Remember the dual role of the orbitofrontal cortex and cyngulate gyrus in both damping down the amygdala as well as in mother-infant social attunement? Let's look at that for a moment.
In the developing brain of the infant a face to face attunement at a distance of 10" or so (mother's eye to breast distance)is very important in the development of the right orbitofrontal cortex. Now remember, this isalsothe place where decisions are made about how the organism responds to threat messages from the amygdala.
So an individual lacking adequate neural development in this region, as a result of poor social attunement to the mother, will not be able to accurately judge the threat level of incoming messages, and in an extreme case, will regard every threat as an existential one!
In contrast, normal development in this part of the brain allows an individual to have a normal autonomic regulation to stress and trauma, and provides for the resiliency needed to deal with them.
Thus with developmental deprivation in the infant there is a lifelong autonomic dysregulation as a consequence, a lack of resilience, leaving the individual extremely vulnerable to physical and emotional illnesses for their whole lifetime.
The list of illnesses associated with lifelong accumulated trauma is long, and will include such things as chemical sensitivities, chronic fibromyalgic pain, chronic fatigue, and irritable bowel syndrome. These all tend to be diseases of self regulation rather than due to infection from outside pathological agencies.
Healing Trauma
There are well recognized ways to heal trauma.
Healing a trauma means dissipating the memory capsules. To do this we have to have a situation in which the cues are experienced without arousing the response. To subdue the response the amygdala must be downregulated, as this is the part of the brain which sends the emotional trigger to the right orbitofrontal cortex.
The anterior cyngulate is the social center of the limbic emotional brain, which includes the amygdala, so we can access it by social means. Rituals, social contact, have been the traditional means of indigenous peoples to heal trauma. By activating the social center of the brain through shared ritual we also gain control of the amygdala.
We also need to balance the right hemisphere where the arousal and emergency action happens by activating the left hemisphere and integrating the two. This can be achieved through EMDR eye movement therapy, which crosses the active focus from one hemisphere to the other (since the control area is on the right hemisphere only), through positive affirmations and empowerment techniques.
Neurofeedbacknow offers itself as an ideal way of achieving brain balance, and NeurOptimal does it in a completely non-intrusive manner. This is an ideal approach to dissolving the root of the problem, which are the neural networks representing the encapsulated trauma in the brain.
What makes NeurOptimal unique is its non-directive approach when the sensors on the head detect a neural network which does not function efficiently and smoothly (such as those representing an encapsulated trauma), feedback in the form of a micro-interruption to background music is generated.
This serves to alert the brain to the turbulence and the entire magic of it is that the brain then self corrects! In this way the entire trauma capsule is dissolved without any further action on the part of the client.
