EM brainwave entrainment

philthemn · September 11, 2004, 11:54am

I heard somewhere that somebody used an Electromagnetic field to induce certain states (much like bwgen, but that uses sound) does anyone know how effective that would be?

and could you build something that would have the same effect?

thanks
phil

DreamAddict · September 11, 2004, 3:06pm

sounds like the “Monroe Institute”
monroeinstitute.org/

EDIT:
oh sorry, I think the Monroe Institute only sheilded bodies from electromagntics … but they also taught people about “schumann resonance” and our connection with earth’s electromagnetic radiation.

… so just maybe it’s possible … but sounds backwards and unnatural.

DreamAddict · September 11, 2004, 3:27pm

I remember this article:
abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/ … 20919.html

Scientist Induces Out-of-Body-Experiences
Reports of out-of-body sensations have been common throughout history. The Greek philosopher Plato was among the first to suggest that when the body dies and disintegrates, the soul migrates outside the body and continues to live. Characters in countless paranormal dramas have been resuscitated back to life and then speak about how they rose above their own bodies and watched others working feverishly to save them.
But rarely has the sensation been captured in the controlled setting of a laboratory — until now.

In a new study released today in the journal Nature, Swiss scientists describe how they were able to trigger bizarre, out-of-body experiences in a 43-year-old female epileptic patient while analyzing her brain with electrodes.

Accidental DiscoveryReports of out-of-body sensations have been common throughout history. The Greek philosopher Plato was among the first to suggest that when the body dies and disintegrates, the soul migrates outside the body and continues to live. Characters in countless paranormal dramas have been resuscitated back to life and then speak about how they rose above their own bodies and watched others working feverishly to save them.
But rarely has the sensation been captured in the controlled setting of a laboratory — until now.

In a new study released today in the journal Nature, Swiss scientists describe how they were able to trigger bizarre, out-of-body experiences in a 43-year-old female epileptic patient while analyzing her brain with electrodes.

Olaf Blanke, a neurosurgeon at University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne, wasn’t trying to set off the sensations in his patient but was using electrical stimulation to map the activity of her brain in preparation for surgical treatment. But by recording the patient’s reactions and matching them with specific electrodes, Blanke was able to pinpoint the region where out-of-body experiences seem to originate.

“We wanted [and needed] to be sure that what the patient experienced and told us was related to the actual stimulation,” says Blanke.

When Blanke and colleagues activated electrodes placed just above the patient’s right ear — a region known as the right angular gyrus — the woman began to have the strange sensations. Depending on the amplitude of the stimulation and the current position of the patient’s body, her experience varied. Each of the patient’s four episodes lasted about two seconds.

After one stimulation, the patient said she felt as though she were sinking into her bed and then she felt as though she were “falling from a height.” After another stimulation she said felt like she was “floating” about 6½ feet above her bed, close to the ceiling. When she was asked to watch her legs during the stimulation, the patient said she saw her legs “becoming shorter.”

Scientists have long tried to explain how people might have such sensations. Last December a British journal described a Dutch study that estimated 12 percent of cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death experience out-of-body sensations such as seeing a bright light or their own dead bodies. In 1995, Michael Persinger, a psychologist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, found he was able to trigger out-of-body and other paranormal experiences in people by exposing the right sides of their brains to a series of electromagnetic pulses.

Severe migraines, small strokes and epilepsy have also been known to trigger the condition and previous work has located the cause to the brain’s right lobe.

Right Brain Condition

Blanke says his study shows the right angular gyrus has a specific role in triggering the feeling. This region is the part of the brain that scientists believe integrates visual information, including how the body is seen, and touch and balance sensations that all work together to create the mind’s representation of the body.

He says out-of-body experiences “may reflect a failure by the angular gyrus” to integrate these different channels of information. Physical stress, or a lack of oxygen to the brain, he says, might trigger the kind of brain misfiring he induced in his patient.

Vilayanur Ramachandran, a professor of neurosciences and psychology at the University of California in San Diego, says Blanke’s study makes sense since damage to the same region of the brain has been known to cause a confused physical sense of the body. But, he adds, it’s rare to be able to induce the sensation.

