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Show New medical research indicates the human mind can influence the functioning not only of the heart but other vital organs out the rats’ muscles with injections of curare, a South American arrow poison that uniquely leaves the heart and most other internal organs unaffecied. Because that does not include the diaphragm, breathing hasto be assisted —so Miller’s researchers devised little respirator from a toy balloon with its closed end cut off. They slipped this over the rat’s snout, and pumped air in and outof its lungs through the mouthpiece. Then, with electrodes surgically attached to “pleasure centers”in the im- mobilized creature’s brain, they painstakingly taught it to raise or lower its heart rate as much as 20 percent by rewarding it with an electrical stimulus to the pleasure centers. On the premise of his assistant, Dr. Leo V. DiCara, that “people are at least as smart as rats,” Doctor Miller transferred the procedure to human beings and got comparably good results. In a soundproof chamber, patients with excessive heart rates were electronically monitored but naturally with no electrodes embeddedin the brain. The Miller team, then working with Cornell Medical Center physicians, simply told them that a mutualeffort would be made to reduce their speeded-up heartbeat and that a beep would sound whenever even a small slowing occurred. Orter labs accompany the beep with a pleasing picture flashed briefly on a screen, but the only reward the Cornell patients needed was the prospect of getting well. They did their level best to keep that beep sounding and, in case after case, they succeeded until their racing hearts were normal. How did they do it? Nobody really knows. But as Dr. Gary E. Schwartz of Harvard’s Psychophysiology Lab at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center sees it, “We don’t have an answer to the truly basic question of how we move our arm, either. We doit, but we cannot say exactly how we doit. That goes for things a lot more mysterious than raising or lowering blood pressure, such as how people self-direct their entire behavior.” Even so, to the laymanit borders on the occult to know that medical science has now proved beyond doubt that we can actually learn to makeheart, brain, circulation, and so on do our bidding. This new-found training capability is increasing steadily in preciseness. As a result, even more amazing things appear to be in store, at the human level, than the Milier’s team’s feat of inducing trained rats to dilate blood vessels in the right ear without affecting those in the left ear, and then reverse the process! For example, the Harvard team of Drs. David Shapiro, Bernard Tursky, and Gary Schwartz has done and reported scientifically exquisite work in using operant conditioning to lower systolic blood pressure among persons with essential hypertension (high blood pressure of unknown origin). This is the same team that is working with Dr. Herbert Benson at Boston City Hospital’s Thorndike Memorial Research Lab to train individuals to raise the temperature in feet. Doctor Schwartz feels operant conditioning may even be applicable to the prevention of baldness t>cause one of the causes of baldness is loss of blood flow to the scalp. If rats can learn to dilate the blood vessels in one ear and £ Can we control the temperature of our bodily extremities? Subject abovetries to do so during experiment which has her wired for monitoring by researchers. thus upgrade the flow of blood to that ear, Doctor Schwartz sees no reason why people cannot be trained to dilate blood vessels in the scalp and ward off hairloss. One day it may be possible to eliminate entirely such annoying bodily phenomena as excessive sweating, “butterflies” in the stomach, and palpitations of the heart as one rises, for example, to give a speech. Brain-wave researcher Dr. Joe Kamiya at San Francisco’s Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Instititute has conducted experiments involving use of an electroencephalograph to monitor brain waves in his subjects. He guides them without telling them what he is doing toward an “alpha state” that psychologists regard as one where percep- for psychologists offered a machine, not as yet portable, designed to maintain the “alphastate”electronically in human beings. The price was modest. Microminiaturization should make possible a reasonably priced pocket device to do as much for the cardiac patient, the hypertensive,the epileptic, and othervictims of internal malfunction, at a figure within reach of any pocketbook. the subject brings his brain waves into phase with the eight to 12 cycles per second for which Doctor Kamiya has adjusted bis monitor. The feeling of serene Ore big goal is to make it possible for us to take over much of the responsibility for maintainirg our own health. Operant conditioning and bioglectronic meansof extendingits influence are an important step forward—and can also help bring down the soaring cost of medical care. Notthat “inst®@mental learning”is as vet all that easy. People vary in their ability to master it. Many get responses that they do not want accompanying the main, desired response—a reduction in well-being is so pleasurable that, once heart rate along with lowered blood pres- the beeper sounds, without knowing how he doesit, the subject “focuses” his brain waves on that cycle-range to keep the beeper sound coming. A pocket-beeper seems within reach. A recent advertisement in a magazine sure, for example. But those in the forefront of this investigation, which has tions and feelings are in ideal balance. Hearrangesfor a beeper to go off when a waytofilter responses with unerring precision. Doctor Schwartz sees within the next two years the use of operant conditioning as an important additional treatmeni method for certain kinds of patients and an independent treatment in its own right—for instance, against Raynaud’s Disease, by virtue ofits ability to restore impaired circulation to the extremities. One majorobstacle is the problem of financial support. As part of the big picture in man’s steady advance against “the ills that flesh is heir to,” what do these studies portend? They have already provided new insights into basic theories of learning. These are bound to affect our entire educational system for the better. Also, we will gain a better understanding of the cause of psychosomatic illness, with matching gains in how to go about preventing it. Operant conditioning should open up whole new vistas of treatment for chronic disorders. Perhaps best of all, from these bright new fron- made history by showing that man’s tiers there will inevitably arise a much supposedly independent autonomic ner- deeper grasp of what constituics a vous system is anything but, are confi- “normal” healthyperson, to help each dent that continuing research will find of us to become one and remain one. @ |