Michael Hutchison: MegaBrain Report

Vybran clnky z knihy (v anglictine): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Time Flashes: A Short History of Sound and Light Technology. A Long and Twisted Tale: Denis Gorges and the Synchro-Energizer. At the Crossover Point or New Breakthroughs In the Twilight Zone. Happy Brain, Sad Brain: Brain Tech and Cerebral Asymmetry. Brain Tech Breakthroughs in Treatment of Learning Disorders. Riding the Big Wave: Ultradian Rhythms and Brain Tech. Julian Isaacs: Recent Studies in Sound and Light. Tools for Evolution?. Megabrain "Software" Programs: Applications and Techniques. The Brainwave Investigation. Peak Performance Brainwaves . Jonathan D. Cowan: Alpha-Theta Brainwave Biofeedback: The Many Possible Theoretical Reasons for Its Success. Siegfried Othmer: EEG Biofeedback Training: The Old and the New.

FROM MEGABRAIN REPORT, VOL. 1 NO. 2 Edited by Michael Hutchison

TIME FLASHES: A SHORT HISTORY OF SOUND AND LIGHT TECHNOLOGY

by Michael Hutchison

To those seeing them for the first time, sound and light devices may seem bizarre, like something out of a science fiction movie - the users seem laid back, out there somewhere, wired into a small box listening through headphones to some unheard sounds while eerie light pulsations flicker inside futuristic goggles. And to those encountering these devices from a background of meditative practice, the idea that one can attain heightened or meditative states of consciousness by using a machine, and the sheer technical computerized hardware of the devices themselves, must seem coldly materialistic. But while the hardware may seem new, the techniques being used are ancient. LIGHT The knowledge that a flickering light can cause mysterious visual hallucinations and alterations in consciousness is something humans have known since the discovery of fire. It must have been knowledge of great value to the ancient shamans and poets, who learned how to use the images in the flames to enhance their magic. Ancient scientists were also intrigued by this phenomenon, and explored its practical applications. In 125 A.D. Apuleius experimented with a flickering light stimulus produced by the rotation of a potter's wheel, and found it could be used to reveal a type of epilepsy. Around 200 A.D. Ptolemy noted that when he placed a spinning spoked wheel between an observer and the sun, the flickering of the sunlight through the spokes of the spinning wheel could cause patterns and colors to appear before the eyes of the observer and could produce a feeling of euphoria. In the 17th century, a Belgian scientist, Plateau, used the flickering of light through a strobe wheel to study the diagnostic significance of the flicker fusion phenomenon. As he caused the light flickers to come faster and faster, he found that at a certain point the flickers seemed to "fuse" into a steady, unflickering light pattern. Plateau discovered that healthy people were able to see separate flashes of light at much higher flicker speeds than were sick people. (In recent years, studies using light sources such as a tachistoscope to provide rapid light flashes have revealed that long-term meditators are able to see discrete flashes of light at much higher flicker rates than non-meditators.) At the turn of the century, French psychologist Pierre Janet noticed that when patients at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris were exposed to flickering lights they experienced reductions in hysteria and increases in relaxation. SOUND Similarly, humans had always been enthralled by the effects of rhythmic sounds, and aware of the mindaltering and brain wave entrainment effects of rhythmic noises, as evidenced for example by the sophisticated auditory-driving techniques developed over thousands of years by shamans and priests. As anthropologist and shamanism authority Michael Harner, points out, "Basic tools for entering the SSC [Shamanic State of Consciousness] are the drum and rattle. The shaman generally restricts use of his drum and rattle to evoking and maintaining the SSC... The repetitive sound of the drum is usually fundamental to undertaking shamanic tasks in the SSC. With good reason, Siberian and other shamans sometimes refer to their drums as the 'horse' or 'canoe' that transports them into the Lowerworld or Upperworld. The steady, monotonous beat of the drum acts like a carrier wave, first to help the shaman enter the SSC, and then to sustain him on his journey." Researcher Andrew Neher investigated the effects of drumming on EEG patterns in the early 1960s and found the rhythmic pounding dramatically altered brain wave activity. Other researchers of shamanistic rituals, Harner observes, have "found that drum beat frequencies in the theta wave EEG frequency range ... predominated during initiation procedures." And humans have always been keenly appreciative of the consciousness-heightening powers of music, which is of course, among other things, a succession of rhythmic auditory signals. For thousands of years musicians and composers have consciously and intentionally influenced the brain states of listeners by manipulating the frequency of the rhythms and tones of their music.

SOUND AND LIGHT TOGETHER Humans have also long been intrigued by the possibilities for influencing mental functioning that emerge from combining both rhythmic light and rhythmic sound stimulation. Ancient rituals for entering trance states often involved both rhythmic sounds in the form of drumbeats, clapping or chanting, and flickering lights produced by candles, torches, bonfires or long lines of human bodies rhythmically dancing, their forms passing before the fire and chopping the light into mesmerizing rhythmic flashes. Some composers of the past, such as the visionary Scriabin, actually created music intended to be experienced in combination with rhythmic light displays. Technological advances made possible even more powerful combinations of sound and light. Moving pictures developed soundtracks, and moviemakers quickly exploited the potentials of sound to enhance the power of the flickering images onscreen, so that movies like "Gone With the Wind," "The Wizard of Oz" and others that followed became true audio-visual experiences in which the rhythmic soundtrack was fused with the flickering light and the rhythmic flickering of montage editing techniques to create alterations in the consciousness of the audience that would have been impossible using only sound or only light. The interplay of electronic musical instruments and amplified sound with stroboscopic "psychedelic light shows" that took place in the rock concerts of the 1960s could produce rapid and profound alterations in consciousness. Modern scientific research into the effects of rhythmic light and sound began in the mid-1930s when scientists discovered that the electrical rhythms of the brain tended to assume the rhythm of a flashing light stimulus, a process called entrainment. Research shifted into high gear in the late 1940s when the great British neuroscientist W. Gray Walter used an electronic strobe and advanced EEG equipment to investigate what he called the "flicker phenomenon." He found that rhythmic flashing lights quickly altered brainwave activity, producing trancelike states of profound relaxation and vivid mental imagery. He was also startled to find that the flickering seemed to alter the brain-wave activity of the whole cortex instead of just the areas associated with vision. Wrote Walter: "The rhythmic series of flashes appear to be breaking down some of the physiologic barriers between different regions of the brain. This means the stimulus of flicker received by the visual projection area of the cortex was breakiing bounds - its ripples were overflowing into other areas." The subjective experiences of those receiving the flashes were even more intriguing: "Subjects reported lights like comets, ultra-unearthly colors, mental colors, not deep visual ones." Walter's research aroused the attention of many artists, including the American novelist William Burroughs, and they put together a simple flicker device called the Dreammachine. As Burroughs described it in the 1960s, "Subjects report dazzling lights of unearthly brilliance and color... Elaborate geometric constructions of incredible intricacy build up from multidimensional mosaic into living fireballs like the mandalas of Eastern mysticism or resolve momentarily into apparently individual images and powerfully dramatic scenes like brightly colored dreams." A flood of subsequent scientific research in the 1960s and 70s revealed that such flicker effects at certain frequencies seemed to have amazing powers. Various scientists discovered that such photic stimulation could have a variety of beneficial effects, such as increasing I.Q. scores, enhancing intellectual functioning and producing greater synchronization between the two hemispheres of the brain. Other researchers found that the addition of rhythmic auditory signals dramatically increased the mind-enhancing effects. Throughout history technological advances, such as those in cinema, have quickly been seized upon to stimulate the human fascination with rhythmic sound and light. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, technological advances also made it possible for scientists to understand more fully how sounds and lights influenced the electrochemical activity of the brain. The result was the flood of studies mentioned above, dealing with photic and auditory entrainment, and hemisperic synchronization. In the early 1970s, Jack Schwarz, known for his feats of self- healing and self-regulation, began selling a device known as the ISIS, which used varible frequency lights mounted in goggles combined with rhythmic sounds to produce heighted mental states. In 1973, scientist Richard Townsend published a description of his research with a device using goggle-mounted lights for photic entrainment. In 1974 a scientist at City College of New York, Seymour Charas, obtained the first patent on a combined sound and light stimulation device, though it was never put into commercial production. But by the early 1980s the time was right for a breakthrough in the combination of sound and light. The catalyst was the revolution in microelectronics that was taking place at that time, a revolution that allowed home electronics buffs and garage inventors to put together astonishingly sophisticated and

