Brain Wave Analysis

and Neural Efficiency

Dr. John Ertl, PhD

Members of the Research Advisory Board, ladies, and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here for the purposes just described. It is necessary to briefly explain my philosophy of science so that you may understand my thinking with respect to the validity of the Neural Efficiency concept.

As far as I am concerned, causal explanation in science is not dead. Einstein and, to some extent, Russell were the last great thinkers who held out against the tide of quantum theory and the statistical explanation of events. Einstein wrote to Born in 1944, and I quote a passage from this letter.

In our scientific expectations we have progressed towards anti­podes. You believe in the dice-playing God, and I in the perfect rule of law in a world of something objectively existing which I try to catch in a wildly speculative way. I hope that somebody will find a more realistic way, or a more tangible foundation for such a concep­tion than that which is given to me. The great initial success of quantum theory cannot convert me to believe in that fundamen­tal game of dice.

In statistical theory, laws are generated from a study of errors; the laws apply to groups, not individuals. In the physical sciences at least, the members of the group under study are essentially the same while their indivi­dual behaviors differ in some random way. In the application of statistics to human behaviors, the situation is.

A speech delivered to the Research Advisory Board of Neural Evaluation, Inc. in Dallas, Texas — 4 November 1977.

First, the human behavior system is poorly under­stood, both at the micro (physiologi­cal) and at the macro (psychological) levels. Secondly, individual differences on almost all parameters are very large. Forcing, for the sake of statistical convenience, a number of individuals with similar characteristics into a group is often not justified. A good example of this is people of average intelligence, those with IQs of 120 plus, the group with learning disabili­ties, etc.

I am deeply concerned about the permeation of the statistical approach to human behavior in psychology, education, and govern­ment. Statistical rather than causal explanations of phenomena are an indication of our ignorance of reality and should be applied with great caution to the interpretation of human behavior.

Kenneth Craik, in his book “THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION,” states: ” 4A is sometimes followed by B and sometimes not’ is surely the final anomaly which, in every other branch of science, prompts further enquiry and gives in itself a sense of dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction.” I firmly believe in looking for causal explanation of phenomena rather than getting excited about weak statistical relationships. I share Einstein’s view that “God does not play dice.” Based on this philoso­phy, I approached the problem of measuring brain efficiency in the following manner:

I postulate a three factor theory of human intelligence. The factors are: Time, Quantity, and Entropy, where entropy involves the second law of thermodynamics as it applies to information theory. I am trying to measure and explain individual differ­ences in human intelligent behavior, using the concepts of cybernetics and neurophysiology. In psychological terms, these three factors may corre­spond to the concepts of speed, power, and creativity.

Both the abso­lute amount and the mixture of these factors are infinitely variable and produce an infinite variety of human talent. My theory is only partially worked out and refers mainly to time domain analysis. The three factors proposed are inter-related.

The quanti­tative contribution of each factor to the output, which could be called general intelligence, is not known. Surprisingly, my theory has less difficulty with the concept of creati­vity than with the power and speed factors. I view creativity as noise in the brain, or unreliability of some of the functioning elements. Computers are idiots mainly because they are too perfect and because, at present, they are sequentially operated machines.

The brain is composed of millions of unreliable elements connected in paral­lel and in series with tremendous redundancy. Neurons can and do fire randomly, creating chains of events and thoughts which can surface to consciousness. The person who listens to these internal noises and is willing to damper the master program control will be able to expand his mind.

I have made little progress in understanding the power-quantity factor. The speed factor is closely related to Neural Efficiency and is measured to some extent by the BWA. The Psychological aspects of this theory, or rather speculations, are poorly developed. The aspects relating to the concept of Neural Efficiency and the EEG are in much better shape.

I must also make clear my attitude towards all tests of human mental potentiality, which include IQ tests and my own system. It would be difficult for me to improve on what Chief Justice Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court has said, and I quote: The facts of this case demon­strate the inadequacy of broad and general testing devices as well as the infirmity of using diplomas or degrees as fixed measures of capability.

History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of ac­complishment. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the com­mon sense proposition that they are NOT to become masters of reality. (401 US 433 Duke Power Co. vs. ? ).

From an educational point of view, it is crucial that we start evaluating our tools and methods in terms of decision theory and not group statistics.

We should ask questions such as these: If I give test (A) to 100 children, how many will be misclassified? What is the human and financial cost of these errors? What is the risk that I will misclassify this little child sitting in front of me? It is almost totally irrelevant that some new test corre­lates .5 and .8 with some other test, which in itself is doing a poor job of selection or diagnosis and does not help you with critical yes/no decisions.

