Business Week
BY SUSAN GARLAND
10-16-2000

Wednesday, October 21, 1998
(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)
From ABC's 20/20

SAM DONALDSON: Tonight, we bring you word of an amazing medical discovery. It's not a bio-engineered drug or a dazzling piece of high-tech equipment. This is a breakthrough treatment for depression and anxiety that is so simple, even the Harvard doctor who came up with the idea couldn't believe it would work. Our own DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: turns the spotlight on this cutting-edge therapy -a pair of goggles and some tape, giving some patients a dramatically different view of the world.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON, ABCNEWS MEDICAL EDITOR (VO)
Depression and anxiety - what is the key to unlocking the troubled mind? Psychologists believe in the healing power of talk therapy. Neuroscience, on the other hand, tells us that emotions are generated by brain chemistry and that drugs like Prozac are, therefore, crucial. But now, Dr Fredric Schiffer, a Harvard psychiatrist, has come up with a startling new concept to explain some common emotional disorders. And he says he's found a safe, cheap and surprising way to help treat them-a simple pair of goggles, seen here in a college class demonstration. These ordinary goggles are taped so that a person can see only out of the extreme left side, and these goggles allow the person to see only to the extreme right. Dr Schiffer says that the light from looking out just one side activates the opposite side of the brain, and, therefore, triggers thoughts and emotions specific to that side.

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER, PSYCHIATRIST: I'm so amazed at this.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (VO): So are his patients. This patient agreed to talk to 20/20 if we did not identify him. We'll call him "Joe." Three years ago, JOE: felt himself slipping dangerously into depression. The pressures of a new job had quickly overwhelmed him. The anxiety he felt was intense and painful. He tried one medication after another, but nothing worked.

JOE, GOGGLE THERAPY PATIENT: When you're depressed and you're severely depressed, one of the things that seems to disappear is hope.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (VO): He says the first time he tried on the goggles in therapy, they dramatically lifted his dark and pessimistic mood.

JOE: It was such an immediate difference. It was startling. And this was the very first time.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (VO): Dr Schiffer, who is on the staff at the world-famous McLean Hospital in Boston, believes, like many people do, that we often have two sides to our personalities-one that's more calm and accepting, another that's more emotional and impulsive.

ANGRY MAN: It's insane.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (VO): But he takes it one giant step further. In his book, "Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology," he argues that sometimes we literally have two different minds in our brain-a calm, optimistic mind on one side, and an anxious, pessimistic mind on the other. Dr Schiffer says visual stimulation with the special goggles he uses in therapy can activate one or the other side of the brain and therefore trigger either the calm and optimistic mind or the anxious and pessimistic mind. Dr Schiffer says the glasses help his patients get better by calling on their calm mind to help teach their anxious mind. (on camera) So the glasses, really, through the eyes, help to isolate one part versus the other part.

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: It's to get the healthy part to help the troubled part.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: Looking left or right in order to change our feelings or emotions is controversial. Some neuroscientists are skeptical. But many other experts believe that Dr Schiffer's theory is a logical extension of past studies showing that the two halves of our brain function quite differently. In other words, if our two halves can function differently, maybe they can feel differently. In 1995, Dr Schiffer decided to test that theory with an admittedly very low-tech experiment.

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: I decided to put my hands over my eyes like this to see if I felt a little different that way versus that way.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (on camera) Yeah?

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: And I didn't feel any different. But I went to the office that afternoon and, not expecting anything, I asked a patient to do it.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: Figured it wouldn't hurt. Might be worth trying.

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: Yeah, it wouldn't hurt. And the patient says, "Oh, my God." I said, "What's the matter?" He says, "I got all my anxiety back." And he was a guy who had come in six months earlier for anxiety, and he was doing much better. And so, I quickly said, "Well, try the other side." And he said, "Oh, that feels good." So I was amazed. I was absolutely amazed.

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (VO): All five of Dr Schiffer's patients that day had similar dramatic responses. So just two days after the first attempts with patients using hands in his office, Dr Schiffer tried using taped goggles instead.

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: The patients would tell me how far to put the tape over, and they'd say, "No, that's not as strong." And I'd move it over a little more. "Yeah, that's better," and ...

DR TIMOTHY JOHNSON: (on camera) So you'd experiment with them?

DR FREDRIC SCHIFFER: Yeah. They would literally give me feedback, and it was very accurate and consistent.