complex devices for producing and combining sound and light - devices that could produce a rich assortment of tones, chords and even beat frequencies; that permitted the selection of a variety of light-flash patterns and intensities; that enabled the user to select the mode of interplay between lights and sound; that contained a number of preset "programs" designed to produce specific states of consciousness, ranging from sleep to meditation to extreme alertness, at the push of a button; and that permitted the users to design and store in the device's computerized memory a variety of their own programs. Before the breakthroughs in microelectronics, such complex computerized devices would have been enormously expensive to build, and like the old UNIVAC vacuum-tube computers, their circuitry and components would have been huge and unwieldy. But these new sound and light stimulators were relatively small - some of the first models were about the size of a portable typewriter, and soon models were being made with consoles not much larger than a pack of cards. As happened with personal computers, there seem to be new advances, new machines, and new generations of older devices appearing almost constantly; and as with PCs, the advances have included smaller size, greater versatility and power, and steep reductions in price. As this is written, there are well over 20 sound and light machines in commercial production around the world, and we seem on the verge of an entirely new generation of devices that combine sound and light stimulation with biofeedback capabilities. These new devices enable the machine to read the user's dominant brainwave activity, and then provide the optimal frequency of sound and light to entrain brainwave activity toward the "target" frequency. One such device (the DreamWave) is already on the market. Another significant development is the advent of a sound and light system on a simple board that can be plugged into your computer's expansion slot. One example currently on the market is the Mind Gear XLR8R, a hardware-software combination that turns an IBM PC XT/AT/386 or clone into a research laboratory grade audio- visual synchronizer, permitting users to program hundreds of sessions of almost any length and complexity, to program each eye and ear independently (this permits extraordinary effects, such as combining alpha and theta frequencies, or setting up visual "beat frequencies"), create sounds, chords and beat frequencies on the computer with a stereo synthesizer, and program thousands of time ramps and sound-light levels into a single session. These developments point the way toward the future. I believe it will be only a short time until we have a fully computerized integrated and interactive system that would allow the user to put on a few electrodes that would monitor EEG as well as other physiological indicators (muscle tension [EMG], skin potential, heart rate, skin temperature, breathing, etc.) and display them on the computer screen in real time; would use this information to provide the optimal type of sound and light stimulation (as well as cranial electrostimulation and appropriate digitized music selections or preprogrammed audio suggestions, hypnotic inductions, information for accelerated learning, etc.); and would permit the storage of thousands of sessions, with individual users able to select desired mind states or experiences with the ease of selecting a channel on the TV, or play back or re-experience past sessions. The technology for such a system is already available. SOUND AND LIGHT RESEARCH It has been well established that these devices can rapidly produce states of deep relaxation, and may increase suggestibility, receptivity to new information, and enhance access to subconscious material. New work into the effects of these devices being undertaken around the world, and preliminary results suggest that the machines may of being beneficial in the treatment of migraine headaches and learning disorders, alleviation of pain, enhancement of immune function, and much more. Here's a summary of some of the most interesting work done in the last decade. In one preliminary 1980 study of one of the sound and light machines, Dr. Thomas Budzynski, then of the Behavioral Medicine Associates clinic in Denver, found that "Results ranged from production of drowsy, hypnagogic-like states (with theta frequency used), to vivid, holograph-like images. At times, images from childhood were experienced." This led Budzynski to speak of the device as a "Hypnotic Facilitator," and a "Facilitator of 'Unconscious Retrieval," that could have therapeutic value, since the device seemd "to allow the subject to recall past childhood events with a high degree of 'being there' quality." He also suggested that the device could be effective for accelerated learning, since it seemed capable of putting users in the theta (or "twilight state") of hypersuggestibility and heightened receptivity to new information. Medical researcher Dr. Gene W. Brockopp of Buffalo, New York, speculated that sound and light stimulation could perhaps "actively induce a state of deactivation in which the brain is passive, but not asleep; awake, but not involved with the 'clutter' of an ongoing existence. If this is true, then it may be a state in which new

