A Personal Quest
A Personal Quest
A Personal Quest
A Personal Quest: Searching for the Neural Correlates Underlying the Active and Passive Brain
Anthony Sully
4/3/17
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Abstract
While living in France, I came across a method of psychotherapy known as the Vittoz Method,
named after Dr. Roger Vittoz (1863-1925). Having experienced healing thanks to Vittoz
exercises, I have always had a desire to understand the Method through the lens of modern
science. In this paper, I seek to discover “how” the Vittoz Method works, by reviewing literature
on mindfulness techniques (an approximation of certain Vittoz exercises) and their relationship
with the human brain, hoping to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying the Vittoz
Method.
Keywords: Vittoz Method, mindfulness, default mode network, task positive network,
A Personal Quest: Searching for the Neural Correlates Underlying the Active and Passive Brain
While living in France, I came across a unique method of psychotherapy known as the
Vittoz Method (pronounced vee-toes), so-called after the name of its founder, the Swiss
psychotherapist Dr. Roger Vittoz (1863-1925). The method is still relatively known throughout
France and Europe, but never became known in the United States. Dr. Vittoz was ahead of his
time; without any of the modern technology available to us today, his insights into the brain and
its place in human healing still seem relevant today. I personally developed an interest in the
Vittoz Method because I experienced firsthand its power of healing and unification in my own
life. Vittoz transformed my life, and I plan to employ therapeutic techniques from the Vittoz
The core intuitions of Dr. Vittoz are laid out in the only work he ever formally wrote,
the title suggests, Dr. Vittoz believed that the majority of diverse symptoms classified under the
(culpability, inferiority, etc.), inability to concentrate, nervous tensions of all sorts, etc.—were
caused primarily by a lack of cerebral control. For Vittoz, neurotic conditions were the result of
a brain that had become “passive,” where the “unconscious” brain had gotten the upper hand
over the “active,” or “conscious” brain (Vittoz, 1907/1999). Dr. Vittoz believed that the first
step in healing persons affected with such conditions was to begin with the brain, and
specifically, to give back control to the conscious brain over the unconscious brain. When the
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brain is in control of itself, of its thoughts, the person is no longer subject to and dominated by
To this end, Dr. Vittoz devised a method to train the brain to become conscious, rather
than unconscious. Though it does not appear that Dr. Vittoz had any knowledge of Eastern
practices (he was a devout Christian), he created a method of self-healing that has much in
common with what are known today as mindfulness practices. The Vittoz Method, like modern
mindfulness practices, involves exercises of conscious receptivity to one’s internal and external
of deliberate and intentional choosing, etc. The simple exercises of Dr. Vittoz were created to
train the person—and specifically, the person’s brain—to live life consciously. One cannot
conquer one’s intrusive and negative thoughts and feelings when one is dominated by them, their
“victim.” Give the person back control over their thoughts, and the person is now free to do
Dr. Vittoz never lived to see a technology capable of validating his Method, and I have
often wondered how his Method would hold up to the scrutiny of modern science. While to my
knowledge no scientific studies have been done on the Vittoz Method, a wealth of studies have
been done on the topic of mindfulness therapies and their relation to the brain. This paper will
limit itself to one core aspect of the Vittoz Method: using current knowledge of the brain, as
well as current research on mindfulness therapies, I will seek to find the possible neural
correlates of Vittoz’ concepts of “active” and “passive” brain, and whether the development of
Literature Review
seminal study in 2001 by Raichle et al. discovered a network in the brain that became known as
the default mode network. Researchers were intrigued by the fact that in many studies involving
increased activity in certain parts of the brain could be found when a subject was engaged in
some specific task. This was not surprising: why shouldn’t there be an increase in brain activity
when it is engaged? However, the researchers also noticed that when certain brain areas began
to “activate” during various activities, other areas seemed to decrease their activity
(“deactivate”) simultaneously. Further, while the areas activated by task performance were
relatively specific to the task involved, the areas that were deactivated tended to be the same,
regardless of the task involved. The researchers thus wondered if there might be a sort of
“baseline” state of neuronal activity that could be found within the brain, when the brain was not
The Raichle et al. study (2001) consisted of 49 adults, divided into three groups. Two
groups were studied while they rested, awake but with their eyes closed. A third group was
studied while resting but with eyes open, watching a twitching crosshair on an otherwise blank
television monitor. PET scans monitored brain activity while the participants rested, and found
