Neuroscience In The News On May 30

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about fighting addictions through the gut-brain axis, information processing through the cannabinoid receptor in the hippocampus and the neuroscience secret to happiness.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 30, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from May 23, 2016

Addiction Through Gut-Brain Axis

“We are what we eat”. This piece of folk knowledge is true in more ways than one. In fact, it is well known that food, through action on the enteric system, has direct effects on the brain. The mechanisms underlying this exchange are no longer a mystery since a large body of scientific literature highlights the functional crosstalk between the periphery and the brain. In particular, the so-called gut-brain axis consists of bidirectional communication between the brain and the enteric system, linking the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions (and vice versa). Insights into the gut-brain crosstalk have revealed an extremely fascinating communication system that is thought to be involved in many routine functions and systems within the healthy body, as well as in many diseases.

Article Link:

• Fighting addiction through the gut-brain axis…the future?
• Source:  www.eurekalert.org
• Plos Neuro Community Blog, Giuseppe Gangarossa

Information Processing in Cannabinoid Receptor

In the brain, there is a delicate interplay of signaling substances and cellular activity. Scientists of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now identified another key player within this ensemble. In a laboratory study they found that the “cannabinoid type 2 receptor” influences information processing inside the hippocampus. This area of the brain plays a crucial role in the generation of long-term memories.

Article Link:

• Neuroscientists discover previously unknown function of cannabinoid receptor
• Source:  www.healthcanal.com
• Professor Dietmar Schmitz, Neuroscience Research Center of the Charité.

Neuroscience Secret To Happiness

In his book, The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama wrote: “We need to learn how to want what we have, not to have what we want in order to get steady and stable happiness.” And the wise man might have been proved right by science.

According to neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp, it is the road to happiness, rather than the act of reaching the destination, which makes us happy. The neuroscientist claims that the fulfillment of desires may not cause happiness in the long run.

Article Link:

• Neuroscience’s secret to happiness
• Source:  www.deccanchronicle.com

Insights Into Memory

I'm often intrigued and perplexed and in awe of this most misunderstood part of our brain and body.  We all have a memory, but in many different bodies, it works better for some and not so good for others.  Often our memory starts out better when we are young and diminishes with time.  I stand in awe of what it does and where it fails.

In my own life, my memory has been my greatest advocate and my strongest adversary.  It has been there for me, but it at times is a haunting force that I would best flee.  There are times that it has brought the most beautiful moments up in my life while forcing me to face those times which were pure horror and torture.

Traumatic Memories

In Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps The Score, I still remember him stating that the mind remembers too much and too little at the same time.  This is especially true in the face of a traumatic past.  [insert book picture]

I've seen people forget the horrible abuse and torture they inflicted upon others, acting as if it never happened.  At the same time, the traumatized victim that was the recipient, is haunted every day of their life, desperately trying to get their memory to forget.  How can a memory work one way for someone in these shoes and yet, totally different for someone else?

Memory And Conversion Disorder

When I was paralyzed by a Conversion Disorder, I reached the point where I could barely remember my name.  Most things in my life were a blur, including the trauma that I had been through.  It was easier for my mind and memory to forget all that had happened in hopes of keeping me alive, then to confront the ugly truth that lied beyond the fog.

I know as I get older, my memory is sometimes fuzzy at best and other times, it is like an encyclopedia.  There are the little things that I forget.  There are the more recent things that sometimes are hard to grasp.  Often, it feels like I need a complete defrag as one would do with a computer.  If only I could find that button to push.

Alive Inside

I remember seeing another documentary called "Alive Inside".  In this program, they show that people with various conditions including memory issues would come alive when music from their past was played.  I experimented with a trauma survivor and behold, it does work.  An almost comatose person started coming alive the minute I played one of their favorite songs.

NOVA - PBS

On Nova (PBS), I saw a documentary called Memory Hackers.  I was gulping up the information that they displayed because I believe the more we come to understand our mind and memory, the more we can evolve and grow and heal our mind body connections. 

Memory Hackers

Top 5 Things From Memory Hackers

The top five things I got from the Memory Hackers program was as follows.

