Tone

Tone, as used in the TQ Assessment, refers to autonomic tone and relates to emotional stress building over a significant period of time, resulting in disruptions of the autonomically-mediated functions of the body, as well as relatively ongoing levels of anxiety or depression.

It’s important not to confuse the Tone category, which does include the over-wound autonomic response, with the specific brain activation patterns that make it up. Tone is a meta-category, which takes in folks whose brains are using the strategies of Disconnect, Reversal or Blocking as well as those who have high levels of fast beta, which may be in temporal or frontal or even parietal areas and may or may not co-exist with high coherences in the fast frequencies.

Tone doesn’t lead us anywhere in terms of what and where to train–which are always my focal questions. The brain strategies do guide us toward answers to those questions.

If a person has happened to have lived through a period of fairly severe and unremitting stress, they will often find that their nervous system gets “wound up” fairly high, so that they are either in “fight or flight” more for a greater percentage of their experience–or pop into it more easily–than is necessary. This can result in feelings of anxiety or depression or just of being highly stressed. It can result in rebound effects such as panic attacks, migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome. It can result in breakdowns in physiological function, like sleep problems, digestion problems, cold hands/feet, sweating, racing heartbeat, inability to catch your breath, etc.

As this level of emotional drive increases, more of the brain’s resources are drawn into the task of controlling the emotional responses, so they are less available for cognitive work such as paying attention, processing language effectively, remembering, etc.

If the brain has established a pattern which is a strategy for dealing with these (what we call) Tone problems, then simply training to deal with the cognitive side-effects will rarely have a lasting effect. It’s like turning on the air-conditioning in a building that is on fire. It may have a temporary cooling effect, but it’s not dealing with the true root cause of the heat.

These Tone strategy patterns were almost always survival strategies that worked at some time in the past, but they are now maladaptive because they result in a waste of brain energy and they often end up KEEPING the client in the very state that they were originally meant to protect against. Training that guides the brain away from these old patterns can not only reduce the emotional drive, but often result in improvements in cognitive function as well.

When the system is overbalanced to the sympathetic side (stuck in fight-or-flight), that would be considered high tone.

Part of the job of the cortex is to control and integrate emotional material (and memory) with sensory information to keep us alive and moving toward our objectives. When Tone issues become dominant, more of the cortical energy needs to go toward just keeping emotional drives in check, and the Tone strategies (disconnect, hot temporals, reversals and blocking) are commonly seen patterns that cortexes adopt to deal with excess emotional drive.

The orbitofrontal cortex and cingulate combine to control how much emotional material gets into the prefrontal’s decision-making process. When the strategy is to block ALL emotional material (denial) then this system either gets overheated or (later) burned out. I generally teach that since this strategy is more a way of defending against the emotional drive than a way of changing the way it’s processed, it’s probably best not to start with training this until you’ve worked with the other Tone strategies.

Stress and Control

Autonomic arousal levels are related to stress response, which is related to need to control. If I want to have more control over a situation than I can have, that results in a stress response in me. Another in the same situation, but without the need to control, may not find it stressful at all. When stress becomes an ongoing element of one’s experience, then the ANS tends to slide increasingly toward sympathetic–high levels of autonomic tone. That may go along with excessive fast wave activity, but in many cases it does not. And it’s perfectly possible for a person to stay in that stressed state so long that they exhaust their adrenal glands and become seriously under-aroused, even though they are highly anxious.

In many cases the disconnect category has a link to dissociation.

Remember that, with Tone problems, training alpha up can result in relaxation all right, but that can mean that sympathetic tone drops, resulting in a sympathetic rebound. In many clients this takes the form of a burst of anxiety or even a panic attack.

Disconnect

The disconnect pattern is a very specific one: left or right temporal high beta at two times or more the other side. High levels of fast activity in the temporal lobes are important to a disconnect pattern, but without the differential they don’t constitute a disconnect.

The word disconnect is not negative (“I disconnected from my stress” wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?). It is simply descriptive. It describes the findings of Teischer that the declarative and emotional memory systems are disconnected and functioning independently instead of together, meaning that adults who had childhood histories of abuse did not activate their temporal lobes together when asked to recall prior events as most of us do. They tended to activate only on the left (around T3) when recalling positive events, suggesting that the amygdala/hippocampus memory structure that deals with declarative detailed story memory was active, but the right side, which handles feeling tone, was not. Hence, they had intellectual memories of positive events but no feeling related to them. On the other hand, they activated the right side strongly and not the left in response to painful memories (and hence events in current life which trigger them). They had no intellectual context for understanding those memories–and indeed, in many cases, didn’t even HAVE a memory–but there was a strong feeling tone triggered.

The disconnect category is related specifically to 23-38 Hz, but if ALL frequencies have 2X as much activity on one side as the other, then there is no disconnect. The TQ Analyze page looks at both the level of amplitudes (Raw Amplitude in microvolts) on both sides, and it looks also at the relative value–the percent of each frequency. If either achieves a 2:1 relationship in 23-38 Hz, it will tell you to rule out a problem, but I personally only look at the relative values. If the percent high beta on one side is 24% and 12% on the other, that could be a disconnect.

