THETA WAVES AND MEMORY

WHAT AN ENORMOUS WEALTH OF INFORMATION WE COULD

call on if only we could gain access to this storehouse of forgotten" knowledge we carry around in our heads. Imag-me, for example, having perfect recall of all the books you have read. How do we gain access to our inner encyclopedia?

One intriguing method scientists have been exploring is using 95

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structure and its incredible ability to reorganize virtually in-stantaneously.

TOTAL RECALL. Many scientists now believe that a large part of everything we see or hear or otherwise sense -including things that are only unconsciously processed by our brains and never actually enter our awareness - is perma-nently stored away in the brain, ready to be instantaneously recalled. There have always been rare humans who have exhi-bited unbelievable powers of memory, being able, for exam-ple, to memorize long lists of numbers or nonsense words and then recall them perfectly fifty years later.

Then in a series of now-classic experimental brain opera-tions, Canadian researcher Dr. Wilder Penfield, of McGill University, stimulated human brains with mild electrical cur-rents. Since the brain itself has no pain receptors, Penfield was able to stimulate various sites while the patient was con-scious and ask what feelings or reactions were evoked. Pa-tients described a variety of startling perceptions, instantly recalling past events as if they were actually reliving them.

When the electrode was moved slightly, totally different expe-riences were recalled. Said Penfield, "Every patient reported a word-for-word 'playback' of long-forgotten conversations, songs, jokes, childhood birthday parties - things that had only been spoken once in their entire lifetimes - all perfectly corded." He concluded that virtually every experience is re-corded permanently in the brain.²⁶¹

Lozanov agrees, contending that his techniques don't trig-ger some abnormal "supermemory," but simply facilitate re-call: we all have almost everything we've ever experienced or learned stored away; the problem is to recover the material-Says Lozanov: "The human mind remembers a colossal quan-tity of information, the number of buttons on a suit, steps on a staircase, panes in a window, footsteps to the bus stop. These 'unknown perceptions' show us the subconscious has startling powers."²⁵²

Other evidence of our powers of perfect recall of all or nearly all past events had been put forth by Dr. David Cheek, a gynecologist at Children's Hospital in San Francisco, who

RELAXATION AND THE BRAIN

has done extensive work with subjects placed in deep hypnotic trance. Cheek hypnotized individuals who had undergone sur-gery during which they were anesthetized and supposedly to-tally unconscious, and discovered that they could repeat exact phrases spoken by the medical personnel in the operating room. Further, he found that such operating-room chatter could have a profound effect on the later recovery of the pa-tients. So if a surgeon had perhaps muttered, "I don't know if this guy's going to make it," the patient, with subconscious recall of that prognosis, would be less strongly motivated to recover. Cheek recommends strongly that surgeons be very careful of what they say during operations, and suggests that positive or supportive statements can speed postoperative re-covery significantly.

In his studies of deep hypnotic trance, Cheek also found that many hypnotized subjects are able to recall past events with lifelike clarity, even as far back as the moment of their birth. One subject, for example, recalled something the doctor had said when he was delivered. Though his mother did not remember it and thus had never told him, the doctor con-firmed the accuracy of the subject's memory.²⁶⁹ The researches of Cheek and other investigators of hypnosis, including a number of Russian researchers, indicate that subjects can re-call astonishing amounts of information, such as the number of telephone poles passed while walking to first grade, state-ments made by some long-forgotten aunt while they were in-fants in the cradle - all those "unknown perceptions" Lozanov mentions.

WHAT AN ENORMOUS WEALTH OF INFORMATION WE COULD

One intriguing method scientists have been exploring is using 95

MEGABRAIN

that mysterious mind state we've already spoken of, that elu-sive time when our brains are generating large quantities of theta waves - the hypnagogic state or theta state. Interest-ingly, the theta state also is the period when our brains pro-duce vivid memories. Budzynski and others studying this state have found that when subjects enter the theta state, they fre-quently find themselves mentally reliving or recalling events which had long been forgotten.

This quality was first stumbled onto by psychobiologist Dr.