cognitive strategies could be designed and developed." Brockopp also suggested that "If we can help a person to experience different brain-wave states consciously through driving them with external stimulation, we may facilitate the individuals' ability to allow more variations in their functioning through brreakup up patterns at the neural level. This may help them develop the ability to shift gears or 'shuttle' and move them away from habigt patterns of behavior to become more flexible and creative, and to develop more elegant strategies of functioning." In a study of "The Effect of Repetitive Audio/Visual Stimulation on Skeletomotor and Vasomotor Activity," performed by Dr. Norman Thomas and his associate David Siever, at the University of Alberta, a group of experimental subjects were given audio/visual stimulation (using a DAVID device) at a frequency of 10 Hz (in the alpha range) for 15 minutes, while being monitored for muscle tension, using an EMG, and for finger temperature. A control group, similarly monitored, was simply asked to relax and to visualize a tranquil scene, without audio-visual stimulation, for the same 15 minute period. Significantly, both the experimental group and the control group were what the researchers called "resistant" or "non-hypnotisable" subjects. While the control subjects expressed a sense of relaxation, the EMG and finger temperature monitors showed that, quite to the contrary, they were actually experiencing increased amounts of muscle tension and decreases in finger temperature (associated with tension or stress). On the other hand, the group using the sound and light machine showed dramatic increases in relaxation, reaching profound relaxation states that continued for long periods after the 15 minutes of audio-visual stimulation. The researchers wrote: "It is concluded that autosuggestion relaxation is not as effective as audio-visually produced relaxation. Electroencephalography shows that a frequency following cortical response is evoked in the audio-visually stimulated subjects. It appears that audio-visual stimulation offers a simple hypnotic device in otherwise resistant subjects." In 1988, anethesiologist Robert Cosgrove Jr., Ph.D., M.D., undertook preliminary studies of sound and light stimulation. In his initial evaluations, in which he used the Alpha-Pacer II device, Cosgrove, an authority in pharmaceutics and biomedical engineering, noted that audio-visual stimulation was "clearly very powerful in its ability to cause deep relaxation in most subjects. Its effectiveness has been so great that we are very enthusiastic about the prospect of evaluating the [device] for its sedative properties in patients prior to, during, and immediately following surgery. We are also undertaking studies to prove [its] utility in chronic stress." "We are also," Cosgrove continued, "quantitating the electroencephalographic (brainwave, EEG) effects ... in both volunteers and patients. Our preliminary results show strong EEG entrainment." The device, Cosgrove noted, "with appropriately selected stimulation protocols has been observed by us to be an excellent neuropathway exerciser. As such we believe it has great potential for use in promoting optimal cerebral performance... Furthermore, the long-term effects of regular use of the device on maintaining and improving cerebral performance throughout life and possibly delaying for decades the deterioration of the brain traditionally associated with aging is very exciting. We plan to test this hypothesis in brain injured patients where the degree of recovery has been proven to be related to sensory and cerebral stimulus, with the results having implications for long-term use in healthy normal brains." In 1989, another researcher, D.J. Anderson, used photic stimulation using red LED goggles to treat seven sufferers of migraine headaches - none of whom had been able to relieve their migraines with drug treatments. He found that out of 50 migraines noted, 49 were rated by subjects as being "helped," and 36 sttopped by the photic stimulation. Significantly, brighter lights were found to be more effective. Further evidence of the potential therapeutic value of photic stimulation has come from researcher Jill Ammon-Wexler, Ph.D., of the Innerspace Biofeedback and Therapy Center in Los Gatos, CA, using a device that uses a flickering light stimulus without an accompanying sound stimulus. The device, called a Lumatron, uses a strobe light with color filters to provide rhythmic photic stimulation in variable frequencies and in selected wavelength or color bands [MEGABRAIN REPORT will devote a full-length article to this device in a future issue]. Ammon-Wexler did a controlled study of twenty subjects suffering from phobias and found that "remarkable resolution of the subjects' phobic systems had occurred over the process of the 20 experimental sessions. There was also 'across the board' evidence for enhanced self-concept, and clinically-significant reductions in both anxiety and depression." Dr. Ammon-Wexler's findings about the potential medical benefits of photic stimulation have been echoed recently by William Harris, M.D., director of the Penwell Foundation, an organization for the investigation, research and application of different modalities for the treatment of those with AIDS/HIV. In preliminary work

with a number of AIDs sufferers he has experimented with the use of a sound and light machine (the IM-1) and found it extremely effective. He speculates it may boost immune function by producing states of deep relaxation, by enhancing the patients' receptivity to suggestions for healing, by improving patients' ability to visualize and the clarity of their visualizations. "At this point it's conjecture," says Harris, "But I think that this type of machine may actually be stimulating ... the body to produce its own chemical substances," and that these natural substances may enhance immune function and healing. In 1990 Bruce Harrah-Conforth, Ph.D., of Indiana University completed a controlled study of one of the computerized sound and light machines (the MindsEye Plus) the result of over two years of research into the field of brain entrainment, and found that compared to the control group, which listened to pink noise with eyes closed, the group receiving sound and light stimulation showed dramatic alterations in their EEG patterns responding to the frequency of the sound and light device, and also showed evidence of hemispheric synchronization. Participants in the study were asked to describe their experiences. According to Dr. Harrah- Conforth, "the subjects' comments were such typical descriptions as 'I lost all sense of my body,' 'I felt like I was flying,' 'I was deeply relaxed,' 'I felt like I was out of my body,' etc." The report by Harrah-Conforth suggests that sound and light devices may cause simultaneous ergotropic arousal, or arousal of the sympathetic nervous system and the cerebral cortex, associated with "creative" and "ecstatic experiences," and trophotropic arousal, or the arousal of the parasympathetic system, associated with deep relaxation and "the timeless, 'oceanic' mode of the mystic experience." In humans, Dr. Harrah-Conforth concludes, "these two states may be interpreted as hyper- and hypo- arousal, or ecstasy and samadhi." In a separate letter to MEGABRAIN REPORT, Harrah-Conforth writes: "I have little doubt that brain entrainment technology is a highly effective means of inducing changes in consciousness." He continues, "Brain entrainment, at least within my own research, has shown itself to be virtually foolproof and does indeed facilitate whole brain experiences." While pointing out that our current understanding of brain entrainment technology is only in its infancy, he writes "there seems to be little doubt that this technology has a remarkable future. The evidence, my own and others, clearly indicates that brain-wave entrainment is produced by these machines. EMG tests have also made it quite clear that one of the byproducts of this entrainment can be the relaxation response. And subjective reports range from heightened creativity, to beautiful visual trips, to increased alertness, and many other states." He concludes that "the early indications are strong that this now-developing technology will profoundly revolutionize both our concepts of, and interaction with, our consciousness... The evolution of human consciousness is a tangibly manipulable process. We can control our destiny... It would appear as though brain entrainment will be among the technologies leading the way." California psychologist Julian Isaacs, Ph.D., working with a private research group called "The Other 90 Percent," is now engaged in an ongoing study of the brain-wave effects of sound and light as well as other mind-altering devices. Megabrain, Inc. is providing assistance in this research by, among other things, making available a number of devices. Isaacs and his colleagues are using a 24 electrode color brainmapping EEG, with newly developed software that permits extremely precise and sensitive measurement and statistical analysis of whole brain electrical activity. In a discussion of his preliminary findings, he told me that there was "very clear evidence of brainwave driving" using sound and light. He also said he'd found a very strong correlation between the intensity of the lights used (whether red LEDs or incandescent bulbs) and the brain-entrainment: the brighter the lights, the more entrainment. He mentioned one device he had tested that used dim lights, and found it had "no brain driving capacity at all." However, Isaacs pointed out that it was easiest to entrain brain-wave activity in the alpha range, while it seems much more difficult to drive the slower brain frequencies, such as theta (a fact discussed by the machine manufacturers in the roundtable discussion elsewhere in this issue). However, the EEG evidence was quite clear that people using the devi ces did indeed spend much of their sessions in theta. Often, however, their dominant theta frequency was very different from the theta frequency being flashed by the sound and light machine. How to explain this? Isaacs suggested the possibility that while the devices can clearly and quickly entrain brainwave activity into the low alpha range, what happens next is that the brain becomes habituated to the repetitive stimulus and the Reticular Activating System - the volume control and attention-directing part of the brain - simply tires of the repetitive stimulus and ignores it, or "blanks out" the conscious perception of the lights. As a result, the brain drops into the theta state. The effect, that is, may be very much like that of the ganzfeld, which uses a featureless and unvarying visual field to cause the "blank out" effect. This theory brought to my mind the work of Dr. Gene Brockopp mentioned above, who suggested that sound and light stimulation could perhaps "actively induce a state of