that in all three groups, including the group with eyes open, the same areas of the brain showed
consistent activity. Having eyes open or closed had no effect on the measured activity, which
was intriguing given that one might expect visual areas to be specifically activated in the eyes-
open group relative to the eyes-closed groups. Counterintuitively, though the participants were
doing “nothing,” implicated areas of the brain were far from doing nothing; rather, they were
most active when the subject was doing nothing, and it was these areas of the brain that tended to
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deactivate when specific activities began. The researchers believed they had discovered a sort of
baseline of neuronal activity within the brain; a network of areas in the brain that activated when
The areas of the brain known to be implicated in the default mode network (DMN)
include the inferior, lateral, and medial parietal cortex, the dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal
cortices (mPFC), the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), parts of the medial and lateral
temporal cortices, as well as emotion-related areas such as the amygdala and the hippocampus
(Sheline et al., 2008). Following the Raichle et al. study (2001), numerous studies have been
done to better understand its functions. Mason et al. (2007) linked the DMN to the well-known
phenomena of mind wandering and daydreaming. Their research showed that the DMN was
active in the presence of stimulus-independent thought (SIT), or thoughts that come to mind
which are unprovoked by or irrelevant to current environmental stimuli. They also revealed that
the DMN can be engaged even when a person is active: if the activity is familiar to the person
and performed with ease, SITs tend to increase; whereas if the activity is novel or requires focus,
DMN activity is inhibited. This explains why our mind often wanders when we are doing
something familiar or tedious, like folding laundry, and does not tend to wander if we are being
chased by a vicious dog. Greicius and Menon (2004) further note that certain individuals who
exhibit stronger DMN activity (heavy daydreamers) need greater stimulation to deactivate DMN
DMN activity is not only associated with daydreaming. As Guo et al. (2014) notes, the
DMN is implicated in many types of SIT: self-referential thought of all kinds, thinking about
one’s past or future, and taking perspective on one’s life. Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, and
Schacter (2008) also note the DMN’s association with episodic and autobiographical memory as
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well as contemplating the beliefs and intentions of oneself or others. The common denominator
among these diverse functions of the DMN is clear: the self. Self-referential and autopilot-like
Is self-referential thought a bad thing? Isn’t it a good idea to think about oneself, so as to
take stock of one’s life? While a certain degree of self-reflection can be beneficial, numerous
studies have demonstrated a correlation between self-focus and negative emotional states. An
a dysfunction which Ramel, Goldin, Carmona, and McQuaid (2004, p. 434) define as “passively
focusing one’s attention on a negative emotional state like depression, its symptoms, and
thinking repetitively about the causes, meanings, and consequences of that state.” Hamilton et
al. (2011) found that a ruminative response style is highly correlated with maintaining a
depressed individual in his or her depression, and their research using fMRI demonstrated that
individuals suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) suffered from a “dominant” DMN
in which passive, self-focused, negative thought patterns significantly exceeded conscious, task-
Sheline et al. (2008) performed a study which attempted to find a link between self-
referential thought and the DMN in persons suffering from depression. Participants diagnosed
with MDD as well as non-depressed controls were asked to both passively and actively look at
negative and neutral pictures while their brains were scanned using fMRI. While looking
“passively,” participants had merely to describe what they saw and how they felt about it. When
looking “actively,” participants were asked to reappraise the pictures and reframe them in either
a more positive (or negative) light. Researchers found significantly more activation of the DMN
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in patients with MDD; they also found a significantly reduced ability to modulate their emotional
response when asked to reappraise a negative picture with a positive perspective. Researchers
concluded that a core aspect of MDD involves a pathological inability of the DMN to regulate
self-focus appropriately.
Is mind-wandering always negative? This is unlikely, or else evolution would not have
preserved the DMN in its current function. Daydreaming and introspection have undoubtedly
led to many of the great human inventions and discoveries throughout the centuries.
mind tends to be an unhappy mind. Having created a smartphone application allowing people to
track their minute-by-minute happiness levels, as well as whether they were daydreaming or
present, they found that unhappier moments strongly correlated with daydreaming moments.