1. Memory is not what we thought it was.  It isn't something we store one time and it remains that way until we die.  It can be changed every time it is recalled.
2. Telling the memory repeatedly can often allow us to alter and mold it into something it is not.  It gives an opportunity of rewriting parts of the memory as we tell it and store it away.
3. We all have parts of our memories it seems that we would like to forget or stop from controlling our every day life through phobias.  While there are ethical implications, there are real ways being tested in a laboratory to do this.
4. If someone has a great memory, it does not necessarily mean they are the smartest person around as evidenced by the HSAM section.
5. Various parts of a memory are stored in different sections of our brain which include all our senses, experiences, and emotions that were going on at the time.  

Hippocampus And Memory

The hippocampus is vital in bringing all these parts back together.   It is almost like the conductor and while it attempts to bring things at the right moment, memory is not always linear. 

There are far too many times that I have had emotions come up without the full memory, or a sensation that has happened and yet there is no emotion.  There are times a story arises, but there are no senses, emotions, or other experiences that I can put together to make sense of it.

I still remember the nightmares that lasted many years of being afraid of the color purple.  It seems strange and odd to most that the color purple would bring out terrifying horrors of anxiety, anger, and depression.  It was not until Thanksgiving of 1997 that the color purple finally came into full view and I saw the memory for what it was.

Oprah Male Survivor Show

When I went to the Oprah taping of the 200 Male Survivor show, it was an emotional experience.  Hearing others tell their stories immediately connected to those experiences in my own life.  I was a wrung out mess of tears by the time I left and in many ways, I felt so out of it.

Normally, you will not hear me telling my story over and over.  I have longed in many ways to forget these things even though I know that sharing my story may help others.  I've always been cautious in telling the memories repeatedly, because I felt that things could be altered as my mind tried to make sense of what was going on.  With this Nova program on Memory Hackers, I can see that my gut instinct was right.

Unified Therapy - Dr. Paul Canali

In Unified Therapy, we often bring a person to the edge of those moments where the memory is alive.  We do it through the felt sense or what some call interoception.  This is the act of feeling something deep within our body without becoming lost in it.  It helps empower us while bringing about awareness and through that awareness, we can begin to change it and alter it.  Often when we have been through traumatic moments in our life, our memory suffers because our brain shuts down feeling, so that we can survive.  Through turning the felt sense back on, we begin to discover and connect our mind and body together.

Conclusion

I so wish I could wave a magic wand and erase all the bad memories.  Even though I know it is possible in the research lab, I question if the body truly forgets too, or if there is some residual part of the body that will continue to poison the mind.  Only, in this case, the poison of the bad memory has nowhere to go.  It just fills the empty void.  It is my biggest concern because I've seen how my own body responded to memories that I could not recall easily.

I don't have all the answers and I know most don't.  It is wonderful to see different parts of our scientific, medical, and alternative healing worlds coming together to better understand our memory.  It is the continued focus on how our memory functions that will bring greater truths of healing and empowerment for individuals.

In this day and age of MRI scans, we can no longer sit by and embrace the paradigms of old with respect to memory.  We are living in a new day and age, and the advancement for our civilization and human body is in the mind.  I've seen this in my own life and I am excited by the possibilities of discovery for what lies ahead.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2/17/16 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
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Understanding Neuroplasticity

Understanding Neuroplasticity
Change The Brain
Change The Mind

One of the concepts that I have begun to learn over the past few years, is just how much our brain and mind is wired through what we allow our self to consciously connect to in our life.  Neuroplasticity is all about how the neurons fire together and wire together.

The following video lecture of Rick Hanson, author of "Buddha's Brain" is on how neuroplasticity impacts our life through the firing and wiring of the neurons.  The following information I have written, is excerpts from this 7 minute video that explains a lot about neuroplasticity and the mind body connection.

Through the MRI and other research, we can see more clearly that as the brain changes, so does the mind.  In other words, what is fed into the brain, the mind focuses on in those moments.  The left part of the prefrontal cortex is responsible for controlling negative emotions.  The more it slows down the negative emotions, the more positive our thoughts become.

Trama and the Limbic System

The limbic system is the part of our nervous system that is responsible for our survival as well as emotions like fear and anger. It is also involved in feelings of pleasure such as eating and sex. It is a complex set of structures that lies on both sides of the thalamus just below the cerebrum and includes the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala and thalamus.