deactivation in which the brain is passive, but not asleep; awake, but not involved with the 'clutter' of an ongoing existence. If this is true, then it may be a state in which new cognitive strategies could be designed and developed." Further discussions of recent scientific research into the effects of sound and light machines can be found in the "Sound and Light Interviews," and in the separate discussionss of the "red LED controversy" by Robert Austin and David Siever.

A LONG AND TWISTED TALE: DENIS GORGES AND THE SYNCHROENERGIZER

by Michael Hutchison

... IN WHICH WE EXPOSE FAKED LETTERS FROM THE FDA ... INVESTIGATE SECRET MILITARY MIND MACHINES FOR THE SAUDI ARABIANS ... CONSIDER 10,000 BRAIN CENTERS ON THE MOON ... ENCOUNTER THE MYSTERIOUS 'DEEP BRAIN' ... AND FINALLY SEE THE LIGHT - FULL SPECTRUM.

While conducting research for the book that was to become MEGABRAIN, I tried out a sound and light machine called the Synchro-Energizer (SE) and spoke with the man who claimed to have invented it, Denis Gorges. He told me he was an M.D., Ph.D., and psychiatrist (and presented me with written materials, including his business card, that described him as "Denis E. Gorges M.D. Ph.D."), and described a variety of university research projects that were underway into the effects of the Synchro-Energizer. He told me his device was "FDA approved" as a "learning and relaxation" device. I accepted these assertions at face value and subsequently wrote an article about the device in Esquire magazine and devoted a chapter of MEGABRAIN to the SE and Denis Gorges in which I repeated Gorges' claims about himself and his machine. As a result of these writings, Gorges once told me, he had sold "thousands" of his devices (which then cost around $5,000 and soon shot up to over $8,000), and there's no doubt the book brought him an extraordinary amount of credibility and attention by the media and potential buyers all over the world. Since the writing of MEGABRAIN I have learned that my reporting about Gorges and the SE in that book was not based entirely on facts. Over the years I have learned many facts about Gorges and the SE that are quite troublesome to me. Some of what I have learned leads me to believe it's urgent that readers of MEGABRAIN REPORT and potential users of mind machines be alerted to the facts. Since I played a part in bringing Gorges to public attention, I feel not only dismay, but also a strong sense of responsibility to correct the false impressions and false information given by my book. What follows is some of the information I have learned about Denis Gorges. FAKE 'FDA FILES' EXPOSED Beginning in the spring of 1990, representatives of Gorges's company Synchro Tech began circulating a series of letters on FDA letterhead purportedly written by a "Walter Schmidt" of the FDA. These letters apparently advise Gorges of the dangerous and deleterious effects of red LEDs (as used in many sound and light machines), compared to the purported "preponderance of positive effects" of "full spectrum" lights, like those Gorges claims to use in the machines he produces (though as we shall see, these claims are highly questionable). From the beginning, it was clear to many that there was something fishy about the letters (a photo of one of them accompanies this article), which are filled with grammatical errors and represent extremely uncharacteristic behavior by the FDA. One oddity was that Mr. Schmidt signed his letters over several titles: "Chief Executive Officer," "Chief Information Officer," and "Chief Information Office." The first letter, dated January 26, 1990, and addressed to D.E. Gorges of Synchro Tech Research foundation, claimed that "A search was conducted on the subject of negative effects of red light (red- LED's etc.) on health behavior and general well-being." The letter went on to list the titles (and only the titles, filled with misspellings, but with no other information about authors, journals and dates of publication) of 58 supposedly scientific studies. Oddly, these "studies," though many of the titles seemed to have at least some relationship with vision and/or color, seemed to have nothing to do with negative effects of red lights or red LEDs. A sampling of titles included: "Dermooptical perception a clinical case," and "A method for study the early states of the development of the process of abstraction" [sic]. Another Walter Schmidt letter, again on FDA letterhead and again addressed to D.E. Gorges, was dated February 5, 1990, and included 16 "abstracts," "relevant to your request for information on the subject of health hazards/effects of red light, electro- magnetic/magnetic fields, etc. We will secure full copies A.S.A.P." The 16 abstracts were a hodge-podge, many of them dealing with the health effects of electromagnetic and magnetic fields, and only a few even peripherally related to red lights or red LEDs. Another letter, however, again addressed to D.E. Gorges, and dated February 27, 1990, seemed to be marked by a dramatic change

