GAZING AT YOURSELF: THE MIND MIRROR

I FIRST MET JOSEPH LIGHT IN THE MIDTOWN NEW YORK OF- fices of a popular magazine. I'd recently read a book, The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness, in which British physicist-psychologist C. Maxwell Cade described his experiments with a new machine called the Mind Mirror, and I had heard that Light was a U.S. distributor for this device. According to Cade's book, the Mind Mirror's unique method of measuring the EEG allowed users to observe their brain waves in such a way that they were able to ascend through a "hierarchy of states of con- sciousness." This upward progression led from deep relax- ation through states of deep meditation and hemispheric synchronization. Here most EEG biofeedback training stops, considering this state to be the most beneficial. However, Cade claimed that using the Mind Mirror one could learn to pass into an even higher state of what he called "lucid awareness," or "awakened mind," in which subjects can open their eyes, walk around, hold conversations, read and understand literature and works of considerable difficulty and complexity, solve mathematical problems in their heads, intentionally in- duce desired emotional states, all without disturbing the state.66 This sounded to me like some sort of ideal mind-en-

182

hancement device, and I craved to try it, of course. Whatever else it might be, it sounded like fun.

I called Joseph Light and he offered to give me a demon- stration. We agreed to meet at the offices of the magazine, so that my friend, an editor there (the same one who a few weeks earlier had skeptically put on the Synchro-Energizer and im- mediately begun to hear chanting monks and all sorts of other bizarre audio hallucinations), could also try out the device. Light arrived at the offices, a somewhat ethereal soul with abundant blond curls and an elfin twinkle in his eye that seemed to imply that he might indeed be the sort of fellow who had several secret and interesting things up his sleeve. We retired to a small alcove, where he proceeded to set up the Mind Mirror. For a device with such a formidable reputation, it came in a small package - about the size of a small briefcase. When the briefcase was opened, it revealed an assort- ment of dials and buttons surrounding a central display screen made up of fourteen lines, each line consisting of a string of about thirty lights. The fourteen lines were divided in half. As Light explained, each of the fourteen lines represented a specific brain-wave frequency. The fourteen lines on the left would display the activity of the left hemisphere, the lines on the right, the right hemisphere. At the bottom, the lowest line represented the brain-wave frequency of 0.75 hertz - in other words, deep deep delta, the slowest brain waves. As the lines moved upward, they represented higher frequencies. Specifi- cally, the lines moved from the deep delta of 0.75 Hz through higher delta frequencies (1.5, 2.75 Hz), into the theta range (4.5, 6.0), to alpha (7.5, 9, 10.5, 12.5), and into the increas- ingly rapid beta waves (15, 19, 24, 30, and 38 Hz).

The editor arrived, and since he had gone first the last time with the Synchro-Energizer, we agreed it was my turn to go first. Light began hooking me up to the machine. This was quick and simple, and consisted of putting one electrode against my left and one against my right occipital lobe (i.e., the back of my head). These electrodes were held in place with a Velcro headband. The machine was turned on, and behold! the lights on each of the fourteen channels, both right

11 GAZING AT YOURSELF:

THE MIND MIRROR

182

GAZING AT YOURSELF: THE MIND MIRROR

hancement device, and I craved to try it, of course. Whatever else it might be, it sounded like fun.

MEGABRAIN

and left, lit up and began moving back and forth in a confus- ing display. Light told me to try to center myself, and most of the lights retreated toward the center of the machine. What was going on?

Light explained that each row of lights, called light-emitting diodes (LEDs), indicated the amplitude, or strength, of the brain wave I was emitting at that specific frequency. The closer to the center the lights came - that is, the fewer the number of LEDs which were lit up - the smaller was the amplitude of that specific brainwave frequency. The longer the lines became - that is, the more LEDs which were lit up - the more powerful was the amplitude of my brain wave at that frequency.

I was puzzled - I had thought that at specific points in our brains, such as those directly beneath the electrodes, our brains were emitting a single frequency, such as alpha or beta waves. But the Mind Mirror seemed to be showing lights flashing in and out on each of the fourteen channels, from low delta up to high beta. "I don't understand," I said, "how my brain can be creating all these frequencies at the same time and in the same place." At the instant I asked the question, the LEDs in the upper-left beta all shot out to the left in a flurry of activity.

"You see," said Light, "your brain just now engaged in a burst of high beta activity in your left hemisphere - the hemisphere involved in rational, detail-oriented thinking. Simply considering the question caused the activity, and you saw the activity of your thinking registered in that characteristic pattern."

Still, the question remained unanswered; the editor and I remained puzzled, so Light led us through a course in elemen- tary electroencephalography. "What's unique about the Mind Mirror," he said, "is that all other EEGs, whether clinical or experimental, work on the principle that they place an electrode on a specific location on the scalp, and they display the frequency of the highest voltage that they pick up at that location, and everything else is filtered out. So, for example, if they were to place an electrode on your occipital lobe, as I've

184

GAZING AT YOURSELF: THE MIND MIRROR

done with you, all it would display, if they had set it to focus on, let's say, a frequency of 8 hertz, which is low alpha, would be the amount of 8-hertz activity going on at that spot. All it would be telling you is that 8 hertz is the dominant voltage or the frequency of the highest voltage that they're picking up on that spot.

"Let me give you an analogy," said Light. "Now wherever you are in your home, you have the frequencies of thousands of radio and television stations - these waveforms are passing right through your room all the time. If you were to take a weak radio and turn the dial, you would find that some stations come in very weak and others strong. What traditional EEGs do is display only the frequency of the strongest radio station. What the Mind Mirror does is take in fourteen of these, not just the strongest station; and it processes and dis- plays them - the entire frequency spectrum - in a logical, easily understood pattern, and it does it all in real time.

"The problem with traditional EEGs is that many elec- troencephalographers do not understand the limits of their equipment. So when they set their machine to measure, say, 8-hertz activity at a certain place in the brain, they assume that 8 hertz is the only frequency in voltages being generated by the brain at that point. But that's not true. With the Mind Mirror, on the other hand, you can put an electrode on the scalp on the same point on the occipital lobe, and it will display fourteen frequencies and voltages from that single point. The brain simultaneously produces many frequencies and volt- ages. What they're doing with traditional EEGs is filtering out everything and only taking in the highest voltage, and then displaying that frequency."

Light described how he had taken the "MM" to a research institution and demonstrated it to a highly respected electro- encephalographer. The researcher, who had about $350,000 worth of EEG equipment, was fascinated and said, according to Light, "Well, let's see what we can do with our equipment."

"And with all his hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of sophisticated equipment," said Light, "they were unable to

In document 0 The Mega Brain (Page 198-200)