The amygdala and hippocampus are part of the limbic system and play a major role in our memory. The amygdala determines what memories are stored and where they are stored while the hippocampus is responsible for sending out memories to the appropriate areas of our brain for long term storage. The hippocampus retrieves the appropriate memories when it is necessary. The amygdala is involved in our emotional response.

The limbic system has an important role as it helps in the self preservation and survival of the species. it is responsible for the fight or flight response. If parts of the limbic system are impacted negatively, it can strongly influence or disrupt normal social behavior.

According to the article, "The Biological Response To Psychic Trauma", because the limbic system is the main area of the Central Nervous System where memories are processed, this is the most likely place to find an explanation of memory issues as a result of trauma. The hippocampus does not fully mature until at least the third or fourth year of life but the amygdala matures much earlier in life. In the first few years of life, the quality of events but not necessarily the context with which they happened can be remembered. Severe traumatic events of prolonged stress can disrupt the normal processes of the hippocampus which then disrupt the memory process by creating fearful associations without context, yet the feelings are still associated with the memories.

The main thing to keep in mind is that there are memories stored throughout our body and that connect to our mind. These are stored as emotions and sensations. Our fears get locked in with these memory sensations and so in order to understand our emotions and to understand the fear we hold, we must go in to the body. Only trying to access these memories through cognitive or mental exercises, is like only filling up a water glass a third of the way to quench your thirst after being outside all day. While you may add water to your body this way, you're going to still suffer from thirst. So it is with cognitive functions. If you only address part of the underlying events that reside in the body, than you're missing the greatest part of it.

Many claim that they have the right way to heal and they try to prove this. However, just having emotions come up or feeling nice or relaxed or seeing certain conditions change does not necessarily mean you are at the root of what is going on. If there is not a grounded body connection to the method of healing where you go in and embrace the fear, you are missing the point as a healer. There has to be a connection to the body, through the mind to arrive at the place of release, surrender and healing. Without all these elements, true healing is not taking place.

For More Information:
Reference: http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk2/
Anxiety Research (U.K.), Volume 4: Pages 199-212
The Biological Response to Psychic Trauma: Mechanisms and Treatment Of Intrusion and Numbing

Forgetfulness - Symptoms Of Stress, Part 8

This is Part 8 of 9 Part Series - Forgetfulness

Ask anyone these days and most often you will hear that person make some mention of having memory issues. Whether it is short term or long term memory, many people struggle with this. According to this article on health.yahoo.com, Dr. Lombardo, author of "A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness", is quoted as saying “Research shows that chronic stress can literally shrink the size of the hippocampus, which is responsible for some memories.” Fortunately, according to Dr. Lombardo, the size of the hippocampus will go back to its normal size once the stress level is reduced.

However, many people are living in a constant state of stress and do not even fully realize it. They often think that if you just relax for a few hours, than all is fine. While that may help, it is just part of what needs to happen. The nervous system in our bodies is meant to absorb stress and deal with it but when we constantly overload the system, the stress becomes overwhelming. Daily chronic stress, if not released, builds up and can be as harmful as if you were involved in a traumatic incident. Both have many of the same long lasting effects on a body.

In our day and age of technology and fast paced business offices, we are not able to readily escape stress. It is everywhere around us. We all have many responsibilities to deal with and even during this time of unemployment and financial crisis we are in, many are struggling to just hold things together and keep going. So it is no wonder right now that the level of stress is at an all time high in our society.

Stress is stored in the body and if you are not doing things to release the stress from the body each day, it will build up and begin causing all kinds of health problems. Bodywork, exercise, meditation, Yoga, deep breathing, movement and just taking some time out each day to let go and relax are all helpful ways in dealing with this. The key though is to find something that works for you and make the time in your day to do this. It isn’t just something that is nice to do once or twice a year on vacation. It is critical for your survival and evolution as a human being into becoming all that you can be.


Symptoms Of Stress: (9 Part Series)
Part 1. Tweaked and Tense Muscles
Part 2. Eye Twitching
Part 3. Ragged Cuticles
Part 4. Cavities
Part 5. Rashes & Itching
Part 6. Nausea
Part 7. Sleep
Part 8. Forgetfulness
Part 9. Confusion



*For more articles, check out the Mind Body Thoughts Blog

Post-traumatic stress may harm kids' brains

This is an excellent article from CNN.com about a study led by Dr. Victor Carrion and the senior author was Dr. Allan Reiss, both at the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford University School Of Medicine.


