risk of developing the condition than
individuals raised in the countryside.
• http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v2/n4/full/nn04
99_295.html

Types of abuse
• Childhood sexual abuse, for example, was
associated with hallucinations, whilst being
brought up in a children's home was associated
with paranoia. The research further suggests a
strong relationship between environment and
the development of psychosis, and provides
clues about the mechanisms leading to severe
mental illness.
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/1
20419102440.htm

Trauma and neglect
• Persisting mental health problems are a common
consequence of child abuse and neglect in adults.
Mental health problems associated with past
histories of child abuse and neglect include
personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder,
dissociative disorders, depression, anxiety disorders
and psychosis (Afifi, Boman, Fleisher, & Sareen,
2009; Chapman et al., 2004; McQueen et al., 2009;
Springer et al., 2007).
• Depression is one of the most commonly occurring
consequences of past abuse or neglect (KendallTackett, 2002).
• http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs20/rs20.ht
ml

Events in depression
• The hypothalamus registers distress from insults to
the self
• Its axons in the pituitary gland release the
neuropeptide cortical release factor (CRF)
• The presence of CRF in the gland stimulates the
release of adenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
• ACTH travels through the blood stream to the
adrenal glands
• These glands release the steroid corticosterone
• The presence of this steroid is associated with
depression
• Permanent stimulation with ACTH causes the
gland‘s receptors to shrink to avoid the release of
steroids to increase well-being in the face of trauma

Norman Doidge:
• Kandel argues that when psychotherapy
changes people, "it presumably does so through
learning, by producing changes in gene
expression that alter the strength of synaptic
connections, and structural changes that alter
the anatomical pattern of interconnections
between nerve cells of the brain."
Psychotherapy works by going deep into the
brain and its neurons and changing their
structure by turning on the right genes (Doidge,
2007, p. 156).

Norman Doidge:
• A study of depressed patients treated with
interpersonal psychotherapy — a short-term
treatment that is partially based on the theoretical
work of two psychoanalysts, John Bowlby and Harry
Stack Sullivan — showed that prefrontal brain
activity normalized with treatment.
• A more recent fMRI brain scan study of anxious
patients with panic disorder found that the tendency
of their limbic systems to be abnormally activated by
potentially threatening stimuli was reduced following
psychoanalytic psychotherapy (Doidge, 2007, p.
164).

Critique of affective neuroscience
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•
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•

Brain centrism
Focus on individuality and interiority
Promotion of individual choice and autonomy
Explaining the complexity of life in terms of
‗scanable‘ brain functions
• Focus on mediating neural processes rather
than on changing socioeconomic living
conditions

Critical neuroscience
• Most likely, much of the concern and revolutionary
language about the radical changes imposed by
neuroscience on society arise from the gap between
actual findings in research and the representations of
the findings.
• Choudhury et al., Critical Neuroscience: Linking
Neuroscience and Society Through Critical Practice,
BioSocieties (2009), 4, 61–77, London School of
Economics and Political Science doi:10.1017/S1745855209006437

Focus on brain activity and cognition
• Findings from cognitive neuroscience have
revealed new insights into how mental
processes emerge from the activity of the brain
• Do mental processes [language] not also
emerge in response to present cultural and
ecological living conditions?

Lack of body-mind unity
• How self-conscious can we be if parts of our body
are numb and feel wooden when touched, limiting
our ability to experience the possibilities associated
with this disowned part of our bodymind?
• Cohen (1993) says that the brain is the last to know.
• Lopsided association of consciousness with the
brain (excluded: role of cellular memory of the whole
body as container of a person‘s consciousness)

Summary of points of criticism
• Belief that it is possible to do objective and
value-free research
• Lopsided focus on early experiences (excluded:
effects of current cultural, economic, and
ecological living conditions)
• Many neuroscience scholars continue to use
pathologising and stigmatising language and
terms such as ‗dysfunctions, disorders, and
treatments‘

The future: ‗neuroart‘?
• ‘Neuroart’:
• Integrates neuroscience, attachment, and
epidemiological research within a network and
complexity paradigm
• Interprets neuroscience findings such as ‗dysfunctional‘
brain structures and reduced information flows not as a
problem but as life-saving adaptive processes
• Expands research on ‗neuropeptides‘ into areas of
research such as epigenetics and the role of genetic
code creation and sharing
• Is ‗self-critical‘ of its research methodologies and role in
society

The brain is everywhere
• Neurons, immune cells, endocrine cells,and many others
synthesise, store, and secrete neuropeptides (which should
not be called neuropeptides anymore for this very reason).
• They should be called by their names such as cytokines,
chemokines, lymphokines, interleukines
• ‗These substances‘ inform the brain about what is going on
in particular cells.
• They can even alter the permeability of the brain‘s surface
to get access to other receptors deep inside the brain.
• According to Pert (1997, p. 185) the mind is the network
that holds the psychological, endocrine, and immune
system together.

