Week 4

Question 1

Right Brain Dominance

Answer 1

• Right brain is for implicit, nonverbal communication, intuition, holistic processing and social interaction

Question 2

Brain Hemispheres

Answer 2

• Right & Left hemispheres have different priorities
• Right seeks new threats and opportunities, is sensorial and implicit memory
• Left side strongly linked to cognitive processes, Likes to organise information

Question 3

Right Brain is Dominant in Therapy

Answer 3

Implicit, nonverbal, intuitive, holistic processing of emotional information and social interactions

Schore 2014

Question 4

Developmental and Affective Neuroscience

Answer 4

• When a therapist tunes into the client experience
• Shift from cognitive left brain to right brain unconscious and emotional, holistic functions

Question 5

Attunement

Answer 5

• Appears between mothers and babies
• Appears to be both right brains communicating
• Babies only have right brain functioning
• Left brain still developing
• Best therapy is right brain intuitive

Question 6

Attachment Neurobiology

Answer 6

• Mother-infant communication happens quickly
• Is unconscious therefore right brained
• Left side is cognitive and conscious

Question 7

Regulation Theory

Answer 7

• Maturation of the right brain
• The caregiver teaches the infant to regulate their affect
• Using nonverbal, rightside visual-facial cues, auditory prosodic cues

Question 8

Co-regulation

Answer 8

• Initial regulation of nervous system relies on comfort & support of caregiver
• Needs responsive approach that supports distress of child
• Early co-regulation promotes self-regulation when there is no one to lean on

Question 9

Neurochemicals That Will Soothe Us

Answer 9

• Oxytocin mainly in females
• Vasopresin mainly in males
• The care system and natural opioids, endorphins and dopamine
• Hugs help release these naturally

Question 10

Secure Attachments

Answer 10

• Positive caregiving fosters this
• Helps self-regulation and auto-regulation

Question 11

Empathic Therapist

Answer 11

• Conscious Explicit attending to client’s language
• Objective diagnosis and rationale of dysregulation and symptomology
• Active listening to interact at an implicit level

Question 12

Left Brain Communication

Answer 12

• The sharing of conscious and constructed ideas
• Both sides are important in their own way
• Get clients to describe their anxiety and what the feeling is
• Get them to connect the emotion to left brain activity

Question 13

Relational Trauma

Answer 13

• When early attachments fail affect regulation is poor
• We need to develop affect regulation and positive implicit interactions
• Must occur in a therapeutic context

Question 14

Core Clinical Skills

Answer 14

• Right Brain Implicit Capacities
• Ability to sensitively register changes in emotion
• Immediate awareness of own subjective experience
• Regulation of own and patient’s affect

Question 15

Neuroception

Answer 15

• Neurophysiological process that happens without awareness
• Could be called gut instinct
• Evaluates risk and triggers adaptive responses to threat
• Uses implicit cues of safety: faces, gestures, prosody
• Connecting with present and cognitive supports change

Question 16

What is Therapeutic Prescence?

Answer 16

• Grounded contact with own healthy self
• Open, receptive, immersed in what is important in the moment
• Larger sense of expansion of awareness and perception
• Intention of being with client and serving their healing

Question 17

Components of Neuroception

Answer 17

• Body feelings and emotions can be influenced by others
• Bidirectional communication with brain, body and nervous system of others
• Not aware its happening, can be gut feeling
• Makes us alert within social interactions

Question 18

Function of Neuroception

Answer 18

• An adaptive mechanism that turns off defenses to engage socially
• Or prepares us for defensive strategies connected with fight/flight or shutdown

Question 19

Bidirectional Influence

Answer 19

• Feelings are contagious
• Therapist can influence client’s feelings and vice versa
• Geller & Porges 2014 say it is specifically right brain connection that creates state regulation

Question 20

Regulation Theory

Answer 20

• A process of anchoring and adjusting our performance
• Is both mental and physical in nature
• Responses to corrective feedback within our social and physical environment.

Question 21

Modern Attachment Theory

Answer 21

The development of affect regulation

Right Brain lateralisation of visual, auditory and gesture communication

Primary caregiver regulates infants distress