Article Link: Post-Traumatic Stress May Harm Kids' brains

What Your Child Remembers

Note: This is an article that I stumbled across while doing some research and the author, Robin Grille, has given me permission to reprint this in the blog. It is excellent information and make sure you check his books and his website out.

WHAT YOUR CHILD REMEMBERS
New discoveries about early memory - and how it affects us

Most of us have been told at one time or another that children aren’t supposed to remember anything that happens to them before – roughly – the age of two. Emotionally painful experiences during infancy will therefore have no lasting impact. These words might have been reassuring, if they didn’t also imply that our infants don’t remember the love we have given them, and so our love at this time has no lasting impact either. As science continues to throw open the mysteries of the brain, and the nature of memory, this kind of advice will gradually vanish. Every emotionally meaningful experience - whether joyous or painful - is stored in memory and has a lasting impact on a baby’s developing nervous system. The way our world feels to us as babies influences our unfolding personality, emotionality and relating styles profoundly, for the long term. There are different kinds of ‘memory’, beyond the stories we can recount. And we ‘remember’ a lot more than we realise.

Within the limbic system of the brain - an area concerned with processing emotions - are the amygdala and hippocampus. The amygdala processes highly-charged emotional memories, such as terror and horror. The hippocampus processes narrative, chronological memory. The amygdala is mature at birth, so babies are able to feel a range of intense emotion, even though they cannot understand the content of the emotion and its relation to what is going on around them. The hippocampus on the other hand, does not mature until sometime between the second and fourth years. Until then, babies are relatively unable to organise memory meaningfully in terms of sequences of events. Only rarely does anybody consciously recall the events of infancy. However, the storage of the emotional content of memory is facilitated by the amygdala. We therefore remember every emotion and physical sensation from our earliest days, and even if we have no clarity about the events that took place, these memories imbue the way we relate to each other as adults.

Just as memory can be divided up into the dual categories of ‘Short Term’ and ‘Long Term’, there are also two qualities of memory: ‘Explicit’ and ‘Implicit’. The capacity for ‘explicit’ memory reaches full maturity at around three years of age. This is the kind of memory that is conscious and enables us to tell a story that makes sense of what happened. ‘Implicit’ memory is available from birth or earlier, it is unconscious, and is encoded in emotional, sensory and visceral recall. In other words, what we don’t remember with our minds, we remember with our bodies, with our hearts and our ‘guts’ – with lasting implications for our thinking, feeling, and behaviour.

The process of ‘forgetting’ is more superficial than we once thought: it only rubs out conscious recall. Even as adults we are mercifully capable of deleting any record of traumatic events. If we are unlucky enough to face a situations of panic or terror which we feel helpless to escape, the brain secretes endogenous opioids in order to numb us to overwhelming emotional or physical pain. These brain chemicals also interfere with the storage of explicit memory, though implicit memory of the trauma remains available. Experiences that are emotionally too overwhelming to deal with are stored somatically, as a body memory. Thereafter they are expressed as an unconscious response to stress. When we over-react to mildly stressful or even innocuous situations without knowing why, this might be the result of implicit, traumatic memories dating back to childhood or infancy.

The memory centres that govern narrative recall, emotional memory and body memory can operate independently of each other. Despite being in a coma, one man went into physiological anxiety states when exposed to a smell that was associated with a personal trauma. It is possible to have strong emotional reactions without conscious recall, even without consciousness! Another man whose damaged brain had lost all capacity for short term memory, still reacted aversively to specific doctors who had conducted unpleasant tests on him, without any recollection of having met them. A brain-damaged woman who had also totally lost her short term memory refused to shake the hand of a doctor who had earlier hidden a sharp pin in his hand. She was bewildered by her own refusal, since as far as she was aware, each time she met him was the first. So, much of what we think, feel and do is induced by implicit memories ‘written’ into muscle, sinew, fascia and viscera. Not one of our experiences is lost to us. Each experience, particularly those that are charged with emotion, adds to the complex mosaic of our personality.