James McGaugh, of UC at Irvine while studying memory and learning in rats. It was known that electroconvulsive shocks could make rats forget what they had just learned, so McGaugh wondered if certain drugs could counteract that ef-fect. Amazingly, he found that the drugs could actually bring back memories that had apparently been completely erased by the electroconvulsive shock. Further investigations showed that the shocks prevented new protein synthesis in the brain.

Apparently, memory formation depends on the formation of new protein in the brain. (Thus, one explanation for Rosenz-weig's findings that rats in enriched environments increased the size and complexity of their brains, and dramatically im-proved their memory, is that the increase in brain weight and neural size is a result of the increased protein synthesis in the brain associated with memory formation.)

Then McGaugh and his associates discovered that during the post-shock amnesia the rats showed virtually no theta waves in their brain. Focusing on this, the researchers discov-ered that, in the words of science writer Maya Pines, "the more theta waves appeared in an animal's EEG after a training session, the more it remembered. This was true in all cases.... Apparently, the best predictor of memory was the amount of theta waves recorded in the animal's brain.

McGaugh now tells his students that 'if you want to learn, and you're a rat, it's a good idea to have some theta.' But he does not believe the theta waves are a sign of memory as such-Rather, they show that the brain is in the right state to process and store information."^{261, 218}

RELAXATION AND THE BRAIN

Following up on this research, a number of investigators of biofeedback began training people to produce theta waves vol-untarily, in hope of improving their memory. Among these researchers were Elmer and Alyce Green of the Menninger Foundation. They found theta "to be associated with a deeply internalized state and with a quieting of the body, emotions, and thoughts, thus allowing usually 'unheard or unseen things' to come to the consciousness in the form of hypnago-gic memory." Unfortunately, large quantities of theta waves are difficult to produce: usually we only experience the state in those brief moments between wake and sleeping. Even if you intentionally try to produce theta waves you will in most cases quickly fall asleep. The Greens set out to train people-using special biofeedback machines - to enter the theta state without falling asleep. This accomplished, they discovered that the subjects frequently reported vivid memories of long-forgotten childhood events: "They were not like going through a memory in one's mind," write the Greens, "but rather like an experience, a reliving." They also found that those produc-ing theta waves frequently had "new and valid ideas or synthe-ses of ideas, not primarily by deduction, but springing by intuition from unconscious sources."¹³⁰ Here we are reminded of the Texas A&M experiment indicating that when students suddenly arrived at the Eureka event, the Aha! experience, their brains were in the theta state.

As a result of their work the Greens are convinced that the theta state not only is conducive to memory and learning, but is the source of creative thinking. We only have to remember all the tales of great ideas and seminal discoveries - and even our own flashes of insight - that occur as the thinker is drowsing before a fire, walking alone upon a beach, gazing Pensively into the distance: in other words, in that state of near-sleep reverie when the vivid memories and "syntheses of ideas .. . springing by intuition from unconscious sources"

characteristic of the theta state are free to emerge. One expla-nation for this, we can assume, is that since theta waves are of even higher amplitude and lower frequency than alpha waves,

MEGABRAIN

This quality was first stumbled onto by psychobiologist Dr.

RELAXATION AND THE BRAIN

characteristic of the theta state are free to emerge. One expla-nation for this, we can assume, is that since theta waves are of even higher amplitude and lower frequency than alpha waves,

MEGABRA1N

they represent greater energy fluctuations in the brain, which can rearrange the neural connections, leading to new, richer, more complex intercommunication between the brain's cells, causing the dissipative structure to reorganize and escape to a higher order.

Since a major effect of the machines we will explore is the production of a profound state of relaxation and, in many cases, of the elusive theta state that dramatically boosts our ability to acquire new information and is the source of memo-ries and creative thinking, it is possible that in this way such machines can enhance our learning abilities, thrust us into higher levels of creative thought, and provide access to that vast fund of information and memories we have stored away in our brains and "forgotten." Perhaps it's too much to expect that these machines will enable us to turn our memories on or off at will, or to pinpoint certain events or information we once acquired but now only vaguely recall and allow us to switch on our powers of total recall. But many scientists be-lieve such abilities are possible; moreover, they are actively devising and experimenting with machines and drugs that will soon make them possible.

7 IN SEARCH OF THE WILD

In document 0 The Mega Brain (Page 102-106)