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Discover a new you in thirty days. Amazing digital headset will open
your learning centres so new skills and information pour in like magic.
Quadruple your reading speed and build self-esteem! Enthusiastic claims
for the ‘brain machine’ that looks like a cross between a Walkman and pair
of sunglasses. But is it anything beyond mere entertainment?

At first sight, the machines appear to fall somewhere on the junk science
scale between psychoactive guarana juice drinks and crystal healing. But
the idea is to ‘entrain’ brain rhythms and produce altered states of consciousness.

The phenomenon of entrainment, or frequency-following, has a long scientific
history. Neurologists first stumbled upon it in the 1930s shortly after
they began recording the brain’s electrical activity with scalp electrodes
and the electroencephalograph (EEG). Researchers noted that the brain’s
rhythms of activity – its alpha and beta waves – would fall into line with
the flickering of a bright strobe lamp. Using a simple pulsing light, it
was possible to lead a person from the ragged 14 to 30 hertz beta frequencies
that are the hallmark of a busy and alert mental state to the calmer waters
of the 8 to 12 Hz alpha waves associated with a quiet, relaxed mind.

Although interesting enough in itself, what really attracted attention
were reports from researchers like the 1940s physiologist William Grey Walter,
who found that at certain entrainment frequencies, his subjects would enter
trance-like states where they began to experience deep peacefulness, dream-like
visions, and other unexpected sensations.

The psychedelic culture of the 1960s and 1970s prompted many people
to experiment with strobe entrainment and similar consciousness-altering
technologies, including sensory deprivation and biofeedback. But not only
strobe lights could produce that effect. Rhythmic noises, such as the intricate
beats of tribal drumming or the swoosh of surf, could work as well.

Researchers also found that the surest way of entraining a person was
to have the strobing stimulus connected in a feedback loop with an EEG machine.
This made it possible to home right in on the correct frequency, and then
keep the flicker rate adjusted precisely a step above or below so that the
brain wave could be maintained at the optimum level.

Instant cure-all

Even in the early days, researchers tended to make extraordinary claims
for entrainment systems, saying they could do everything from increase
a person’s IQ scores to cure migraines. But the equipment looked like something
you might find in a hospital casualty department and cost nearly as much,
so there was little hope of selling these devices for home use. Now, however,
microchip electronics has caught up and a new generation of light and sound
machines (as manufacturers prefer to call them) have appeared, selling
for as little as £100.

Instead of trestle-mounted strobe lights, the machines use light goggles
– ordinary visor sun-glasses inset with a cluster of LEDs (light-emitting
diodes) no bigger than pinheads over each eye. The red (or sometimes green)
LEDs sit near the eye and have to be viewed through closed lids. Each LED
is individually programmed. So with a diamond-shaped array of four lights,
it is possible to create swirling movements as well as bright flashes of
light. Users also wear headphones to listen to pulsing sounds and the whole
system is driven by a signal generator. The latest pocket-sized units have
an 8-bit microprocessor and are programmable, making it possible to chose
from a library of hundreds of entrainment sequences. Each program ramps
the brain through a different set of frequencies, supposedly to produce
a particular tailor-made effect on the user’s consciousness.

But what can these entrainment systems really do for your mind? Slip
on the glasses and press the start button on Mindlab, the ‘mental fitness
system’ from Synetic Systems in Seattle. You are immediately assailed by
colourful visions and soothing noises. The rapid flashes of the red LEDs
produce a green after-image and as the flashes come closer together and
brighter in intensity, they merge to create a swirling, pulsating field
of light. The experience resembles the closing sequences of everyone’s
favourite science fiction movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

After perhaps 15 minutes, staring into this vaguely patterned visual
noise, many people will begin to see shapes and even flashes of dream scenes.
The shapes are the form constants first noted by Heinrich Kluver of the
University of Chicago in the 1920s when he documented the effects of psychedelic
drugs like mescaline. These shapes – fleeting impressions of gratings,
spirals, tunnels, foaming bubbles and dancing dots, all outlined in neon
colour – are still poorly understood but are thought to be caused by the
brain trying to interpret a chaotic field of light. Much the same patterns
will be seen in a sensory deprivation chamber – or even just when staring
into the dark of your eyelids as you wait to fall asleep – but they are
made more intense by the prompting flicker of the LED headset.

Dream on

Form constants are really a side-effect, a natural consequence of watching
a kaleidoscopic light show rather than a result of brain wave entrainment.
But as the brain is led deeper into the theta rhythms that mark the very
borderline of sleep, suddenly the externally driven field of light can disappear
to be replaced by the rich, dream-like experiences known as hypnagogia.

These vivid images, which seem like a single frame snipped out of some
longer dream sequence, are thought to occur to everybody as they fall asleep.
Normally most people are too far into sleep to notice or remember their
hypnagogic visions. But the claim of light and sound enthusiasts is that
the machines can keep a person balanced precariously at just the point where
they would normally tip over into full sleep, making the visions more accessible.