Our brain has an amazing capacity to make associations. Something or someone that ‘reminds’ our brains of a traumatic situation - a smell, a song, a person that looks like someone from our past – triggers our automatic, self-protective ‘fight, flight or freeze’ responses. This reflexive reaction occurs too quickly; before the information reaches the cortex where it can be evaluated rationally. That is why we sometimes over-react to things, people or situations reminiscent of a traumatic event, without any conscious recollection of the event in question.

There are occasions when implicit memory can be made explicit. Since implicit memory is ‘stored’ in the body, repeating certain movements, gestures, breathing patterns, or assuming certain postures associated with highly-charged emotional memories can bounce these memories into explicit, conscious awareness. It is as if the body releases its secrets to the mind. Many individuals have been able to retrieve traumatic memories, both from adult and infant experiences, when induced by strong emotions associated with the original experience. In certain states of consciousness, in psychotherapy or meditation, people have spontaneously recalled things that happened to them as babies. Many have remembered how it felt to be a baby, howling for a mother who would not come. In reconstructing a particular body posture, or talking about a similar emotionally charged event, the contextual memories of unbearable longing, rage or terror come back into focus. It is equally possible for sweet, joyous memories of a parents’ loving face to resurface. This phenomenon is called ‘state-dependent memory retrieval’, and while it is not essential, it can bring healing under certain conditions.

But even if not consciously remembered, early memories show themselves indirectly through behaviour. It is intrinsically human to re-enact defensive reactions to forgotten traumas, though our reactions are no longer relevant. Often early memories become evident through persistent feelings that don’t seem to relate to a present situation, or through bodily sensations that don’t seem to make any sense. More commonly, these early memories of emotional pain or hurt are indirectly evident through persistent difficulties in relationships, particularly in intimate relations.

Implicit memory - or body memory - explains why, for instance, a woman who was molested as a child remains fearful of intimacy - at least with men that ‘remind’ her of the perpetrator – even without a trace of conscious memory of the traumatic episodes. A man fears being alone because it triggers an emotional memory of terror as he cried in the crib, and no-one came to comfort him. He has no recollection of the event, and all around him find him likeable and congenial. He has no understanding about his compulsive avoidance of solitude. Though successful and functional, many people can be avoidant, clingy, or perhaps insensitive in relationships. These are just some of the problems of relationship that have their roots in hurts we felt at the advent of life. To some extent, most of us suffer from some behavioural manifestations of painful implicit memories.

Unbeknownst to our ‘rational’ minds, we sometimes respond mistakenly to current challenges as if they were the hurts we suffered originally. This dynamic holds true in our relationships with our children. There are many reasons why, for instance, we might find our children’s expressions of need aversive and overwhelming. Here is a common scenario: when a baby screams, our bodies react the same way as when our parents screamed at us as children, we are neurologically conditioned to escape or push away, rather than to respond with spontaneous compassion. Alternatively, our baby’s cry might trigger in our bodies an implicit memory of a time when our own cries, as infants, were not met with a loving response. Either way, our baby’s cries evoke our own painful memory, and so we seek refuge. We are all biologically capable of a wellspring of spontaneously loving responses toward our children, and toward each other. Sometimes this love is blocked by automatic defensive reactions to unresolved, implicitly remembered hurts. We are not insensitive nor neglectful; we are wounded.

When a child is reprimanded, an image of the scolder’s looks of disapproval gets stored in the lateral tegmental limbic area of the brain. The growing child and adult judge their own behaviour through the lens of these stored inner representations, which are imprinted as images charged with feelings of shame. These inner visual and auditory records of the shamer usually – but not always - operate beneath conscious awareness. The experience of parents setting healthy boundaries literally grows the child’s orbitofrontal brain, whose purpose it is to contain and regulate raw emotion. But when the parent imposes limits, for some time following the symbiotic time of infancy, the toddler feels a degree of hurt and betrayal. This developmentally necessary change in the parent-child relationship is emotionally stressful. It is important that the parent soothe the toddler after imposing restrictions on him, to help him cope with his ‘shame-stress’. Reassurance of the parent’s love repairs the child’s wounded ‘self’ and restores his self-confidence. If parents diligently assist with their child’s shame–repair, he soon learns to take over, and based on his parents’ role modelling, repair his own shame when needed. Inner representations - stored as emotional and narrative memory in the brain - of a soothing and reassuring parent are used later in life as a template for shame-repair. This internal portrait of a reassuring adult is essential so that as an adult the individual won’t be disabled or overly inhibited by experiences of shame. Though this process is usually unconscious, it secures our ability to self-soothe, and to recover from shame when needed.