in tone and content. Suddenly, after extensive searches that had apparently come up with nothing about any dangers of red LEDs, Walter Schmidt wrote Gorges, "We have reviewed 38 new files on the subject of adverse effects of red light or LED's. It's interesting to note that the majority of the work done on the subject shows very significant indication of the negative effects of red light..." The letter, however, cited only a single study which "shows a corollation [sic] between occupational disease due to long term exposure to red light." That is, it dealt not with flickering red LEDs but with long term, chronic occupational exposure to red light. Since we have reproduced this letter here, the reader will have an opportunity to examine the strange syntax. Curiously, there were several differences between this letter and the earlier Walter Schmidt letters - it was single spaced (all other Walter Schmidt material was double spaced), printed in a completely different typeface (the other letters all bore the same typeface), and in this letter, Mr. Schmidt identifies himself as the "Chief Information Office." Most importantly, Walter Schmidt's signature seemed different from the other Walter Schmidt signatures. Another Walter Schmidt letter was addressed to Gorges on March 20, 1990, and described attempts to inquire with the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act about devices such as the Innerquest and MC2, the manufacturers of these devices, and "any complaints made to the FDA on such products." This letter was, like the others, on FDA letterhead. This seemed even more curious: why would Walter Schmidt, who signed himself Chief Information Officer of the Food and Drug Administration, be requesting information from his own agency under the Freedom of Information Act? These letters were distributed and/or displayed to potential buyers of sound and light machines at trade fairs by representatives of Gorges's company Synchro Tech, in an apparent attempt to scare buyers away from competing devices. According to reliable sources, including one former business associate of Gorges, Synchro Tech representatives flashed these letters to prospective customers and warned them away from competing devices by talking about "thousands of studies from FDA files" suggesting "the dangers of red LEDs." According to several manufacturers and distributors of other devices, the scare tactics worked. One former Synchro Tech distributor who has since begun selling other sound and light machines, and who did not wish to be identified for fear of reprisals, told MEGABRAIN REPORT, "Every fair we go to, if people go to Gorges' booth first, we're in trouble," since they are immediately warned of the "FDA files" on the dangers of red LEDs. Said our source, "He's done serious damage to our business." In addition, the "FDA files on red light" were also sent to at least one individual who operated a "brain fitness center" that featured competing devices, accompanied by letters from Gorges' company Synchro Tech, threatening ferocious, timeconsuming and expensive litigation. We reproduce one example here, written to Maryellen KrygowskiVisconti, operator of the Visconti 2000 Mind/Brain Fitness Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The letter stated, among other things, that all other sound and light machines "have no safety or university testing." (An untrue statement, as evidenced by university studies described in the accompanying article, "The History of Sound and Light Machines"). The letter continued that all other machines "claim FDA approval, which is illegal, as the FDA does not endorse any product..." Again, this is not only false, but exceedingly strange, since, as I mentioned above, one of the first things Gorges had told me about his device, and told me repeatedly, and had stated in numerous articles since, was that his device had "FDA approval" as a relaxation and learning device (though, as we shall see below, this is not quite the case). The letter then threatened Ms.Krygowski-Visconti by warning her that she could be liable for injuries, as the other sound and light machines she used "are known to be unsafe as per FDA sources," warned her to "pull these products from your place of operation," and claimed there was "substantial research" indicating that red light "can and is [sic] a detriment to health," though as we have seen, there was no actual evidence that there is any research, let alone "substantial research," to this effect. The letter claimed red lights could, among other things, stimulate chronic fatigue syndrome, lower T cell counts, enhance sensitivity to epileptic type seizures, increase aggression and hostile behavior, produce lethargy, decrease sex drive and cause "Cellular level breakdown" [sic], basing these claims on "FDA reports enclosed." The "FDA reports," of course, were the letters from Walter Schmidt. The letter then threatened legal action if Ms. Krygowski-Visconti dis not cease and desist in the use of other sound and light machines. It was signed by Caroline Walter, whose title on this occasion was "Public Relations and Media Director for Synchro-Tech International." The letter included the above mentioned packet of "FDA files on red light" from the mysterious Walter Schmidt. Even more ominously, a similar letter, containing much virtually identical language about "FDA reports," "substantial research" about "detriment to health" and so on, except directed specifically at one sound and light machine, the InnerQuest, was sent from Synchro Tech's Caroline Walter to Bob Guccione, publisher of

OMNI magazine, which had published several advertisements for the InnerQuest. The letter warned Guccione that the InnerQuest was making "spurious and unsubstantiated claims as to its effectiveness and safety," made several other false or questionable statements about the InnerQuest, warned him that he, Guccione, could be liable "If an injury were caused by this product," said the device was "known to be unsafe as per FDA sources," and said "we suggest you pull this advertisement from your magazine." For this letter, Caroline Walter carried the title of "South Coast Representative for Synchro-Tech International Research Foundation." Accompanying the letter were the "FDA files on red light," i.e. the Walter Schmidt letters. As anger, fear, confusion, consternation and curiosity about these letters mounted, MEGABRAIN REPORT undertook an investigation of the letters and their origin (several of the manufacturers of sound and light machines were also investigating the letters). We made several inquiries with the FDA, including the Personnel Department, and quickly found that no Walter Schmidt was listed in the FDA "Active," "Inactive" "or "Commission Corps" files. This, and similar inquiries by several manufacturers of sound and light machines, convinced us that there was no Walter Schmidt working for the FDA. THE MYSTERIOUS STAPLE IN THE EAGLE'S WING But if Walter Schmidt did not work for the FDA, then who had written these letters on FDA letterhead? We had noted that each of the Walter Schmidt letters bore a clearly visible staple mark in the top left corner. Curiously, in every one of the Walter Schmidt letters, the staple mark seemed to be identical in shape, with the exact same upward twist on the right side, and was in exactly the same place, stretching across the three bars on the sylized wing of the eagle on the FDA letterhead! Several different people interested in tracing the origin of the letters remarked to us that they believed the letters to be a "cut and paste job," with the typed body of the Walter Schmidt letters superimposed on a single FDA letterhead - the same FDA letterhead each time, one which happened to have a staple in it. There were also obvious inconsistencies and incongruities within the letters themselves. One sound and light machine manufacturer, Rob Robinson of Psych Research, maker of the InnerQuest devices, hired attorney Jay Geller, who had over 20 years of experience in dealing with the FDA, to pursue the matter with the FDA. "The manner in which the letters are written," Geller wrote to the Office of the General Counsel of the FDA, "leads to questions as to the authenticity of Mr. Schmidt. For example ... Mr. Schmidt states 'We have also requested from the FDA what the current rulings are for marketing such devices as well as any complaints made to the FDA on such products.' "It is obvious to me," wrote Geller, "as I am certain it is to you, that someone working for the FDA would not be making an FOI request to the FDA... "I have received, over the years, hundreds of letters and other correspondence from the FDA. I have never come across a letter such as this, both by the syntax used, and the tone, written by an FDA employee... The references to 'papers in our database system', and 'reading hundreds of abstracts' simply do not make sense. I am unaware of any FDA employee who would, at the request of someone in the industry, read 'hundreds of abstracts' on a subject and then report on them to that individual. "Finally, there are two incomplete letters ... which reference numerous articles and abstracts. I am unaware of any FDA employee ever providing a summary of study extracts to anyone submitting a request for information. I cannot imagine that any FDA employee would have the time (or inclination) to undertake such a massive project." In response, the FDA replied to Geller that they had referred the matter to gthe Director of the FDA Program Integrity Branch. Geller followed up this letter. "I talked with a Robert Taylor in the FDA Program Integrity Branch," Geller told me, and Taylor "said they were probably going to be turning it over to the HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is a part] Inspector General's Office or the Department of Justice." As the investigation of the Walter Schmidt letters letters progressed, it began to appear that serious criminal offenses were perhaps involved, offenses that might include including impersonating a federal official or employee, misuse of government property, forgery and more. All of the "Walter Schmidt" letters were addressed to Denis Gorges. It was apparent that Gorges' company Synchro Tech distributed these letters to people like Guccione and Krygowsky-Visconti as "FDA files." The purported evidence of the "dangers" of red LEDs they contained was nothing of the sort. And yet they had

