Useful References
Dr Daniel Nightingale, Dementia Therapy Specialists
Joane Goulding, The Goulding Institute
Glenn Doman, The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential
Dr David Snowden, The Nun Study
Dr Lisa Genova, Still Alice (neuroplasticity)
Norman Doidge, The Brain that Changes Itself (neuroplasticity)
Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-cybernetics
Australian and Pacific College of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy
Dr Daniel Nightingale
Dr Daniel Nightingale is CEO of Nightingale Dementia Consultants in the US and Dementia Doctor in the UK. Dr Dan (as he likes to be known) is a world leading clinical dementia specialist, a Hypno-Psychotherapist, author and regular writer for Expert Care Manager. Trained by world famous Dr Patch Adams in the use and benefits of humour in medicine, Dr Dan is known as an actor and stand-up comedian and has worked as a clinical dementia specialist for over 20 years.
In the field of hypnotherapy for dementia, Dr Dan is world renowned for his pioneering research addressing Neuro-cognitive disorders (NCD) or dementia related illness. The use of hypnotherapy in the treatment of NCD has led to the recent publication of his book: A Clinicians Guide to Non Pharmacological Dementia Therapies.
In this book Dr Dan discusses his core therapy program, utilising current understandings of the nature and work of neuroplasticity in the brain, across 7 key areas of need, entitled the Nightingale Model of Psycho-Social Support. This following model is at the heart of Dr Dan’s NCD program.
The 7 key areas of need are as follows:
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Concentration
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Relaxation
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Motivation
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Activities of daily living
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Immediate memory
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Memory of significant events
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Socialisation
Source: A Clinician’s Guide to Non-Pharmacological Dementia Therapies
By Dr. Daniel Nightingale
Dr Dan also refers to this method as ‘person-centred care’. Currently the Nightingale Model of Psycho-Social Support is being used across the United Kingdom and the United States of America by a range of clinicians, Dementia Therapy Specialist and practices.
Joane Goulding
Joane Goulding conducted extensive research over a number of years both in Australia and Singapore. From this exhaustive study Joane developed SleepTalk®, a unique process that appears to demonstrate neuroplasticity at work in the minds of children.
The process continues to be used effectively with children who are experiencing issues coping with being anxious, fearful, sad or have a predisposition of feeling unloved and even un-loveable.
Children diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) have been successfully treated with SleepTalk®, since the process uses neuroplasticity to retrain or rewire the brain to overcome these issues that are especially difficult presenting problems for children.
Using a simple analogy the SleepTalk® process has been described as developing the minds emotional resilience in order to better protect the recipient of the treatment from damaging negative propositions that develops into long term harmful memory sets similar to the way a computer firewall program guards and protects itself from outside intervention and harm.
With this concept in mind (a method proven for over 40 years) several other neuroscience specialist are working on neuroplasticity therapy methods for people of all ages.
Glenn Doman
Founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.
Glenn Doman was a physical therapist known for his ground breaking book entitled How to Teach your Baby to Read. His revolutionary treatment program entitled The Doman Method™ taught thousands of parents around the world how to help special needs children achieve normality, physically, intellectually, physiologically and socially.
Helping to globally spread the Doman Method™ Katie Doman, Glenn’s wife, became an essential part of his work helping to design and implement the program. With Katie's help, Glenn created new treatment programs that provided a direct brain treatment rather than a purely symptomatic cure. Their patients showed a faster and better recovery rate than had previously been achieved using existing methods.
It was time for new thinking, a radical change. Glenn discovered that children diagnosed with autism or cerebral palsy etc. had a neurological condition that with brain development could be enhanced and function improved.
With proof of the success of his work being plainly observable, a paradigm shift occurred. Glenn discovered that the success of the treatment directly correlated with the environment in which the treatment was delivered. The best results were achieved when the families treated their children at home. As a result Glenn started teaching families the fundamentals of brain growth and development including neuroplasticity. Most importantly he showed them how to deliver his treatment programs in the home environment.
Glenn came to understand that the brains development relied on stimulation with a specific set of activities. He claimed, “The brain grows by use”. This innovative concept, understood today as neuroplasticity, is widely accepted by the scientific and medical community as a real and empirically tested physiological phenomena.
The Institutes is internationally known for its pioneering work in child brain development and for its programs to help brain-injured children achieve wellness and well children achieve excellence.
Dr David Snowden
Epidemiologist David A. Snowdon PH.D,a professor of neurology at the Sanders-Brown Centre on Aging at the University of Kentucky, is known among his portfolio of research for studies with, antioxidants and aging, neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease and the famous Nuns Study are among his most prominent works to date. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on Alzheimer's disease
In 1986, David commenced a study that included 678 nuns of the School Sisters of Notre Dame order all residents at the convent on Good Counsel Hill in Mankato, Minneapolis. It was to become a revolutionary scientific study changing the way we look at the ageing process particularly of the brain.
Results derived from The Nun Study revealed the importance of maintaining an active brain. This continuing study is reinforcing what researchers are now referring to as neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, two processes that are underscored by a person remaining intellectually active throughout their life.
David’s research provides verifiable case studies of women ranging in age from 74 – 106 demonstrating how it is possible to escape the worst effects of Alzheimer's disease again by living an active intellectual life that is a direct verifiable result of the brains ability to change.
