Neal Miller

It was 1968 when I first joined Dr. Miller’s laboratory as a graduate student of Bruce McEwen. Dr. Miller’s laboratory was the first neuroscience laboratory I had encountered.  He had physiological psychologists (e.g., Ted Coons,  Jay Weiss, David Quartermain, George Wolff, John Winston, Leo DiCara, Bruce Pappas) and biological psychologist (e.g., Bruce McEwen, Eric Stone, Sara Leibowitz).  There were more researchers in his laboratory than in my college biology department. Every member seemed to have their own project but they were all influenced by the Dr. Miller, who strongly felt that the brain could be controlled when the behavior was understood.  No questions seemed too large to tackle, from conscious control of the autonomic system to quantifying the actions of LSD or dissecting the neuronal effects of stress.  This willingness to use science as a penetrating light into the unknown has remained with me through all the years of my research.  Dr Miller was not interested in testing someone else’s hypothesis, or following the latest trend, he saw the potential of neuroscience for understanding questions encountered in the real world.  This bold approach often met with failure as when the rats on LSD simply remained immobile and did not bar press to sounds or noises (expected to occur during hallucinations) as they had been conditioned to do so. But at least Dr Miller tried the interesting experiments and enjoyed when he succeeded, but was not discouraged when science was not ready to experimentally reveal one of its secrets.

I have three stories I love to tell about Dr. Miller.

(1) One friday evening I was in his office as he was preparing to go away for the weekend for a bit of a holiday.  He was packing his briefcase with papers, journals and books until it almost broke.  He said to me; “The more work I take with me, the less chance there is I will get to any of it.”

(2) He was notorious for not knowing names.  At his home he was having a fair-well party for his first graduate student at Rockefeller.  When it came time to give his speech, he looked around and admitted he did not remember his name! (3) Dr. Miller was completely bald. One day a postdoc, who had just shaved his head, came into his office while I was there, and asked Dr. Miller if he noticed anything different about him.  Dr. Miller looked up, and said, “Did you shave your beard?” I though it amusing since the post-doc never had a beard.

Neal was a critical factor in my practice of internal medicine/nephrology. He taught me about the art of science, more so than I ever learned in medical school or subsequent training. I learned from him in my research with him the ” you’re right, but what else could it be” approach to medical problems. I, also, learned about statistics and could read a medical article and appreciate that the interpretation of statistics are too often at odds with reality. Yes, it was a privilege working and learning from him that significantly affected my approach to medicine. I shall always remember him, and indirectly, so shall my patients.    Dr. Bob

Graduate students

• Aaronson, Inez (Y=Yale)
• Agarie, Nariyuki (Y), OKINAWA
• Auld, Frank (Y)
• Azmitia, Efrain (R=Rockefeller)
• Bailey, Clark J. (Y)
• Banuazizi, Ali (Y)
• Berkun, Mitchell M. (Y)
• Birge, Jane S. (Y)
• Bower, Gordon H. (Y)
• Brown, Janet L. (Y)
• Brown, Judson S. (Y)
• Brucker, Bernard S. (NYU/R)
• Bugelski, Richard (Y)
• Burros, Raymond H. (Y)
• Carmona, Alfredo (Y), CHILE
• Chi, Carl (Y)
• Conger, John J. (Y)
• Coons, Edgar E. (Y)
• Davis, Maritta (Y)
• DeBold, Richard E. (Y)
• Derrer, Douglas (Y)
• Dworkin, Barry R. (R)
• Egger, David M. (Y)
• Feirstein, Alan R. (Y)
• Ferguson, Elizabeth A. (Y)
• Fields, Craig (R)
• Fowler, Harry (Y)
• Fromer, Robert (Y)
• Gallistel, C. R. (Y)
• Godbeer (now French), Elizabeth (Y)
• Goldstein, Jacob (Y)
• Grose, Robert F. (Y)
• Grossman, Sebastian P. (Y)
• Gwinn, Gordon T. (Y)
• Hendry, Derek (Y)
• Hutchinson, Ronald (Y)
• Jensen, Donald D. (Y)
• Karsh (now Hammond), Eileen (Y)
• Kaufman (now Shapiro), Edna (Y)
• Klebanoff, Seymour G. (Y)
• Kohn, Martin (Y)
• Kraeling (now Rutz), Doris (Y)
• Krasne, Frank P. (Y)
• Lawrence, Douglas H. (Y)
• Linton (now Barr), Harriet (Y)
• Mahl, George (Y)
• Moltz (now Futterman), Sara Lee (Y)
• Murray, Edward J. (Y)
• Myers, Arlo K. (Y)
• Nagaty, Mohamed O. (Y), KUWAIT
• Nelson, Franklin (Y)
• Novin, Donald (Y)
• Porter, Lyman W. (Y)
• Quadfosel (now Folsom), Angela (Y)
• Roberts, Warren W. (Y)
• Ruark, Margaret (Y)
• Runyon, Richard (Y)
• Sheffield, Fred E. (Y)
• Sheffield, Virginia F. (Y)
• Stone, (Steinbaum), Eric (Y,R)
• Stricker, Edward M. (Y)
• Trowill, Jay A. (Y)
• Vertes, Robert P. (R)
• Weiss, Jay M. (Y,R)
• Wells, H. Herbert (Y)
• Williams, Joanna Pozzi (Y)
• Wolf, George (Y,R)
• Zimbardo, Philip G. (Y)

