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"We've done something that nobody else has done before."

Dan Monti, M.D.

     

Drs. Dan Monti and Andrew Newberg recently joined ONE's board meeting to report on our research project conducted at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA

    

Dr. Monti began by recapping the study, which uses the NET protocol to target cancer survivors who have traumatic stress symptoms. "There is a well-known phenomenon amongst cancer survivors of traumatic stress. In our terms, they have an NEC and it's a pretty big one. It's usually related to either receiving the diagnosis of cancer or some highly distressing experience related to the treatment itself."

  

Traumatic stress symptoms have two major features: intrusive thoughts and avoidant behaviors. These symptoms, coupled with higher distress and anxiety levels, tend to contribute to symptoms and poorer health outcomes. According to Monti, "The morbidity really approaches that of full-blown PTSD."

    

Prior to diving into the details, Dr Newberg described his enthusiasm for the study. "There's never been imaging of it [NET]. So it's very exciting to look at a [fMRI] scan and say, okay, this is the first time anybody's actually seen what's going on in the brain when somebody experiences something, or feels something, or responds to something." 

    

"I've never seen such a change in people both clinically as well as the psychological changes. I've done other studies looking at depression and anxiety and I've never seen these kinds of changes" Andrew Newberg, M.D.

  

Newberg continues, "One of the things we seem to be seeing is that the amygdala, which mediates your fear and distress response, is substantially reduced in terms of its reactivity to the trauma after the person gets the NET program. Not only are they [patients] saying that they no longer have a very distressing feeling, but their amygdala is responding the same way. The amygdala will light up when you're distressed and so the more distressed you are, theoretically, the more the amygdala will light up. What we're seeing is that the amygdala just doesn't light up that much to the same stimulus after the person has the NET treatment. 

   

The other thing that we saw when we looked at the comparison between the NET and the control group is that another area of the brain, the anterior cingulate which is part of the neural network that modulates our distressing reactions, is substantially increased in the people who underwent the NET program."

"It [NET] seems to be normalizing the brain's response. The brain doesn't respond to the distressing memory in the way it used to. It's now responding as if it's just another memory and it doesn't have all that emotional addition to it." Newberg

 

Dr. Monti added, "What I think we're going to be able to show is that in response to NET is a decrease in emotional distress which correlates to a decrease in emotional reactivity, and the decrease in amygdalar activation correlates to an increase in cingulate activity. What that implies is that this area of the brain that helps control your emotional responses has become more active in those receiving the NET treatment, and when that becomes more active that's part of how it settles down the amygdala."

  

The study has produced a treasure trove of data. Dr. Newberg states, "There's really a tremendous amount that we're going to be able to talk about in regard to what NET does." When asked about the number of papers they anticipate publishing based on the data, he suggested, "Probably three, but it could be more, depending on how much we ultimately can correlate. We want to get across the data in a nice and concise way, but also in a thorough way that really shows everything that NET appears to do for these people."

  

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The ONE Research Foundation would like to express our sincere gratitude to all who have supported the Foundation and whose generosity has funded this groundbreaking research.

 

 

ONE's mission is to advance mind-body healthcare through research, education and service.

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