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This follow-up presentation will review some of the commentaries on the Mentalizing Homeostasis target article.  Implications for the use of "embodied imagery" in psychotherapy will be discussed.

We will begin with three questions from last month's presentation:  at what level are the processes of self available to consciousness?  How may unconscious memories participate in self processes?  And, what is the ole of self agency in the experience of self-other boundaries?  We will then discuss the key points of Smith's paper on the unified self, and move to an article by Ebisch and Aleman on how neural networks participate in the quality of self-other boundaries. References: Smith, R. (2017)…

Suggested Readings: Craig, A.B. (2009). How do you feel--now?  The anterior insula and human awareness.  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10:59-70.  doi:1038/nrn2555. Lane, R.D., Ryan, L. Nadel, L., & Greenberg, L. (2014). Memory reconsolidation, emotional arousal and the process of change in psychotherapy:  New insights from brain science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38:1-80.  doi:10.1017/S0140525X14000041. Menon, V. & Uddin, L.Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention, and control:  A network model of insula function.  Brain Structure and Function, 214(5):655-667.  doi:10.1007/s00429-010-0262-0.

Readings Mar, R.A. (2004). The neuropsychology of narrative: Story comprehension, story production and their interrelation. Neuropsychologia, 42(10):1414-1434. Kestenbaum, C.J. (2003). Memory, narrative and the search for identity in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A second chance. J Am Acad Psychoanal Dyn Psychiatry, 31(4):647-661, winter. Sign up

Presenter:  Howard Wishnie, M.D. Ketamine, initially used as a veterinary anesthetic, has become a medication used in human cases of refractory depression.  While some training programs are setting up clinical research programs, a number of physicians have established clinical practices using Ketamine.  This presentation will focus upon Ketamine's effect on CNS neurotransmitters and brain centers that seem involved with depression, as well as the need for psychological integration of the Ketamine experience. References: Greenberg, R. (2018). Suicide Deaths Climb Dramatically…

Presenter:  Burns Woodward, M.D. Freud believed the ego works to minimize free, or unbound, psychic energy, a process that some neuroscientists have related to the brain's efforts to minimize prediction error.  The brain constantly anticipates perceptions, events, and actions. Measures of the accuracy of these predictions can be derived from the activity of brain networks. The default mode network is thought to function something like the ego in minimizing errors in this prediction process.  We will explore possible applications of these…