been presented to many potential purchasers and users of sound and light devices as "evidence" of the dangers of other sound and light devices and as evidence that people should purchase Denis Gorges's devices. Gorges himself in a promotional "interview" circulated during that time by Synchro Tech along with an advertisement for the "Relaxman," confidently cited "extensive research over decades" showing that red light has a "much greater tendency than other light to set off seizures (see FDA report January 1990)." The "FDA report" he cited, apparently, was the Walter Schmidt material. With this information in hand, MEGABRAIN REPORT interviewed Denis Gorges on July 25, 1990, and told him we had found no Walter Schmidt working at the FDA. Responded Gorges: "Walter Schmidt is an information officer, a search officer for a search firm. If you want to talk to somebody at the FDA about red lights, you'd have to talk with Marcy Hecht, a Freedom of Information officer in the Office of Compliance and Surveillance, Center for Devices and Radiological Health. She could help you find information on red lights." Gorges' response blithely evaded the important question: if, as Gorges was apparently admitting, Walter Schmidt did not work for the FDA, but rather for a search firm, then how did his letters get printed on FDA letterhead? Was Gorges suggesting that Walter Schmidt, a "search officer for a search firm" actually committed the various crimes involved in putting his letters on FDA letterhead and calling himself "Chief Information Officer" and "Chief Executive Officer" of the FDA? With our questions still unanswered, we followed Gorges' suggestion that we talk to Marcy Hecht at the FDA about red lights, and called her on July 31, 1990. She was, it turned out, the FOI (Freedom of Information) officer in the FDA Center for Devices. "No," she told MEGABRAIN REPORT, "I am not aware of any investigations of red LEDs or red light devices. I am not aware of any health dangers associated with red light." She also added "I have never heard of any Denis Gorges." Meanwhile, MEGABRAIN REPORT hired Alexa Morrill, a court-approved handwriting analyst with over ten years experience in verifying documents for legal and corporate clients, to look at the signatures on the Walter Schmidt letters. She quickly concluded, "one of the Walter Schmidt signatures wasn't executed by the same person who did the others. Even the typewriter is different on the February 27th letter than on the other documents." We have reproduced the February 27th letter here - the only letter to actually claim that there was evidence that red LEDs could have "negative effects." She told us, "this leads me to believe that the other signatures may be legitimate and this one may be a forgery." WHO'S WALTER SCHMIDT ? THE APPEARANCE OF "DEEP BRAIN" At this point, MEGABRAIN REPORT was approached by an individual who had been an associate of Denis Gorges for several years and one of the leading distributors for Synchro Tech products, had since stopped working with Gorges, but was still intimately involved in the business and was deeply concerned about the future of consciousness technology. This source asked that we not use his/her name (for convenience's sake we will hereafter refer to this source as a "he," rather than "he or she"), and was quickly dubbed "Deep Brain." He provided us with useful information and asked, in return, for information about the Walter Schmidt letters. We told him about Gorges' suggestion we call Marcy Hecht at FDA, and described Hecht's statements. He asked if he could call Marcy Hecht himself, and we provided him with the information to do so. The next day, Deep Brain reported that Marcy Hecht had told him just what she had told us. Stymied, we discussed the problem, and concluded that there was another close Gorges associate who might be able to provide information. When approached, this Gorges associate was hesitant to cooperate, but the next morning we had a copy of a letter that appeared to be from Marcy Hecht to Synchro Tech [this letter is reproduced below]. The person it was addressed to at the Synchro Tech address in Cleveland, Ohio, was Walter Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer. In addition, while the typeface for Schmidt's name and the body of the letter was uniform, the name "Synchro Tech" and its address were in much larger and quite different type. It appeared to be a return address label pasted into place over the actual address of Walter Schmidt. Very strange. Asked about her letter to Synchro Tech, Hecht claimed she had not sent any letter to Synchro Tech. She had sent it to Walter Schmidt at a data search firm known as Stacks, Inc., in Auburn, California. Bingo! When notified that his name was on a series of letters written on FDA letterhead, Schmidt was shocked, and immediately consulted his attorney. He then called MEGABRAIN REPORT back. "I just got off the phone with my attorney, who advises me to make one very simple statement," he told us. "That is, of the letters that were sent out, I've never put out any letters on FDA letterhead; I've never been associated with the FDA in any way; and essentially what I do is to develop research and technical topics as far as bibliographies go for data packages - that's it!