While the DMN involves areas of the brain that become active when the brain is at rest
and unengaged in an activity, a second, anti-correlated network of brain areas has been shown to
exist that is “activated” when the brain is attentive and focused on some specific task. This task-
positive network (TPN) consists of the intraparietal sulcus and frontal eye fields (known as the
dorsal attention system), as well as the dorsal-lateral prefrontal regions, the insula, and the
supplementary motor area (Fox et al., 2005); it is known to be involved in “executive function,
attention, and working memory” (Hamilton et al., 2011, p. 327). The TPN is anti-correlated with
the DMN because when the TPN is activated, the DMN is deactivated, as multiple studies have
Among the many functions of the TPN, one of particular interest to this paper is the
TPN’s capacity of attentional control. Malinowski (2013) notes three interrelated attentional
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functions within the TPN: alerting (right frontal and right parietal cortices, thalamus), orienting
(superior parietal cortex, temporal parietal junction, frontal eye fields, superior colliculus) and
executive control (anterior cingulate cortex, lateral ventral cortex, prefrontal cortex, and basal
ganglia). Jha, Krompinger, and Baime (2007) further reduce these functions to a two-fold
orienting whereby voluntary (executive) attention is given to stimuli we need to pay attention to,
and this is carried out primarily by a bilateral dorsal frontoparietal system. “Receptivity” is a
form of bottom-up processing of salient sensory stimuli, carried out by a right-lateralized ventral
frontoparietal system. These dorsal and ventral systems combine to form a network of executive
attention that is activated when the brain is consciously focused, whether upon some object or a
In recent years, the psychological community has given much attention to the therapeutic
psychological difficulties of the widest variety. These techniques of Buddhist origin are
manifold, and can include anything from transcendental meditation and chanting to yoga and
Quigong. For the purposes of this paper, I will limit myself to the two basic facets highlighted
by Teper and Inzlicht (2013) as comprising the core of most mindfulness-based stress reduction
one’s surroundings, one’s breath, etc.) and emotional acceptance (through non-judgmental
observation of one’s thoughts and feelings, cultivating attitudes of love and compassion towards
oneself and others, learning to accept things outside one’s control, etc.). The positive effects of
such practices are well-documented; MBSR has been shown to relieve a variety of conditions,
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including anxiety (Zeidan, Martucci, Kraft, McHaffie, & Coghill, 2014), depression (Sheline et
al., 2008), ruminative thoughts (Hamilton et al., 2011), and mood disorders of various types
While the relationship between MBSR and well-being is fascinating, for this paper I
would like to focus on an even more fundamental relationship: the relationship between MBSR
and attention. In understanding why MBSR has such a powerful impact on so many diverse
forms of malaise, its relation to attention may be a key factor: “The primary psychological
domain mediating and affected by meditative practice is attention” (Cahn & Polich, 2006, p.
200).
As mindfulness deliberately seeks to attend to and regulate one’s thoughts and emotions,
many studies have sought to understand the impact of MBSR on attention and executive control.
What effects, if any, does mindfulness have on the TPN? A 2013 study by Teper and Izlicht
sought to answer this. Researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) to record activity in the
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while both experienced mediators and meditation-naïve controls
completed a Stroop task. The Stroop task is known to require executive control, as participants
must concentrate in order not to make errors; ACC activity was specifically chosen due to its
known correlation with control. Another factor measured by researchers was error-related
negativity (ERN), a neurophysiological response that occurs when an error has been made,
causing that brief “oops” reaction we have when we have missed a question on a test. Results
found that experienced meditators significantly outperformed controls on the Stroop task, but for
intriguing reasons: meditators had a heightened ERN relative to controls, which led researchers
to speculate that mindfulness leads to both greater sensitivity to errors (error-noticing was more
pronounced) as well as a greater ability to regulate ERN and continue calmly accomplishing
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one’s task. Mindfulness seemed to give meditators an edge on the Stroop task not only due to
greater attention capacity but also a greater ability to “let go” of mistakes and not allow oneself
This increase in attention and control, as might be expected, has been shown to have
repercussions in the DMN. Brewer et al. (2011) used fMRI to study the DMN in experienced
meditators. They found that the primary nodes of the DMN—the medial prefrontal and posterior
cingulate cortices—were deactivated during the act of meditation. They also found interesting
deactivating the amygdala, which is associated with fear and other negative emotions. Finally,
researchers found that in experienced meditators, increased functional connectivity was found
among areas involving cognitive control: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, dorsal anterior
cingulate, and the ACC. These areas showed greater connectivity during meditation and even
outside meditation, in a resting state, findings which have been replicated in other studies
(Garrison, Zeffiro, Scheinost, Constable, & Brewer, 2015). This implies that the effects of
mindfulness transform the brain in a more global way, and Brewer et al. (2011) suggests that one
of the primary means by which meditation increases cognitive well-being is through a reduction
mind.