Misunderstandings arise because of the usual misconceptions about IQ; that it measures intelligence and that there is no other way to approach the same subject. After all, how do the makers of the test evaluate a new paper and pencil IQ test? Simple, if it does not correlate about .6 with the WISC, or some other well-known test, then the new test is no good. There are several deep fallacies in this approach; the only thing we really know about intelligence is that we do not know what it is and that we cannot measure it; yet common sense tells us that some people are more intelligent than others.

There is no logical justification, therefore, to assume that one attempt to measure intelligence, for example IQ, is the only way and that any new way must necessarily correlate with IQ. There could be a hundred factors of intelligence; IQ could be measuring numbers 1 and 7, and Neural Efficien­cy could be measuring numbers 98 and 99. If factors 1, 7, 98, and 99 are SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1978 independent, there should be no correlation between IQ and Neural Efficiency; if these factors are partially related, we would expect a moderate correlation; this, in fact, seems to be the case.

Before I treat some of the theoreti­cal aspects of the concept of Neural Efficiency and describe some of the highlights of the Louisiana study, I shall summarize what I believe, after fifteen years of research, we can do now, how well, and what we cannot do now, but hope to accomplish in the future.

Presently, the Neural Efficiency score is a number which is computed from the measurement of five partially independent brain wave parameters. It is a measure of the information processing efficiency of the brain. All measurements and their interrelation­ships are a function of maturation. In educational-psychological terms, the Neural Efficiency score means learning potential or, if you prefer, Neural or Brain developmental age. Not IQ. Not intelligence. Not academic achieve­ment. Though not a measure of global intelligence, I believe it is one; perhaps a basic factor of human intelligence.

I base this hypothesis on the fact that so far, after thousands of measurements, I have not found a child or an adult with a very low Neural Efficiency score who would be considered, by any definition, highly intelligent. I have found many instances of the reverse. Each of the five parameters, alone or in combination, give useful clinical information concerning the maturational development of the brain; certain combinations have prov­ed effective in the detection of learning disabilities; other combina­tions, I feel sure, with further research, will have important educational sign­ificance.

(1) Specifically, right now we CAN detect from birth abnormal brain function, maturational lags, and accel­erations based on five EEG variables and their combinations. In practical terms, we can evaluate the develop­mental readiness to learn at any age; we can assess the maturational level of brain development, and, if the deviations from normal are severe, we can predict that learning problems will occur BEFORE symptoms become obvious. I think mass screening by this method may be useful because it does not give you information you already have, and because the information it does give will help you to take early remedial action. It will also help you to identify high risk children very early.

(2) The Brain Wave Analyzer is language free and color blind.

(3) The test takes less than five minutes. It is totally painless and safe. It requires no special facilities. Short and medium term test/re-test reliability is excellent: .9 and better.

We cannot and DO NOT MEA­SURE IQ. But if the IQ concept helps your thinking, I can easily give you Brain Age; then all you need to do is divide this by the chronological age and multiply by 100 to get IQ. I must, however, point out that this procedure is not valid because the Neural Efficiency scores are NOT normally distributed.

We cannot diagnose the nature or type of L.D. We cannot say how much of his potential a child is actually using; we therefore cannot tell you what his grades are or will be. This is not necessarily a negative aspect; if you know that the child has the potential but is doing poorly in school, you know two things: your chances of helping the child are excellent, and that the problem is psychological in nature.

Some clinicians say that they can smell a schizophrenic patient, and I believe them. After observing thou­sands of brain wave patterns on the oscilloscope, I am convinced that I can see both a sick and a very efficient brain without complex computers or calculations. Of course, this is not science, but it is motivation to objectify and quantify what you see.

This may seem like a simple problem to you, but I think you will change your mind during the demonstration, when you will see the brain waves of a volunteer. You may know what you see, but it is very difficult to specify this in language that a computer would understand.

There are often no words or mathematics to express what you see. For example, when I see a rigid pattern, or something which looks as if it came from a machine, I suspect trouble. You cannot tell a computer what is rigid or what looks as if it came from a machine. For this concept to be useful, it is absolutely necessary to take me out of the picture as a clinician and put an objective, reliable instrument in my place.

I have done my best, but I still think I can do a little better than this instrument, especially in borderline cases, and so can our trained opera­tors.

Because of the difficulty of quanti­fying observations, I had to evaluate hundreds of potentially useful brain wave parameters and finally selected five on theoretical grounds and be­cause machines available today would understand them perfectly.