"So I'm sending copies of these to my attorney today to look over, along with the originals, because they ain't the same! I'm very irritated with the entire situation. Because we're a very simple outfit here ... nothing more than a clearance library... What I have in front of me is copies of letters with FDA letterhead, and I don't put out letters on FDA letterhead. I did put out letters on Stacks, Inc. letterhead back in those days, and that was it." Schmidt agreed that he had indeed been hired by Denis Gorges and Synchro Tech to do a database search and make inquiries with the FDA. We remarked that an odd thing about the letters had been that while the Synchro Tech people had presented them as evidence of the "dangers of red LEDs," none of the studies mentioned in them seemed to deal with red LEDs."That was the point," said Schmidt. "To be precise ... there have not been any complaints on the subject of such devices involved with brainwave alteration. Period." In all of his massive search of databases and inquiries with the FDA he did not find anything at all about the dangers of red LEDs? we asked. "Nothing," Schmidt told us. "Absolutely nothing." The only thing he could come up with, he told us, was some research having to do not with flashing red LEDs, but with long-term exposure to red lights. "With chronic exposure," he said, "very long term, very consistent exposure, day in day out, you'll have some problems. But it's like water. How dangerous is water? Well if you're under ten feet of it you're going to drown. But there's nothing on the short term effects, or directly connected with these type of devices. That you can quote me on: I couldn't find anything." When we told him of the conclusion of our handwriting analyst, that one of the letters was a forgery, the letter of Feb. 27 - the only letter to actually claim there was evidence that red LEDs could have negative effects Schmidt said he would follow his attorney's advice and not make comments on such matters. However, he emphasized to us, "One of these letters I believe not to be mine... I always double-space my letters. The February 27 letter is single-spaced." Several hours after this conversation, Walter Schmidt called MEGABRAIN REPORT again and reported: "We've sent out a letter to Mr. Denis Gorges by certified mail telling him to cease and desist using my name on the bottom of FDA letterhead. I have found, by the way, most of the originals of these letters - and they do not have FDA letterhead - and turned them over to my attorney." Schmidt expressed increasing anger at the situation. "At least if you're going to do it, do a good job of it! It's a horrible job in most cases," he said. "I mean Jesus Christ, unbelievable, but he did a terrible job of everything." MEGABRAIN REPORT asked if he could explain. Said Schmidt, "Let's put it this way, if you're going to make stationery, do a good job of it, don't make a mess of it with staples and all that crap. It's dumb!" THE WAXMAN COMETH ? Along with the barrage of questionable "evidence" about red LEDs, Gorges and his representatives have apparently been threatening distributors of competing devices with the spectre of "The Waxman Committee." In one of her threatening letters to Maryellen Krygowski-Visconti, for example, Caroline Walters, "South Coast Representative for Synchro-Tech International," warns her against using such devices as the "Innerquest, Mc2 and the David" because, since they don't have "FDA approval" (as she claims the Relaxman does) they "threaten the future of brain/mind products and risk greater regulations being placed upon legitimate devices..." Ominously, she warns that "The Senate Select Committee on Health Care Fraud (chaired by Senator Waxman) is investigating..." This statement is peculiar, since Henry Waxman is not a Senator at all but a Representative (D-CA), and he is not chairman of the Committee on Health Care Fraud, but instead chairs the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. The reference to the "Waxman Committee" piqued my interest, since Gorges had referred to this committee before. An article about Gorges published in the Summer 1988 edition of Reality Hackers magazine had stated that "Gorges is known to have blown the whistle on many competitors and supports the Waxman Bill." This bill, according to the magazine, "will outlaw all machines that purport to change behavior or have therapeutic applications unless they conform to regulatory guidelines and remain subject to review." Then, just as this article was being prepared, MEGABRAIN REPORT heard from a prominent scientist - one of the leading researchers in the field of brain/mind technology - that Gorges had told him the Waxman Committee was investigating sound and light devices. At about the same time, in an interview with MEGABRAIN REPORT, Gorges seemed to imply that the Waxman Committee was even investigating me. "The Waxman Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on

Health Care Fraud know about his [i.e. Michael Hutchison's] activities," said Gorges. "He should be more careful." As a result, I called the Washington D.C. offices of Congressman Waxman, where I spoke with Molly Edwards, who is Representative Waxman's staff assistant on the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment and works with the Health and Medical Devices section. When I asked her if she was aware of any "investigation of sound and light machines," or the dangers of red lights, she answered, "No ... I haven't even heard of it, and that particular issue has never been discussed at one of our hearings." Was it possible that some such investigation was going on without her knowledge? No, said Edwards, "I would have some knowledge of it if we were doing anything like that." Also, Edwards pointed out, the only devices the Waxman Subcommittee investigates are "medical devices," which by definition have to have been approved by the FDA. "All the devices that we are investigating," she told us, "are FDA approved." As examples of medical devices they are concerned with she mentioned an apnea monitor, faulty artificial heart valves, and surgical implants. Thus, she said, non-medical devices such as the sound and light devices would not be something the Waxman Subcommittee would even investigate. GETTING TO KNOW YOU: THE CHRONOLOGICAL APPROACH TO MR. GORGES Threats of law suits, questionable documents and questionable claims seem to have surrounded Denis Gorges for many years. Who is Denis Gorges and what does he want? I can only offer a partial answer to this question, and it is, as the title of this article says, a long and twisted tale. It is a tale in which I, personally, have become involved. So it seems to me the best way I can tell it is to return to the place where I personally became involved, and move on from there in a roughly chronological fashion. After the publication of MEGABRAIN, I used the Synchro-Energizer in some of my Megabrain Workshops. I found the device unsatisfactory in a number of ways. I also began to hear from other operators and users of the device of experiences in which users had found the device very irritating, fainted or suffered headaches, and that at least one user had suffered seizures and had had to be hospitalized (I was later to discover that one of the machine's disgruntled purchasers reported that Gorges himself had admitted to him that fully one third of the users of the device had negative reactions). As a result, I began using other sound and light machines in my workshops. I was immediately beseiged with angry calls from Mr. Gorges threatening to sue me. Then, at the request of MAGICAL BLEND magazine, I wrote an article on "Megabrain devices," which included descriptions of several sound and light devices I had become aware of since the writing of Megabrain. Again, I found myself receiving threatening calls from Gorges, saying he was going to sue me simply for writing about these other machines, because they infringed on his "patent" (about which more later). I pointed out to Gorges that it didn't make much sense to sue me - a journalist who was simply writing about machines that were widely available on the market - and that if he had claims for patent infringements, he should direct them at the manufacturers and distributors. This didn't dissuade Gorges, and he continued to threaten me. As a result, I called the manufacturers of some of the other light and sound devices, and found that Gorges had directed similar threats at them and their customers in the form of menacing letters clearly designed to intimidate them. The letters frequently bore the headline: "LAST NOTICE BEFORE LEGAL ACTION," and stated that expensive legal suits were in the offing, but that the various manufacturers could avoid the disastrous problems by selling his device. In several cases in 1988, manufacturers and distributors received letters bearing Gorges' signature, written on the letterhead of a Cleveland, Ohio law firm, Tarolli, Sundheim & Covell. In an absurd and faintly comical touch - perhaps in an attempt to make the letter look even more "official" - someone had stamped at least one of these letters with an official looking circular seal. The seal stated "LIBRARY OF D. E. GORGES MD PHD". Upon investigation, these letters seem to be earlier variations of the motif that was to emerge more boldly with the Walter Schmidt letters: the unauthorized use of an impressive letterhead to give more force to Synchro Tech's threats against its competitors. When MEGABRAIN REPORT recently called the law firm of Tarolli, Sundheim & Covell, attorney Paul Szabo, a spokesman for that firm, stated that Denis Gorges "is not a member or an attorney associated with the firm. As such, he is not authorized to use our stationery. Those letters were sent out without our permission." When he was questioned about this letter by Timothy Maier of the Baltimore Business Journal, Gorges told him "that his staff wrote it. But," Maier points out, "it bears Gorges' signature." HERE COMES THE FDA Since one of Gorges's recurrent threats was that because his device had "FDA approval" he was going to bring down the wrath of the FDA on his competitors, in early 1989 I wrote to the FDA and asked for their files