To this effect, the study by Farb et al. (2012) showed that one of the primary means by
which MBSR aids patients with depression is in giving them tools to increase cognitive control,
whereby they can lessen automatic negative affective processing; by better regulating emotions,
persons suffering from depression can find the space to reappraise themselves more objectively
and positively. Other studies have demonstrated this link between cognitive control and well-
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being by the reduction of activity associated with the DMN (Ramel et al., 2004; Malinowski,
2013).
Discussion
In this paper, I have sought to discover possible neural mechanisms underlying the
method of reeducation of cerebral control developed by Dr. Roger Vittoz, a form of therapy
which I have experienced and which I would like to better understand. As I know of no
scientific studies done directly on the Vittoz Method, I have used a close approximation that has
Vittoz therapy is aimed specifically at the brain, I used modern studies of the brain to see if
mindfulness has been shown to have an effect on cognitive control and well-being. The studies I
found gave me several promising avenues for understanding the Vittoz Method.
The first is Vittoz’ proposal of an existence of two related and mutually exclusive modes
brain (Vittoz, 1907/1999, p. 15-16). The conscious brain is aware of itself and its surroundings,
it is in control of itself and decides deliberately what it wants to do. The unconscious brain is out
coming from who-knows-where and which can lead to negative psychological states.
My studies on the DMN and the TPN have shed much light on this phenomenon as Vittoz
understood it. Indeed, Vittoz’ conception of a passive brain corresponds well to what we know
of the DMN, a network of brain areas that are active when a person is “inactive.” The DMN
does tend to be associated with mind wandering and rumination, or “passive” thought outside
one’s control. Further, Vittoz’ intuition that passive thought often leads to negative
psychological states has been verified by modern psychology, as this paper has shown.
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One of Dr. Vittoz’ central ideas is that neurotic states are primarily caused by
insufficiencies of cerebral control, (being in conscious control over one’s thoughts and
emotions). In other words, states like anxiety are sometimes caused when conscious thought
begins to be dominated by passive thoughts that one is unable to withstand. This seemed to be
verified by research like the Hamilton et al. study (2011) which showed that a major factor in
maintaining MDD was an insufficiency of TPN dominance over the DMN; depressed patients
were locked into their depressive state in part due to being unable to control their ruminating,
negative self-appraisals. Unable to control or halt their negative thoughts, they remain locked in
Thankfully, Vittoz’ belief that it is possible to learn to take back control over one’s brain
has also been verified by scientific research. Vittoz intuitively recognized, long before modern
science would empirically demonstrate it, that one could not be both mentally present and absent
at the same time; the two are exclusive. Whether one is actively receiving a sensory stimulus via
the senses, attending to one’s breath, or accomplishing an exercise of mental focus, one’s mind
cannot ruminate when one is mentally engaged. This Vittozian principle finds validation in what
we know of the anti-correlated nature of the DMN and TPN, and how they mutually inhibit each
other. An active TPN deactivates the DMN, and when TPN activation lowers beyond a certain
Conclusion
Dr. Vittoz felt that he was on to something important when he first created his Method, so
many years ago. Facing a wave of psychoanalysts like Freud, who tried to heal patients through
endless introspection, Vittoz had a contrary intuition: that it was precisely this endless focus on
self that was rendering people sick. He tried to forge a different path, a path of simplicity which
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brought people back to the basics of being human. Taking people out of their heads and into the
moment, giving them back control over themselves; teaching people a cyclical path of possessing
Dr. Vittoz always lamented that the science of his time was unable to corroborate so
many of his intuitions that he knew were true, but couldn’t demonstrate scientifically. Until
writing this paper, I, too, knew the value of the Vittoz Method in my own experience, but didn’t
have the tools to explain how it works. This paper has been a personal quest to help me
understand the underlying mechanisms of the Vittoz Method, and I look forward to using my
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