- To Change Your Mind - Details Matter
Amen on PBS: The Visionary Finds His Larger Audience
The Neuroscience of Sexual Addiction: Carnes Leads the Way
March 1, 2008John O’Donohue: Irish Poet Interviewed by Krista Tippett
March 23, 2008Brain Function, SPECT Imaging, evolved Psychiatric Treatment goes Public
No matter how you slice the SPECT landscape tomographically, Daniel Amen is the primary person who began the leap from brain evidence to application using isotopes in brain imaging. Even now at large national meetings in the imaging industry the imaging folks are still far away from discussing the clinical brain applications. They simply don't have the experience/numbers! And they didn't have the psychiatric background to ask the right questions.
So it's fun for me to see my past mentor achieve the victory that any pioneer longs for in the context of repeated professional retributions and “quacklike” criticism.
Let's face it, he has been beat up for years on these matters, and still walks out with a smile, great science and provocative, true stories. He now finds himself in that phase of science [see Thomas Kuhn the Structure of Scientific Revolutions] wherein many are claiming it was their idea, …they figured it out at the same time.
Friends, it didn't work that way, and everyone on the inside knows he trained almost everyone currently owning their own gamma camera – and he has the data on all levels, and has scanned about 60 murderers as well to see what goes with their brains [more in a later post].
I started talking to Daniel in 2003, and now have many great Brain Function/SPECT applications experiences under my belt – but imagine what he has done from 1991… it's been ugly until recently. And I am here to tell you, his insights and patterns of interventions have proven remarkably helpful.
If you read criticism about Amen, most of it is based on the fact that many treating professionals are limiting themselves to his original insights, and aren't taking scan information to that next level of useful application.
So much more has evolved in the field of brain imaging even in the last 2 years, and we will join Daniel here at the two CorePsych sites to keep the public and professionals trained on those new initiatives.
And now he has entered a different world – a three-part PBS series based on his book: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life – and if you can't catch them on PBS, I have the links posted over at CorePsychPodcast where I keep my audio and video files.
Do pop over there if you can't catch the entire series on PBS – I have links from his newsletter for all three presentations. As usual, does a great job, and even has Bill Cosby as the MC!
cp
6 Comments
Amen’s work is widely criticized by the research community. Where is the independent, data-based evidence that his approach produces significantly different and significantly better treatment plans and outcomes than existing approaches? If it really is superior, meeting the standards of the research community is very straightforward and would end the harsh criticism. Where’s the objective, data-based proof?
Dr Thomas,
The literature is loaded with peer-reviewed specifics regarding SPECT brain findings as related to behavioral appearances and specific cognitive and affective findings. Amen has taken the time to pull together an excellent, significant collection of SPECT references on his site that directly refer to specific outcomes with specific SPECT brain findings.
I personally don’t like the word “superior” as it draws attention to his contributions in a polarized more black-white way, saying not doing brain scans is inferior work. Scans aren’t for everyone, they are remarkably instructive most of the time having read hundreds of them over the 4 years I ran his DC office. Scans add, brain evidence adds, to many diagnostic discussions and is indeed useful, but not categorically useful, as you correctly imply. I see SPECT and other pictorial brain studies as useful metabolic biomarkers that do effectively help ascertain which part of the brain is troubled, with some implications of why.
“Why” is the rub. New, molecular and cellular studies, also biomarkers – but cellular, do help answer they why on function. However, they are also questioned as they aren’t categorically predictable – but neither is blood cholesterol.
Evidence matters, that for me is the point. If it’s there, if it helps, why not use it? And why must it provide 100% accuracy when few tests in medicine promise that kind of specificity. SPECT is more specific than simply asking questions, it often is more predictable than neuropsychological testing, certainly beats qEEG for deeper structures, – and yet does not tell specifics, important specifics, about other cellular mediated disease states.
I discuss some of this in a recent post: http://corepsych.com/galileo I appreciate Galileo’s contribution with the process of using technology to break through appearances and illusions. In the mind Reality matters. Dreams are helpful, but reality turns the tide.
cp
Larry,
Am totally with you on your remarks, – so much that I added your recommended TED talk to a post a while back wherein you can see her whole TED presentation!
Check it out:
http://www.corepsychblog.com/2008/04/watching-your-b.html
And thanks so much for touching base with readers on that super presentation. Her book is in my CorePsych Books Brain Library for easy reference.
Thanks1
cp
I met Dr. Amen at a lecture he gave and then participated in his brain study of injured and uninjured brains. I learned a lot about the damage that can occur even from normal children’s bangs to the head – the kind that happen to most kids who engage in sports.
If you are interested in the brain and how it works, I highly recommend reading “”My Stroke of Insight”” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. It’s on the NY Times Bestseller list and it’s a wonderful book. Dr. Taylor’s talk at TED dot com is also AMAZING! Oprah interviewed Dr. Taylor and you can check that out on Oprah.com. And Time Magazine named Dr. T one of the 100 Most Influential people in the world. Having read her book, I can see why all the attention.
Dr. Amen’s book is brain science and it’s great at that. Dr. Taylor is a Harvard Brain Scientist, but what she writes about is the science and much more. She really cracks the code to understand how our brains (right and left hemispheres) work and she explains how we can get into our right brain and be happier and more joyful. Aside from any of the science, My Stroke of Insight is also just a great story.
Thanks Jace,
Added you to our Useful Resources – time to stand up and be counted. Interesting website.
Chuck
Thought your readers may be interested in a mental health campaign I’m helping to start called everyminute.org that is fighting stigma in trying to organize a grassroots lobbying force to secure more research funding. We just launched our website last week at http://www.everyminute.org Please check it out if it sounds interesting to you. Thanks!
Jace