The idea of a safe, drug-free, psychedelic trip is certainly one reason
that light and sound machines are selling, says Robert Austin, president
of Synetic, which has sold 35 000 thousand Mindlabs, one of the most popular
of the 20 or so brands of machine now on the market. Modern systems come
with special ‘visualise’ programs that make swift changes in flicker rate
(for example, from 12 to 6 Hz) that produce explosions of imagery. However,
Austin says that in addition to psychedelic imagery, the machines can produce
the deep relaxation people often seek through meditation.

Mind expanding

Austin sees brain machines as a quick route to the benefits of meditation:
‘The trouble with meditation is that people are impatient. They don’t want
to sit doing nothing for 30 minutes, trying to blank their minds. But with
light and sound, they have something to look at. A friend said to me, ‘Hey,
I know why this thing works. You can’t think while it’s on.’ The pretty
pictures occupy your mind, so you can let go and relax.’

But relaxation and visualisation are only part of the attraction of
light and sound systems. It is the promise of instant mind expansion – of
tapping unsuspected resources of creativity and intellect – that grips many
buyers’ imaginations. Can such a simple device really induce the kind of
states that people would perhaps most want? That is to say, the feeling
of peak mental clarity dubbed ‘the flow experience’ or the ‘awakened state’,
and the near-sleep trance state in which the mind is especially creative
and receptive to learning?

One problem with assessing the effectiveness of brain machines is knowing
just what brain waves themselves signify. In the early days of EEG recordings,
many people talked about brain waves in almost mystical fashion. They spoke
as if consciousness were a kind of force field rippling with thoughts and
experiences. When the mind was busy with the everyday clutter of life, these
ripples became fast and shallow. But when the mind relaxed into a deeper,
more contemplative state, it assumed the alpha frequency of 8 to 12 peaks
per second. Not only did the waveform become more regular, it was also more
powerful, ranging up to 150 microvolts in amplitude (when measured at the
skull’s surface) compared to the mere 10 microvolts of beta activity. Below
alpha, the brain dropped into the even slower rhythms of theta and delta
activity normally found only in sleep or in skilled meditators.

While EEG machines showed that different waveforms were associated with
differing mental states, they were merely recording the background roar
of the brain – the electrical noise generated by the firing of clumps of
neurons. A busy brain will have a lot of local and overlapping peaks of
electrical activity, so naturally enough when these are averaged together
during an EEG measurement, they will produce a trace that is fast, irregular
and shallow in amplitude. And when the brain is relaxed and doing little,
only a few generalised ‘housekeeping’ pathways remain active, such as those
to do with the maintenance of peripheral attention. In the silence, these
isolated systems stand out, creating what looks like a slower, more powerful
brain rhythm.

Even if strobing lights can drive the brain to exhibit certain characteristic
frequencies, this does not necessarily mean that the brain is mimicking
a natural state. The entrained rhythm could simply be a meaningless background
throb that masks, but does not fundamentally alter, continuing patterns
of ordinary thought.

The most straightforward claim for light and sound machines is that
they can create a feeling of focused mental energy by entraining your dull
and listless brain rhythms and dragging them up into the beta range that
is the usual mark of an alert, busy mind. But the systems are also supposed
to work the other way. Many champions of the technology claim that by leading
the brain down into the theta range – the near-sleep state in which hypnagogic
visions spill forth – the mind becomes highly creative and receptive to
learning.

Most systems are now sold with programs that offer both ‘energise’ and
‘twilight learning’ modes. However, despite frequent claims by manufacturers
that scientific studies have demonstrated dramatic rises in IQ and memory
retention, it is questionable whether light and sound technology alone can
make a difference to a person’s mental abilities.

Julian Issacs, a Californian psychologist, says the machines may successfully
take people into deep alpha, but after that they tend to drift in and out
of a theta state in a fairly uncontrolled way. To support this, he notes
that the actual theta that shows up in a person rarely matches the entraining
frequency supposedly being used.

Free thinking

As to whether the twilight drowsiness of theta leads to an especially
effective mental state, the weight of evidence suggests that its value has
been much exaggerated. It is well known from research into creativity and
subliminal perception that borderline sleep states can lead to an unfettering
of thought. When a fully awake person hears an ambiguous word like palm,
they tend to think of either the kind of palm that bears dates or the kind
that bears fingers. But in borderline consciousness, the brain’s reaction
is less focused. When prompted subliminally, a person will respond equally
freely to both meanings of words like palm, skirt or plane.

This loosening of the stays of thought seems to be why many people claim
their creative breakthroughs are made while drowsing by a flickering fire
or in a moment of idle daydreaming. It is possible that entrainment systems
might help foster the temporary defocusing that allows such a creative re-ordering
of thought. But a technological aid cannot suddenly produce a string of
brilliant insights in the head of a person who has not already prepared
the ground with the slog of ordinary hard study.

