Neurobiological Foundations for EMDR Practice, 2nd Edition

ISBN:

978-0-8261-7266-2

(Print)

978-0-8261-7267-9

(eBook)
DOI:

10.1891/9780826172679

Published:

Abstract

The inner subjective world of the mind was historically relegated to the margins of social science, confined instead within the traditional domains of psychology and psychoanalysis. In the seven years since the first edition of this book was written, many developments in the fields of neuroscience and psychotherapy that were just beginning to appear on the horizon have received a massive increase in interest and study. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is so profoundly guided by the adaptive information processing (AIP) model, it is crucial to examine how it measures up to researched neurobiological models of consciousness and information processing. The book is written with language that is not only technical but also suitable as an introduction to the neural underpinnings of consciousness and EMDR. It examines pertinent neuroscience research related to the understanding of consciousness, information processing, and traumatic disorders of consciousness. The book first presents with basic research in the neurosciences relevant to online/wakeful information processing, which includes sensation, perception, somatosensory integration, cognition, memory, emotion, language, and motricity. The second section examines the neuroscience research relevant to disorders of consciousness, which include anesthesia, coma, and other neurological disorders. Major focus is given to the disorders of type I posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex PTSD/dissociative disorders, and personality disorders. The third section presents the reader with an examination of neuroscience research relevant to chronic trauma and autoimmune function. A number of medical illnesses, collectively known as “medically unexplained symptoms”, are examined. These include fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, systemic lupus erythematosus, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis, Sjögren’s syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis. The final section examines the foregoing material with respect to the AIP model. It explores treatment implications vis-à-vis the various types of PTSD and the presentations of medically unexplained symptoms.

6: Human Development From a Neurobiological Perspective

DOI:

10.1891/9780826172679.0006

Abstract

The foregoing examination of the neural substrates of information processing serves as a platform from which one examines the expression of different types of disruption of consciousness. However, given that a number of disorders of consciousness are developmental in origin—that is, they occur during human neural maturation and growth—certain precepts of human development must first be illustrated in order to fully realize the diverse spectrum of ways in which consciousness can fall into disrepair. The right brain is centrally involved not only in processing social–emotional information, promoting attachment functions, and regulating bodily and affective states, but also in the organization of vital functions supporting survival and enabling the organism to cope dynamically with stress. The maturation of these adaptive right-brain regulatory capacities is experience dependent, embedded in the attachment connection between the infant and its primary caregivers. Thus attachment theory is an affect-regulatory theory.