During the early seventies we read the first time about a curare experiment: completely paralyzed rats were able to learn in an operant learning situation to control different aspects of the physiology. These reports which later turned out to be unreplicable electrified us because they opened the door for learning treatment of medical diseases. I decided to meet the hero behind these experiments in person and travelled to New York and visited Neal in his lab at the Rockefeller University at 1st Avenue. I vividly recall this first formal meeting of a young researcher and behavior therapist from Vienna with one of the most famous psychologists of all times. It was a very friendly and warm encounter from the beginning. Neal  recalled his experience with psychoanalysis in Vienna during the early thirties and the simultaneous rise of the Nazi movement, antisemitism and all the other political illnesses which plague Vienna and Austria until today (I returned my Austrian passport after the Neo-Nazi party of Haider was accepted in the government during the 90ties). This first meeting with Neal was probably around 1972 or 1973. He showed me the lab and I saw different experimental set-ups for research on motivation (hunger and thirst), but nothing of the curare experiments. He told me that he couldn’t show the experiments to me on that day because the responsible graduate student wasn’t there. On the same day I met Barry Dworkin, at that time also a graduate student, who explained to me that they had some problems with the replication of the curare experiments and introduced me to another problem, namely the biofeedback treatment of scoliosis and kyphosis. Barry and I became lifelong friends since that day and published many papers on scoliosis and baroreceptor physiology and blood pressure learning over the years. It was Barry Dworkin who tried to replicate the curare experiments over many decades without success, but discovering many other new effects of learning, particularly classical conditioning on nerve firing. It was Barry Dworkin who in the late 80ties wrote the famous paper where he tried to explain the lack of replication and pointed out that “experimenter effects” may have caused the early success of these experiments. After several visits in these early days at Rockefeller and the beginning of an international cooperative project on the behavioral treatment of scoliosis and kyphosis which was later published in PNAS, Neal and Barry visited my laboratory at Tübingen and we organized a big international meeting on biofeedback and operant treatment of disease on the occasion of the 500th birthday of Tübingen University at a romantic medieval castle near Tübingen. The papers of this conference were published in a book edited by Birbaumer and Kimmel (Biofeedback and Self-Regulation, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. 1979). The fact that Neal’s name became associated so strongly with the failure of replication of the curare experiments and the lack of replicability of many biofeedback studies in general is very unfortunate because Neal’s work, particularly his book on psychotherapy is the foundation and the beginning of behavior therapy and experimentally based psychotherapy in general, now dominating psychological and psychiatric treatment all over the world. Neal’s motivation to write that book and to build an experimentally oriented psychotherapy was driven by his appalling experience with psychoanalysis and the psychoanalysts in Vienna: he started a self-analysis with Ferenci or one of the students of Ferenci during this year in Vienna and experienced the pseudo-logic and mystical drive concept as a trainee himself. Neal was one of the psychologically most healthy persons I ever met in my life and that was probably the basis of his sensitivity to the pathologizing theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Only a healthy mind can create such an intellectual wealth and scholarly productivity as the work of Neal Miller.
Below I cite the papers Neal Miller, Barry Dworkin and myself wrote or edited:

Birbaumer, N. & Kimmel, H. (Eds.) (1979). Biofeedback and Self-Regulation.  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass.