William Fowler of the Massachusetts Center for Early Learning, a creativity
expert, says it is a romantic myth that geniuses pull their ideas out of
the blue. Even though the actual moment of discovery may come in a flash
of inspiration, in every case they will have spent weeks and even years
chewing over the material on which the insight was based.

Altered states

Similarly, it is easy to exaggerate the value of deep alpha/early theta
states to learning. A number of altered states researchers, in particular
Bulgarian psychiatrist Georgie Lozanov, have popularised the idea that the
mind is unusually receptive in near-sleep states, and even in sleep itself.
This belief has spawned a large market for subliminal learning tapes for
people to leave playing by their bedsides overnight. Now brain machine manufacturers
are picking up on twilight learning, selling language tuition CDs or quit
smoking tapes to be played through a light and sound headset.

But psychological studies have virtually ruled out the possibility of
sleep learning and the evidence is that near-sleep states are probably
only good for dull rote learning. Austin believes that brain machines are
best used to review material studied earlier in the day.

The case for energising your mind with beta entrainment is even more
problematic. Not only is the jagged waveform of beta produced by a lot of
brain centres leaping into action at once, different combinations of brain
centres will be used in performing different mental tasks – solving a maths
problem and writing a poem will light up quite separate pathways. So even
if the brain can be made to dance to the rhythm of a rapidly pulsing light,
there is no guarantee that this will produce a coherent network of activity.

Austin claims that informal testing (mainly among Synetic’s staff) suggests
that light and sound machines can be used as an aid to mental acuity: ‘We
use it as a mid-morning pick-me-up instead of a cup of coffee.’ But he admits
the effect is not reliable and perhaps the technology needs to be improved.

Austin says he is experimenting with open goggles where the LEDs flash
on the periphery of vision, allowing a person to be stimulated as they go
about normal tasks. Recently, a Texan medical researcher, Harold Russell,
tested the open goggles on children with attention deficit syndrome, or
hyperactivity as it is more commonly known. Hyperactive children have trouble
concentrating and show more theta and less beta activity than usual, as
if their brains are chronically understimulated. Russell claimed that flashing
beta frequency stimulation while the children carried out standard psychological
tests led to significant improvements in scores. Austin says that if such
findings stand up, then it might be possible to use peripheral beta stimulation
to ‘scaffold’ sustained bouts of concentration in ordinary workers. Beta
entrainment might not itself create an orderly mental state, but it might
help to reach and maintain such a state.

Complex rhythms

Austin believes light and sound systems probably also need to be able
to produce a more complex beta response. Research in the 1970s suggested
that the EEG patterns of people in peak mental states show an unusual blend
of alpha and beta energies. Austin says it will be necessary to entrain
several rhythms simultaneously to mimic such states. To this end, just this
summer, researchers at Synetic’s own labs managed to entrain three different
frequencies in the same person by cycling rapidly every two seconds between
a 7 Hz, a 10 Hz and a 13 Hz program.

Other technical advances are in store. For example, it will be possible
to boost the entrainment effect by using brighter, more dominating lights.
However, Austin says he would be cautious of this route because it is hard
to know what effect prolonged use may have on the eyes – existing commercial
machines use one-thousandth the light levels permitted under Federal health
and safety guidelines in the US.

Likewise, commercial machines stay on the lower margins of beta frequency
stimulation because of fears of triggering epileptic fits. Austin says only
1 in 2000 people are susceptible to photoseizures and most would be aware
of the problem because it can be triggered by TVs, video games or disco
lights. Brain machines come with suitable warnings, yet most manufacturers
still stay clear of the 18 Hz region of danger, the level most likely to
trigger an epileptic fit in a susceptible person.

However, while these two avenues appear blocked other improvements
are possible. Because of the cost, few commercial light and sound machines
have so far used EEG feedback to drive the entrainment process. They have
simply run through preset programs of frequencies, hoping to create a person’s
own wave pattern in passing. Austin says this is a rather hit-and-miss method.
Improvements in electronics should mean that brain machines will have built-in
EEG monitors within the next two to three years.

Austin can also foresee a move to richer visual displays. He says experiments
have shown that blinking chess board patterns are far more effective at
entraining than simple strobing lights, especially with the kind of three-dimensional
displays offered by virtual reality goggles: ‘VR really sucks you into the
experience. And you could set things up so that the scene changed in response
to feedback from your own brain rhythms. You might fly off down tunnels
when your rhythms are on the right path.’

Despite the promise of such technical fixes to come, there still seems
a long way to go to the ‘download knowledge’ and ‘condition yourself for
success’ rhetoric that at present often accompanies brain machines. Yes,
the systems reliably produce visual effects and relaxation. But venture
far beyond that and the technology rapidly descends into the realms of
wishful thinking.

John McCrone is a technology and psychology writer.