[From Rick Marken (931102.0800)]
David Goldstein (931102)
Would the following be a fact?: Using 20 variables of EEG
activity, Thatcher(1989) was able to correctly identify 94.8% of
the cases with respect to the question: Did this person suffer
from a mild head trauma? He was able to show this level of
identification in a number of replications across people,
research settings, different data collection equipment.
I would consider it approaching "fact" status if the 94.8% were
an r squared- so that the the 20 variables accounted for 94.8%
of the variance in the dependent variable, which I presume was
a binary variable: 1 = mild head trauma, 0 is no mild head trauma
(so the r sqaured would be point biserial).
The empirical
function which Thatcher found, which discriminates known mild
head trauma cases from known normals with 90+ % correctness,
Ah, so it probably is an r squared? That a pretty respectable
value. But it's not that surprising. It seems reasonable that
brain cells would behave somewhat differently for some time after
being traumatized and that this difference would show up in
gross measures of the electrical activity of the brain.
Sonders, a psychiatrist,
reports that 80% of the people who were given EEG Neurofeedback
based on these generalizations experienced meaningful reductions
of depression symptoms.
Excellent. He's doing almost as well as a faith healer.
I think that faith healers and Neuro-feedbackers are doing
good works (to the extent that they help people and don't
hurt anyone). I'm glad someone is willing to do this work
(although they do get pretty well remunerated for it).
Societies need witch doctors in areas where there is no
understanding -- it's a noble and useful profession. I'm
just glad that there are others around who are working towards
understanding things like depression. These people are not
necessarily as helpful as the witch doctors -- at the moment;
but the hope is that someday an understanding of depression
will make it possible for non-witch doctors to help the
depressed, freeing up the witch doctors for work in still
un-understood terrain.
Best
Rick