Neuroscience and the Frontiers of Trauma Treatment
Becoming aware of our inner experience
The Neuroscience and the Frontiers of Trauma Treatment lecture and the optional CEU content
Building on the foundational conception of trauma, this lecture explores the neuroscience of trauma and a spectrum of body-centered interventions aimed at helping people integrate traumatic memories. At the core of trauma’s persistence is the dysfunction it induces in the brain and body. Neuroscience gives us a window into the consequences of both limited traumatic experiences and chronic trauma. Within that context, you will learn how trauma rearranges the brain’s wiring - specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.This lecture will show how trauma affects the developing mind and brain, and teach how trauma affects self-awareness and self-regulation.
This lecture will discuss and demonstrate affect regulation techniques, examine ways to deal with fragmented self-experience, and teach the benefits of yoga, EMDR, meditation, neurofeedback, music, and theater.
Course duration 90 minutes
At the end of this lecture you will be able to
Explain how neuroscience has enhanced our understanding of trauma
Describe critical parts of the brain and how the damage trauma causes impairs their functioning, leading to altered perceptions of the world
Explain the difference between limited traumatic experiences and developmental trauma
Explain the consequences of developmental trauma and the adaptations of the children who experience it and what that means for their adult lives
Discuss the importance of visceral experiences in both the making of and treatment for trauma
Examine and compare contemporary treatment paradigms and their limitations
Critique treatment modalities that fall outside of the modern repertoire of treatment for trauma
List 3 characteristics of what can happen to the brains and bodies of traumatized people
Explain how the amygdala facilitates communication between the brain and body
Discuss barriers to treatment for traumatized people
Discuss the core issues of trauma
Introduction to EMDR
Studying EMDR
The limitations of EMDR
Brain anatomy and how trauma rewires the brain
The ACE study and the prevalence of trauma
High ACE scores are associated with a range of negative adult outcomes
Technology has limitations
What brain imaging can tell us
The developing brain
Trauma interferes with the autonomic housekeeping of the body
Cultural responses to trauma
Development of the survival brain
The importance of our map of the world and how it develops
Changing the map with deep visceral experiences
Development of the frontal lobe
Brain anatomy and how its functioning is disrupted by trauma
Brain activity in scans of people having a flashback
What we can infer from brain scans and what they show
How trauma renders us speechless
What we can learn from scans of “the default mode of the brain” versus scans of people who have experienced chronic trauma
What we understand about trauma at different stages of brain development
Trauma changes specific parts of the brain and how they function
Impulsivity and trauma
The finger-wagging part of the brain and how juvenile programs focus on a system that won’t work for many traumatized kids
Teaching kids self control with activities that require self restraint
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and restoring a sense of time with visceral sensations
The importance of raising awareness for traumatized people about their ability to change their internal state and regulate themselves
The anterior cingulate and filtering what is and is not relevant
Attention deficit disorder and trauma
Examining how you organize your relationship to yourself
The relationship between the survival brain and the frontal lobe
Getting control over the primitive part of our brain with body-oriented methods
Our cognitive, social brain cannot override the emotional, survival brain
The midline structures of the cortex that is devoted to you and your relationship to yourself
Activating the midline structures of the brain with interoception and breathing exercises
Reactivity and accessing your internal experiences by exercising the pathway to the survival brain via the midline structures of the brain
Why meditation can be difficult for traumatized people
A breathing exercise
Notice your thoughts
Noticing your body
Noticing your breath
The importance of being in tune with each other
Heart rate variability
The importance of talk and why it can take so long to be able tell your story
Group therapy is a useful setting that is not widely available
Access and barriers to mental health services
Things didn’t happen are as important as events that did happen
How psychodrama workshops can help you know what it feels like to have positive experiences
Working in three dimensions during psychodrama workshops
Suspending time and leaning into space and imagination
The real and the ideal
The right person at the right time in the right place
How neurofeedback works
People can learn to regulate their brainwaves using neurofeedback
Neurofeedback can radically improve executive functioning
There is a spectrum of body-oriented treatments that can quiet the survival brain and enhance the temporal lobe
The roles we all play
Can we go beyond the roles we play