Psychological and social problems arise when a child grows up with too many images of a disapproving face stored in the brain centres that store implicit memory, without the subsequent images of a soothing and reassuring adult. A child that lacks these positive images, stored in his emotional memory centres, is at risk of slipping into depression, becoming overly inhibited, or defensively hostile.

From the earliest moments of life, parental nurturance shapes the child’s emotional make-up, literally altering the course of brain-growth. One of the key elements of secure parent-child attachment is affectionate eye-contact. A parent’s sustained, loving gaze and smile suffuses infants with indescribable joy. What ensues is a cascade of dopamine, endogenous opioids, enkephalins and endorphins in the baby’s brain - all feel-good chemicals associated with loving relations. This joy-precipitated surge of brain chemicals promotes the maturation of precise regions of the cortex, which are concerned with healthy regulation of emotion later in life. Every baby requires this kind of nourishing experience regularly and frequently, for healthy brain development.

By the end of the first year, the infant has stored an internal representation of her mother’s loving face in the area connecting the anterior temporal and the orbitofrontal cortices. These images, though rarely consciously remembered, form the basis for an internal working model of relationships. It is as if the child has filed a video-clip of her mother in her brain’s ‘hard-disk’. Henceforth, these inner representations will animate her core emotional responses, forming the basis of her fundamental relationship style. When she feels her emotional needs are consistently attended to, this engenders in the child an enduring expectation of a supportive world. This attitude is pervasive and unconscious, and it inclines the child toward friendly and considerate behaviour.

Just as we might not remember learning to walk, yet our legs and feet seem to play their parts perfectly, some of our most pivotal lessons in human relations were learnt at a time that our bodies, but not our minds, can remember. The greatest gift in these discoveries is the knowledge that every loving moment we share with our children, from the very beginning, will stay with them for life.



Robin Grille is a Sydney-based psychologist, and author of: Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Media, 2005) and: Heart to Heart Parenting
(US edition, LifeTime Media, due in April 2010).
For more information see: www.our-emotional-health.com


References

Damasio, Antonio (2000) ‘The Feeling of What Happens – Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness’. Vintage.

De Bellis M, et al (1999) ‘Developmental Traumatology Part II’. Biological Psychiatry Vol 45, pp. 1271-1284.

Patten-Hitt, Emma (2000) ‘Childhood Abuse Changes the Developing Brain’. Cerebrum, Fall 2000, pp. 50-67.

Perry B.D., Pollard R.A., Blakley T.L., Baker W.L. and Vigilante D., (1995) ‘Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and Use-Dependent Development of the Brain: How States Become Traits’. Infant Mental Health Journal Vol 16(4), pp. 271-291.

Perry, B. D. (1997) ‘Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the Cycle of Violence’. In: Osofsky JD ‘Children in a Violent Society’. The Guilford Press.

Perry, B. D. (1999) ‘Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States’. In: Goodwin J. and Attias R., ‘Splintered Reflections: Images of the Body in Trauma’. Basic Books.

Rothschild, Babette (2000) ‘The Body Remembers – The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment’. WW Norton & Co.

Schore, Allan (1994) ‘Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development’. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. NJ.

Teicher, Martin H (2002) ‘The Neurobiology of Child Abuse’. Scientific American, March 2002, pp. 68-75.

Van der Kolk, Bessel (1994) ‘The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Posttraumatic Stress’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol 1, pp. 253-265.

In The Mind's Eye

One of the things I have learned from Dr. Paul Canali is that by watching the eyes of someone on the massage table, you can tell so much. When a person is deep in the subconscious (or hippocampus), the brain is processing information and neural connections and neural pathways. The eyes have a movement that when you see it, you will know exactly where they are. This movement also signals that the person has moved past the fears and into the processing stage. By working with this, you can help assist and provide safety to the person as they process things that they may not readily think about or things that are in the conscious mind. This work allows you help the person move through some very traumatic experiences without having to completely relive all the horror and pain of those events in a conscious manner. It is very powerful and amazing to work with.

Here's an article that talked about some of the studies being done in this area.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17762-eye-movements-reveal-processing-of-hidden-memories.html