If you have a significant (2X or more) differential between high beta readings at T4 (higher) and T3, then I would train down highbeta between T3/T4 and train up activity starting at 12-15 Hz but reducing the frequency range in 5-minute intervals (e.g. after 5 minutes try 11-14Hz) until you find a frequency where you feel a “release” or something positive.

Left Temporal Lobe 2-3 Times the High Beta than Right

People with this pattern do not have the regressive emotional reactions to negative events that the folks with the pattern strong to the right (T4) have. It’s probably a disconnect, but in a very intellectualized way. This is what it has been discussed anecdotally, at least. The affects were generally quite flat. I’ve never trained to re-balance that, and so the formula only looks for imbalance to the right in the temporal lobes in high-beta, since that is such a severe problem.

This pattern of very high left side often relates to lack of nurturing during early childhood–emotional neglect instead of abuse. I think that finding something that reduces the activation at T3 will likely have the most positive effect

Hot Temporals

Hot temporals are related to excessive activity–sometimes on one side but more often on both–in beta and/or high beta showing that the amygdalae are over-responding to perceived internal or external threat. The amygdalae turn on the sympathetic/adrenal emergency response system. This forces the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to focus on evaluating the “emergency” and turning off the response, thus keeping it from doing more generally useful tasks. If it happens often enough, the sympathetic response begins to dominate over the parasympathetic (rest & digest–maintenance functions) autonomic responses. It can also lead to excess cortisol build-up in the temporal lobes and the loss of neurons there and in the hippocampus, causing reduced ability to access memory and to feel things appropriately. And it can result in adrenal fatigue to the point that the person can no longer respond to potentially dangerous situations except by freezing. Of course, this derailing of the PFC from its true executive functions can result in fatigue there as well–at least in a breakdown of its performance.

I usually train hot temporals based on the patterns that exist there. Are they only present with eyes closed, or do they show up in eyes-open conditions as well? Are they primarily in beta (15-22 Hz) or high-beta (23-38) or both? Are they significantly stronger on one side than the other (though not rising to the level of a disconnect)? Are the temporals hot–or is the whole brain hot? Looking at the TQ you can see the percent of beta and high beta left and right relative to the average for the entire hemisphere. Hot temporals which are less than or equal to values in the rest of the hemisphere aren’t necessarily hot temporals–they’re part of a hot brain! What kind of alpha appears in the temporals with EC and EO? Are the temporals highly asymmetrical?

Based on these things I may or may not train the temporals first–and I may train them with a bipolar montage (T3/T4) or a one-channel monopolar, or a two-channel squish, sum-difference squish or a windowed squash depending on what I want to do in addition to cooling them down. You could use FRE1C (IN 2-38–or whatever band dominates–; REW 9-13 or 6-13 or 12-16–depending on the EEG). Or with T3/A1/g/T4/A2 FRE2C choosing your inhibits and rewards based on the EEG.

I do use the subjective assessment with every client I work with. I am a strong believer in intervening in the whole system, not just the client’s brain. The subjective gives me a good picture of the parents, spouse, client, etc., and I often use large differentials in the ratings to open the discussion of the homeostatic system in operation (how come dad rates the kid as “trying hard with a few problem areas” and mom rates him as “spawn from hell”?!) Often the subjective report on the client will show issues that the parents aren’t even aware of. It also gives me a great start on a set of training objectives and focuses my interview time by highlighting areas where I want more information.

Many people who train hot temporals experience a quieting of their minds, a sense of being more relaxed and having more energy at the same time, etc. Ideally there would be a reduction in anxiety. You are likely to get a release of energy, without necessarily experiencing the old memories: I feel more relaxed and more energized at the same time.

Blocking

Blocking has to do with denial of emotions, blocking their flow by the anterior cingulate. It shows as unexpressed and unfelt emotional material–as with OCD, addictive and sometimes phobic clients, and it causes the pre-frontal midline loop (orbito-frontal cortex, basal ganglia, cingulate gyrus) to work excessively in order to keep emotional material from reaching awareness. When this process is active it can appear as what Daniel Amen calls the Hot Cingulate. The cingulate runs beneath the sagittal line that separates the two hemispheres, so we look for traces of cingulate issues by looking at Fz (and/or Cz) relative to F3 and F4. If the place where the two hemispheres meet is clearly different from the hemispheres themselves, it may well be the “shadow” cast by the anterior cingulate. A “hot” cingulate with a lot more fast activity, may be actively blocking emotional material from reaching consciousness. A “cold” cingulate, with slow or middle frequencies dominating may be burned out from working too hard for too long and emotional content may be overwhelming the client. Looking at the maps page often clearly outlines the area where the colors are brighter at Fz and Cz.

It’s not generally a good idea to train a hot cingulate first, since it usually relates to a denial pattern (blocking). Excessive control is a way of blocking emotional drive issues, so the brain may well choose to avoid the changes you are asking it to make if you haven’t done anything to resolve those underlying issue. It’s easier to recognize a crutch than, say, a broken ankle, but training to get rid of the crutch probably won’t be as useful as training to fix the fracture first. Then the crutch is no longer needed.

Blocking issues are the last ones I would usually mess with. OCD behavior is a defense against some underlying emotional issue in most cases, and I can’t think of a case where I’ve ever seen Blocking as the most basic category. When I do train it, I usually train with a bipolar hookup between the right mastoid crease and Fp1, increasing low beta and decreasing theta.