Lisa Genova
Dr Lisa Genova is both a neuroscientist researching neuroplasticity and an award-winning novelist. Her first novel Still Alice (2007), about a woman who suffers early-onset Alzheimer's disease was brought to the screen in 2014. StarringJulianne Mooreas Alice who won an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Dr Genova’s empirical research into the neuroscience of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis with people living with Alzheimer’s disease has bolstered the argument for a brain that can change. The brain is not as we have thought a rigid programmed set of electrical impulses but a vast array, a incredibly complex and apparently limitless network of neurons and synapses that can be rewired and in some cases even grow new circuits (neurons and synapses) that can bypass dysfunctional and damaged areas of the brain.
Dr. Genova postulates that if you can learn more than one thing about a person or a subject and that most of that learning/knowledge can no longer be recalled from long term memory, then there is more than a good chance that the remaining learning/knowledge stored in your long-term memory can be recalled.
Based on Dr. Genova’s work it is our belief that improving failing cognitive function is achievable with people living with dementia related diseases and this gives us reason to believe that additional learning’s can be added to the recalled learning’s/knowledge by rewiring and refiring neurons and synapses, (both existing and new) in the brain that will lead to increased cognitive function.
Norman Doidge
A psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author, of The Brain that Changes Itself (2007) and The Brain's Way of Healing (2015), Dr. Norman Doidge studied literary classics and philosophy at the University of Toronto. After graduating with a medical degree at the University of Toronto, he moved to New York to work in residency in psychiatry. Dr. Doidge also completed a degree in psychoanalysis at Columbia University in both the Department of Psychiatry and the Centre for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. A Columbia University/National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellowship for training in empirical science techniques followed this.
Upon his returning to Toronto, Dr. Doidge served as Head of the Psychotherapy Centre and the Assessment Clinic at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry (now part of CAMH) Currently he is on Faculty at the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, and Research Faculty at the Columbia University Centre for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Columbia University, New York.
Since the 1990's Dr. Doidge has written over 170 articles including academic papers on neuroplasticity that led to best selling work - The Brain that Changes Itself (2007).
In this book Dr. Doidge MD, travelled around the United States to meet with brilliant scientists advocating neuroplasticity, and the people whose lives they've transformed. These were and are people whose mental limitations or brain damage (some had Acquired Brain Injury) were previously seen as unalterable whose conditions had long been dismissed as hopeless.
Further we learn that our thoughts can switch our genes on and off, altering our brain anatomy. We can fire neurons and rewire our brains and in some instances grow new neurons (Neurogenesis). Included are case studies of people of average intelligence who, with brain exercises, improve their cognition and perception, develop muscle strength, or learn to play a musical instrument - simply by imagining doing so.
The scientists he met interviewed and studied, confirmed that the brain changed its structure each time a different activity was performed, improving and strengthening its neural pathways (circuits) enabling it to better suit the task at hand. According to Doidge, “If certain “parts” failed, then other parts could sometimes take over. The machine metaphor, of the brain as an organ with specialized parts, could not fully account for changes the scientists were seeing. They began to call this fundamental brain property ‘neuroplasticity.”
With use of personal testimony from the core of the neuroplasticity revolution, Dr Doidge provides us with an inspiring book that will forever alter the way we look at and understand the workings of our brains our human nature and human potential.
Maxwell Maltz
Psycho-Cybernetics
“How we can add more years to our life and more life to our years!” Maxwell Maltz- 1960
Maxwell "Max" Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon. Born in 1899 in Manhattan to Jewish immigrants Josef Maltz and Taube Elzweig from Poland Maltz graduated from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons with a doctorate in medicine. Maxwell Maltz then undertook training with a team of German plastic surgeons who at that time were considered most advanced in cosmetic surgery.
He wrote several books, among which Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living out of Life that was published in 1960. What was to become a landmark book introduced Maltz's viewpoint that: “people must have an accurate and positive view of themselves before setting goals; otherwise they will get stuck in a continuing pattern of limiting beliefs”. Maltz’s viewpoint focused on visualizing one's personal goals, the key to which he believed was self-image.
He saw this as the basis of all the changes that can take place in a person’s life. Additionally Maltz proposed, “if one's self-image is unhealthy or faulty — all of a person's efforts will end in failure”.
So what is Psycho-Cybernetics?
Psycho-Cybernetics– The word cybernetics comes from a Greek term that means ‘a helmsman who steers his ship to port.’ Psycho-Cybernetics is a term I coined which means, “Steering your mind to a productive, useful goal… so you can reach the greatest port in the world … peace of mind.
After years of research into the human self-image, during which he tested his theories on athletes and salespeople, Maxwell Maltz produced the book Psycho Cybernetics. This seminal work in the field of human self-image paved the way for hypnosis as a method of improving self-image.
“With it, you’re somebody. Without it, you’re nothing.”- Dr. Maxwell Maltz.
Australian and Pacific College of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy - Margaret Kelly
The Australian and Pacific College of Clinical Hypnotherapy (APCCH) began its life in Burleigh as the Australian College of Clinical Hypnotherapy (ACCH) officially in January 1996. It is a college that has built a reputation of quality and integrity with its students and the public over the years.
The APCCH provides quality training, and is a Foundation Educational Organisation Member of the Hypnotherapy Council of Australia (HCA), the National Peak Body for self-regulation of the Hypnotherapy Profession in Australia.
As well as being the Director of the college, Margaret served as President of HCA, the National Peak Body for the Hypnotherapy Profession in Australia (2011-2018).