larry@ihuxf.UUCP (10/12/83)
Lots of queries to the net recently. Here's another that has been on my mind: Ever used a brain wave monitor? These were a "fad" a few years ago and there was a variety for sale. Most detected "Alpha" waves, a few would even get into the even lower "Theta" waves. I remember an "Edmond Scientific" catalog priced these "gizmo"'s in the couple of hundered buck range. While I found the idea itself interesting, I could never scrap together the needed funds to buy myself one. Anybody else ever try them out? Any good? I suppose they are still being made, anything special to look for? Larry Marek ihnp4!ihuxf!larry
tim@unc.UUCP (Tim Maroney) (10/12/83)
An electroencephalogram (EEG), which was referred to as a "brain wave monitor" in the article this is responding to, is an instrument for measuring patterns of electrical activity in the brain. As such, it is fairly effective in measuring brain events which have a global effect, such as tense alertness (beta waves), relaxed idling (alpha waves), pre-sleep episodic state (theta waves), and the various divisions of sleep. It has been a few years since I had any hands-on experience with an EEG, so I don't know what the state of the art is. When I used them, you had to shave spots on your head for the electrodes, or you wouldn't get a good contact. (The electrodes were just taped on; most people are averse to having holes drilled in their skulls.) I also do not know how much of the information usually attributed to brain events is actually the product of scalp and forehead muscles; it seems not unlikely that this is a good portion of the distinction between alpha and beta activity, but I don't know. The machines are fun to play around with if you're the sort of person who enjoys messing around with supposedly immutable parts of yourself. The appeal is basically the same as that of biofeedback equipment, meditation, isolation tanks, etc. If you get good at it, you can do neat things like maintain consciousness through theta (although you actually do this through deep meditation, the EEG is a nice confirmation), drop into alpha at will (handy when you're in high-stress situations, or prone to stress), and otherwise learn to control to a greater or lesser extent your own brain function. I saw an article in Discover a while back that showed some three-D cranial scans constructed from EEG information of a quite detailed nature. It was interesting, but Discover is (or was then, maybe it's changed) such a piece of crap. It refused to divulge any information that would interest someone with a degree in psychology (even my wimpy Bachelor's) while touting the work as the greatest thing since CAT scans, which was obviously an exagerration. Does anyone else out there have any more information on this? By the way, in case anyone is wondering how we got what information we have about the function of the human brain: it comes from doing quite nasty things to living animal brains and hoping that human brains work the same. All research into brain function must be done on living brains -- a dead one will show you the anatomical structure, but not the function. The data you are aiming for is division of the brain into functionally distinct regions. The main approaches are: Method of Lesions: cut out a part of the brain with chemicals or surgery, then observe the behavior of the subject. Draw inferences from the impairments observed. Method of Stimulation: stick an electrode into the brain and fire that sucker up. Observe the bnehavior of the organism and draw inferences. This was done on humans in unethical (for the present) experiments in the 1950s, back when mental patients were commonly treated as fodder for experiments. (They still are, but not to the same psychosurgical extent.) Method of No Name That I Know: this is the method that doesn't involve observing the behavior and drawing inferences. Inject some chemical into a particular portion of the brain and cause the subject to perform some behaviors. "Sacrifice" the subject (kill the beast) and dissect the brain. Draw inferences from the redistribution of the chemical. Only a few chemicals are any good for this; the best seems to be horseradish peroxidase, which propagates backwards down active axons (or is it forward down active axons? I forget.) ___________ Tim Maroney duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
nazgul@apollo.UUCP (Kee Hinckley) (10/12/83)
I remember reading about some video-game/micro person who was interested in hooking
up those monitors to a video game. Imagine a game where the goal is to keep a number of
objects in the "air", but each one can only be kept there by generating the appropriate
brain wave. They fall slowly, so you can switch back and forth of course. Talk about
bio-feedback!
-kee