Neuropeptides
• Neuropeptides are small protein-like molecules used by
neurons to communicate with each other. They are
neuronal signaling molecules. The brain largely functions
by virtue of neuropeptides.
• Neuropeptides are expressed and released by neurons,
and mediate or modulate neuronal communication by
acting on cell surface receptors. The human genome
contains about 90 genes that encode precursors of
neuropeptides.
• http://www.neuropeptides.nl/

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOSLvTWjebw
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEcdGK4DQSg
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ysG9ay8TAs

Lindley: The Soma
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 25, 2010)

• There is now extant scientific evidence suggesting that
nature has evolved a number of molecular acquired
inheritance mechanisms. It seems that Lamarck was
right after all! In Soma, Dr Robyn Lindley provides us
with an easy to understand and quite sobering account
of what the new genetics is telling us... "What the mother
ate, can determine whether mice pups have a yellow
coat, a brown coat or a mottled yellow and brown coat."
"You are what your parents ate. Well sometimes"
"Smoking and chemicals in the work place can cause
sperm damage for generations to come." "Repeated
behaviours are inherited." ...and much more! We ignore
the consequences at our peril. Learn why scientists now
believe that acquired inheritance effects are real.

Robyn Lindley‘s soma blog
• What we are also discovering is that many aspects
of our own lives can have a lasting impact on our
evolution as a species. What we eat, what diseases
we develop, how we behave to our young and to
each other, and what we do can all alter our
genome. Even your cigarettes or sunbaking can
leave a specific genetic marker behind in your
genes. So there we have it, Lamarckian forces are
at work, and we are only just beginning to
understand how this occurs, and what it means.
• http://thesomablog.com/

Epigenetics
• In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is
the study of changes in gene expression or cellular
phenotype, caused by mechanisms other than
changes in the underlying DNA sequence.
• Gene expression can be controlled through the
action of repressor proteins that attach to silencer
regions of the DNA. These changes may remain
through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's
life and may also last for multiple generations.
However, there is no change in the underlying DNA
sequence of the organism; instead, non-genetic
factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or
"express themselves") differently.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

Sharing of learning through the dissemination of
genetic code
• In the world's oceans, 90% of the biomass is
microbial, with viruses turning over 20% of that daily.
Without the turnover of biomass driven by viruses,
many sources of food would not be present for other
organisms.
• As bacteria are incredibly diverse, then the viruses
that infect them, phages, are even more diverse. As
bacteria inhabit almost every niche of the earth, so
do viruses.
• https://www.boundless.com/microbiology/viruses-2/viral-ecology/viral-roles-in-ecosystems/

http://www.slideshare.net/moincamacaro/horizontal-gene-transfer

Sharing of gene fragments (Pollmann, 1977)
• Gene sharing through viruses and other
mechanisms (peptides?):
▫ Maintains high levels of biodiversity
▫ Represents an intraspecies and interspecies
information sharing and learning system
▫ Accelerates adaptation to changing ecological
environments
▫ Is the oldest language of the planet
▫ Creates illness in only about 10% of cases after the
transfer and incorporation of newly acquired genetic
code into an organism (so-called infection)

Integration of ‗antigen‘ and ‗neuropeptide‘
functionalities
• Although antigens do initiate immune responses
and cytokines do regulate immune processes, a
wide array of recent research demonstrates that
there are bidirectional communication pathways
between the immune system and central
nervous system (CNS), with each providing
important regulatory control over the other.
• http://people.auc.ca/brodbeck/4007/article6.pdf

References
• Cohen, B.B. (1993). Sensing, feeling, and action.
Northhampton, MA: Contact.
• Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself. Melbourne,
VIC: Scribe
• Lindley, R. (2010). Soma. Createspace/amazon.com.
• Pert, C. (1997) Molecules of emotion. New York: Scribner.
• Pollmann, W. (1977). Viren, Botschafter lebender Systeme:
eine Einführung in die Virusforschung, Munich: Piper.
• Siegel, D. (????) An interpersonal neurobiology of
psychotherapy: The developing mind and the resolution of
trauma.???
• Slaby, J. (2010). Steps towards a critical neuroscience.
Phenom Cogn Sci (2010) 9:397–416DOI 10.1007/s11097010-9170-2

From Neuroscience to 'Neuroart'

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