Background: The discovery of neuroplasticity that thought and mental experience can change brain structure and function is the most important change in our understanding of the brain in 400 years. Our brains are not hardwired, or hardware, or computers, or machines What we do changes our brains, for the better or the worse. The discovery of neuroplasticity raises the question, how might these discoveries affect our understanding, and improve our treatment of eating disorders? Does the discovery of plasticity mean we change our model completely, or can we integrate these findings into existing knowledge?
Objectives: 1. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the concept of neuroplasticity. 2. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the plastic paradox, as it applies to eating disorders. 3. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the neuroplastic development of body maps, and how these maps can become poorly differentiated in disease states, dissociation and eating disorders. 4. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the five stages of neuroplastic healing: general cellular health, neurostimulation, neuromodulation, neurorelaxation and neurodifferentiation. 5. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain therapeutic approaches that target each of the stages of neuroplastic healing. 6. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain how the two hemispheres are normally in a dynamic relationship that is neuroplastically reinforced by the activities we choose. 7. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain how a pathological hemispheric lateralization occurs in eating disorders, and leads to concrete attitudes, limits on mentalization, and the narrowly focused attention of eating disorders, and how understanding this can be utilized in therapy. 8. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the âÃÂÃÂobject relations dyadâÃÂàin psychotherapy sessions, and identify it in sessions to improve mentalization, and left and right hemispheric integration. 9. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain the role played by dissociation from emotions and the body, a key factor in the development of many eating disorders. 10. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain common causes and psychodynamics that cause dissociations and self-fragmentations in eating disorder patients. 11. Following this presentation, participants will be able to identify, utilize and explain how to overcome these dissociations and fragmented self-experiences, in an integrative therapy program addressed to each of the stages of neuroplastic healing including cellular therapies, neurofeedback, intensive psychotherapy, somatic awareness therapies, group therapies, and animal therapies.
Using films of people with what were thought to be incurable neurological and psychiatric conditions, this lecture will explain the basics of plasticity, brain map change, and the five stages of neuroplastic healing, and then discuss an integrated program to treat eating disorders that takes these into account.
While eating disorder behaviors and attitudes may be rigid, this does not mean that the brains of patients with those disorders are rigid or lack plasticity; the illness is in part a product of how they use their plasticity, which is a product of their development. We will discuss approaches to the common developmental inhibitions, conflicts and psychodynamics, self-fragmentation, trauma, hopelessness, borderline personality organization and pathological defenses in the therapy of eating disorder patients. The important role of imbalances between our two hemispheres in eating disorders, and right hemisphere-based dissociation from the body, will be highlighted. The lecture will illustrate how to combine a thought and emotion-based, neuroplastically-informed, hemisphere-balancing psychotherapy, with neurofeedback and other modalities, to help patients access their full neuroplastic potential, stimulate dormant brain functions, improve self-regulation and neuromodulation, and develop a more integrated, differentiated view of themselves. When this occurs, patients can develop more life- affirming goals that make ED behaviors less necessary or attractive to them, so that they can grow out of a reliance on them, and mature psychologically at the same time.
Using films of people with what were thought to be incurable neurological and psychiatric conditions, this lecture will explain the basics of plasticity, brain map change, and the five stages of neuroplastic healing, and then discuss an integrated program to treat eating disorders that takes these into account.
While eating disorder behaviors and attitudes may be rigid, this does not mean that the brains of patients with those disorders are rigid or lack plasticity; the illness is in part a product of how they use their plasticity, which is a product of their development. We will discuss approaches to the common developmental inhibitions, conflicts and psychodynamics, self-fragmentation, trauma, hopelessness, borderline personality organization and pathological defenses in the therapy of eating disorder patients. The important role of imbalances between our two hemispheres in eating disorders, and right hemisphere-based dissociation from the body, will be highlighted. The lecture will illustrate how to combine a thought and emotion-based, neuroplastically-informed, hemisphere-balancing psychotherapy, with neurofeedback and other modalities, to help patients access their full neuroplastic potential, stimulate dormant brain functions, improve self-regulation and neuromodulation, and develop a more integrated, differentiated view of themselves. When this occurs, patients can develop more life- affirming goals that make ED behaviors less necessary or attractive to them, so that they can grow out of a reliance on them, and mature psychologically at the same time.
Norman Doidge, M.D., is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, essayist, and poet, on faculty at the Departments of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and Columbia University, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. His book, The Brain that Changes Itself was chosen by the Dana Brain Foundation USA’s journal, Cerebrum, from among the 30,000 books written on the brain, as the best general book on the brain. Address: 180 Bloor Street West, Suite 501, Toronto M6G 2Z6, Canada Medical License: Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, #52773