Birbaumer, N., Cevey, B., Dworkin, B. & Miller, N.E. (1984). Biofeedback in der Orthopädie [Biofeedback in orthopaedics].  Forschung. Mitteilungen der DFG.

Dworkin, B., Miller, N.E., Dworkin, S., Birbaumer, N. , Brines, M., Jonas, S., Schwentker, E. & Graham, J. (1985). Behavioral method for the treatment of idiopathic scoliosis.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 82, 2493-2497.

Birbaumer, N., Dworkin, B., Elbert, T. & Rockstroh, B. (1987). Stimulation der Barorezeptoren erhöht die Schmerzschwelle bei Bluthochdruck [Stimulation of baroreceptors raises pain threshold in hypertensives]. In: Nutzinger u.a. (Eds.): Herzphobie [Heart phobia]. Ferdinand Enke Verlag,  pp. 92-102.

Larbig, W., Lutzenberger, W., Birbaumer, N., Rockstroh, B. & Dworkin, B. (1987). Barorezeptorenstimulation und Antinozizeption. Experimentelle Labor­unter­suchungen zum lernpsychologischen Entstehungsmodell der Hype­r­tonie [The stimulation of baroreceptors and antinociception. Experimental studies in the laboratory concerning the behavioral ideology of hypertension]. In: F. Lamprecht (Ed): Spezialisierung und Integration in Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie [Spezialisation and integration in psychosomatic medicine]. Heidelberg: Springer, 319-324.

Rockstroh, B., Dworkin, B., Lutzenberger, W., Larbig, W., Ernst, M., Elbert, T. & Birbaumer, N. (1988). The influence of baroreceptor activation on pain perception.  In: Elbert, T., Langosch, W., Steptoe, A., Vaitl, D. (Eds.): Behavioral Medicine of Cardiovascular Disorders, John Wiley & Sons,  49-60.

Rau, H., Schweizer, R., Zhuang, P., Pauli, P., Brody, S., Larbig, W., Heinle, H., Müller, M., Elbert, T., Dworkin, B. & Birbaumer, N. (1993). Cigarette smoking, blood lipids, and baroreceptor-modulated nociception. Psychopharma­cology, 110, 337-341.

Birbaumer, N., Flor, H., Cevey, B., Dworkin, B. & Miller, N.E. (1994). Behavioral treatment of scoliosis and kyphosis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 38, 6, 623-628.

Dworkin, B.R., Elbert, T., Rau, H., Birbaumer, N., Pauli, P., Droste, C. & Brunia, C.H.M. (1994). Central effects of baroreceptor activation in humans: Attenuation of skeletal reflexes and pain perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 91, 6329-6333.

Elbert, T., Dworkin, B.R., Rau, H., Pauli, P., Birbaumer, N., Droste, C. & Brunia, C.H.M. (1994). Sensory effects of baroreceptor activation and perceived stress together predict long-term blood pressure elevations. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 1(3), 215-228.

Introduction to S-R theory of personality

Neal Miller, a pioneer in thefield of neuroscience who in1965 received the U.S. NationalMedal of Science, the nation’shighest award for scientificachievement, died March 23 inHamden, Connecticut. Millerwas 92. He was a member ofthe Rockefeller faculty from1966 to 1988.Miller was best known for hisonce-unorthodox theory that thebody’s so-called “involuntary”functions, such as heart rate, canbe controlled in the same way asvoluntary functions. His researchchallenged the assumption thatvoluntary actions were the solefunctions under our control.Miller trained laboratory animalsand humans to control heartbeat,blood flow and other visceraland glandular activities, and heapplied his theories clinically tosuch disorders as hypotension,hypertension and scoliosis.He also made important contributionsto the fields of physiologicalpsychology and the evolution oflearning theory.His work influencedgenerations of researchers.Alfred E. Mirsky Professor BruceS. McEwen, head of the Haroldand Margaret Milliken HatchLaboratory of Neuroendocrinology,who began his Rockefeller careeras an assistant professor in Miller’slab, recalls his superb teachingabilities. “He strongly encouragedand supported me as a youngscientist in my studies of stressand sex hormone actions in thebrain, and his lab provided awonderful environment for meto learn about behavioral science.Neal was one of thefounders of behavioral medicineand strongly influenced me overthe years to apply basic researchknowledge about stress hormoneactions to a better understandingof human health and disease.”