“This is exciting because it shows this technology can be used to produce reversible lesions,” he says. “This can be a powerful tool to study the condition.”

But Robert Peterson, a person who regularly experiences out-of-body experiences and who has written about them in two books, argues no study can prove the sensations are just the result of a quirk in the brain.

“People who have these experiences are nearly always extremely firm in their convictions,” he says. “No amount of evidence can convince the subjects that it wasn’t ‘real.’”

Persinger of Laurentian University argues it only illuminates how much is left to learn about the human brain.

“This is more evidence,” he says, “that that great raveled knot — our brain — still has a lot of mysteries to unfold.”

Presence_of_Light · September 11, 2004, 5:56pm

bio-medical.com/results.cfm? … iclass=fre

there are some alpha inducing units on here for pain relief but i haven’t found any mass produced alpha/theta/delta type things

i once stumbled across a link that showed you how to build one, but building a device that sends electricity into your brain didn’t seem like a good idea to me…

philthemn · September 11, 2004, 6:45pm

how do they compare do binaural beats in effectiveness, are they better?
and also do you remember the website on how to biuld one, i like the idea of frying your brain with electricity

Presence_of_Light · September 11, 2004, 6:47pm

mv.lycaeum.org/EBS/
found it.

and i would suppose electricity works much better than binaural beats and faster, but i wouldn’t know.

philthemn · September 11, 2004, 7:07pm

cool thanks, theres not too many parts either. i’m still debating whether to try this or not.

any more info welcome!

philthemn · September 11, 2004, 8:51pm

actually I have been looking through google groups and there is a few articles about this exact website and it sounds pretty dangerous, but that works with a direct current running through your brain, anyone know any plans for building something that creates an EM field? that would be much less dangerous, if dangerous at all.

i think?

Presence_of_Light · September 11, 2004, 11:44pm

well if this thing (i’m not sure if it is) is made with a 9 volt battery it probably won’t kill you…

but you never know.

Tomas · September 12, 2004, 12:35am

i once saw a website actually selling this devices… I sadly do not recall the url anymore.

philthemn · September 12, 2004, 10:27am

apperently a 9v battery has enough current to kill you as the capacitors attached to your head are salt water capacitors,lowering the resistance of your skin.

groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&l … 37d&rnum=1

but i guess an EM field would be much safer, am i right?

DreamAddict · September 12, 2004, 10:51am

uhhh, and most tazer guns use 9-volts.

Seeker · September 14, 2004, 8:03pm

It does sound possible, but I’m not going to try it

You guys let me know how it turns out.

Just another thought about EM fields though. Couldn’t you possibly configure a CAT or PET scan device to to something like that?

It sweeps waves of signals through your body in phase with each other.
Wonder if you could configure it to modulate signals to each hemisphere of your brain to induce beats?

philthemn · September 14, 2004, 8:48pm

yes, you could, but i dont have any CAT or PET scanning devices,

does anyone know how to change the frequency of the electromagnet,

so lets say I had a 9v battery in a circuit with an electromagnet of 100 turns around a soft iron core, and the output field was 50hz, how could I lower it.

I dont want to lower the energy of the field jsut the frequency

any ideas

phil

Seeker · September 15, 2004, 12:39am

To do that, you would need to build an oscillator circuit. The frequency would be controlled by resistors and capacitors.
Give this a look:
https://www.interq.or.jp/japan/se-inoue/e_ckt5.htm

One thing you will want to to though is to connect the electromagnet using a transistor instead of driving it directly from the 555 output.

Jeff · September 15, 2004, 1:20am

Yes seeker it would be possible, it could work perfect to replace medication for antidepression for example but also to stimulate your long term memory while learning. Iam sure far far in the future this will be done for sure.

They should also be able to make u lucid while dreaming.
Btw a pet scan made from a lcuid dreamer showed that the frontal cortex and pre frontal cortex possibly are the key to lucid dreaming.

jeff