The Upper Room wellness center
Brain-Based Therapy
The Frontal and Pre-Frontal Cortex
The Brain is separated into different Lobes that work together, synching all actions and reactions, making decisions both conscious and unconscious and filtering feelings, emotions, stimulation and responses to everyday stimuli. The Pre-Frontal Lobe or Pre-Frontal Cortex is like your ‘inner grown-up’. It helps you remember where you put your keys and helps you be organized enough to live your life less flustered. It also filters reactive thoughts like preventing you from making an untimely remark about the extra ten pounds your spouse put on over the holidays. It keeps filtering more primitive thoughts that our other lobes send it in order for us to respond to daily stressors more maturely.
Stress is the natural enemy of the Pre-Frontal Lobe. Whether it be an event in time (Post Traumatic Stress) or an accumulation over time, stress shuts down, really disconnects the Frontal Lobe and forces us to act and react out of less mature Brain centers. Study of this lobe began after World War II when the British noticed that pilots who were excellent pilots during peace time were crashing their planes when under stress. They started studying the effects of stress on higher cognitive function and they found that under severe or prolonged stress, a disconnect occurs; functional disconnect or functionally decreased higher centers, i.e. loss of, or decreased firing of the Frontal Lobe then diminishes the use of this lobe.
The Frontal Lobe handles decision making, complex actions and thoughts, cognitive memory and filtering reactions. When my ten year old daughter sasses back to me, it’s my Pre-Frontal Cortex that keeps me from reacting with and equal but opposite reaction. She gets scolded with a lesson, filtered through my Frontal Lobe that keeps me from yelling or ‘over-reacting’ with something worse. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, those with severe anger issues, and Borderline Personality Disorder are some examples of more severe cases of Frontal Lobe Disconnect. More common we see people that have a less severe disconnect of the Frontal or more specifically the Pre-Frontal Cortex that manifest as a decreased ability to make the best decisions under stress, fear of public speaking, swings of inappropriate reactions to stimuli (yelling at the kids, stressing over the economy), to Anxiety Attacks, bouts of memory loss, or difficulty in making more complex decisions.
Treatment involves exercises that are specific to the Frontal Lobe. These will “flip the switch” to turn on the connection to this center. As with all Brain-Based Therapy (BBT), the treatment involves “Fuel and Activation”. We feed to brain with oxygen, specific nutrition, and Glutathione and then exercise the Cerebellum, Midbrain or Cortex with an increase firing of the pathways to open up the tollgates to the deficient lobe.
I hope this helps. Call our office with any questions: 651-739-1248
Dr Kevin Conners (an excerpt from Dr. Conners’ book: “I Want My Life Back! Finding freedom from chronic conditions”)