on Gorges and his company, invoking the privileges of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (all such information gathered by the government for which there is no compelling reason for secrecy is, in fact, "public information," and the FOI procedure is one means for the public to gain access to the information that has been gathered in its name). I received a thick packet of documents indicating several shocking facts. Among them: even though Gorges claimed to be an M.D., Ph.D. and psychiatrist, he had admitted to an FDA inspector in October, 1985 (even as I was completing the manuscript of Megabrain and he was continuing to make such claims to me, to the press and in his own promotional literature) that he had no advanced degrees. The FDA document submitted by the field investigator states: "When questioned concerning his educational background, Mr. Gorges stated that he had no formal training or degrees. When it was noted that some of the promotional literature and copies of news articles in our files refer to him variously as an M.D., psychiatrist, and Ph.D., Mr. Gorges alluded to misinterpretations, at one point indicating the mistakes were made by his employees. He made no comment when it was noted that he is the person in charge and therefore responsible for corrrecting mistakes." "It should be noted," the FDA officer continued, "that Mr. Gorges is the person who denied any knowledge of the firm or himself when visited 8-14-85." In other words, the first time the FDA had attempted to conduct an inspection at his place of business, Gorges had apparently refused to acknowledge that he was Denis Gorges and had denied any knowledge of his own company. Also, as to the claims Gorges made to me in the mid-1980s that his device was "FDA approved," the FDA documents state in the "SUMMARY OF FINDINGS," that "Deviations from regulatory requirements noted during this inspection included failure to register, failure to submit device listing information, lack of product labeling providing indications and directions for use, failure to obtain pre-marketing approval, lack of an investigational device exemption, lack of prescription labeling and failure to limit distribution to licensed practitioners. Distribution of promotional materials recommending use of the device for conditions for which it is not generally recognized as safe and effect was also noted. Management refused to provide distribution information claiming that it was unavailable at that location." Under the section titled "OBJECTIONABLE PRACTICES" the FDA report enumerated a long list of claims made about the "medical" uses of the product, yet pointed out it was not registered with the FDA as a medical product. It states, "During the inspection, Mr. Gorges emphasized on several occasions that the units are not sold to those people that acquire them, and can be taken back if the customer violates the terms of the agreement and descriptions of proposed use signed by them... However, several pieces of the literature referred to sales of the product, and in fact the introductory cover letter for the literature (Exhibit A) refers to sales to individuals." Under the section titled "COMPLAINTS" the FDA report states: "Mr. Gorges initially stated that he has never received any complaints of injuries or illnesses. He subsequently retracted the statement, stating that a woman using the product at a health show in Detroit several years ago had fainted..." The FDA report went on to say that "At various times during the inspection observations concerning the firm's objectionable practices were discussed with Mr. Gorges. Pointed out were the requirements for registration and device listing, the requirement to obtain pre-marketing approval or an investigational device exemption, and the necessity for adequate labeling to include indications for use and directions for use... Mr. Gorges also stated that he had made no attempt to comply with FDA requirements as he considered thd Synchro-Energizer a learning and relaxation device, not a medical device, subject to FDA jurisdiction. Following discussion of the definition of a medical device and the claims made in promotional literature, Mr. Gorges discontinued his contention that the product was not a medical device." All this, of course, was during the period Gorges was claiming to me and to many others that his device had "FDA approval." It is a claim that representatives of Gorges continue to make. In a followup letter on May 14, 1990 to Maryellen Krygowski-Visconti, Caroline Walter flatly claims that the Synchro-Energizer Relaxman is "FDA approved," and states that "The Synchro-Energizer has been reviewed by the FDA since December 1975. The FDA has on record 14 university based institutional review board reports which have agreed on the safety and effectiveness of research on Synchro- Energizer technology..." However, Walter Schmidt, who was apprently hired by Gorges to search out information about the safety and effectiveness of such devices, flatly and emphatically contradicts this. As he told me, "There are no FDA files, that's the point! I even had a letter that went out to that effect, that essentially there were no files on the subject... There is absolutely nothing that says any device on the market is dangerous or is not dangerous. Essentially, there is no information!" WHERE'S THE DOCTOR ?

A sidelight here. Despite his admission to the FDA field inspector that he had no advanced degrees, Gorges continues to describe himself as an M.D, Ph.D and neuroscientist (in an article in the August, 1990 issue of Longevity, for example, he is "biomedical researcher Denis Gorges, M.D."). In a front page article about brain fitness centers for the New York Times, reporter Katherine Bishop raised some questions about Gorges' claims of advanced degrees. "Although the device [the Synchro Energizer] is said to improve memory," she wrote, "Mr. Gorges could not recall the location of the New Jersey institution he said awarded him a Ph.D. after he completed a course in psychology through the mail. "While he also says he is a medical doctor," Bishop's article continues, "Canadian Government agencies and professional organizations could find no record of the private medical school he said he attended outside Toronto. He is not licensed to practice either in Canada or his native state of Ohio, according to official records." Apparently Gorges' memory had improved somewhat by the time he was interviewed by Timothy W. Maier of the Baltimore Business Journal, who investigated the questions about Gorges's professional degrees in an article published in the April 2-8, 1990 edition. Gorges claimed to Maier, "In 1969 I got a Ph.D. from Thomas Edison College in New Jersey and I have an M.D. from United American Medical College in Canada." "Impressive credentials?" writes Maier. "Take another look. Thomas Edison wasn't established until 1972 and the United American Medical College doesn't exist." Maier reports that Gorges tried to explain this by claiming that the United American College was closed in 1982, while he received his M.D. in 1975. "Most people thought it was a diploma mill," Gorges said, "because that's what it is now. But it wasn't then." But how did Gorges get a Ph.D. in 1969 from a college that wasn't established until 1972? "Then it must have been from what the college was before," Gorges told Maier. Maier investigated and found that "That would have been Trenton College, a similar community college that shared one distinct characteristic with Thomas Edison, both never offered a doctorate or any post graduate studies." "When informed of these facts through a telephone conversation," writes Maier, "Gorges responded, 'Gotta go. Look, I'll send you credentials. Gotta go. Germany is on the line." The credentials that arrived claim that Gorges is a member of the Southern Medical Association, according to Maier, "and several obscure associations, none of which thoroughly screen members. SMA said it plans to investigate Gorges." WHO SIGNED THE RECEIPT ? COULD THIS BE A U.P.S. SCAM ? The file I obtained from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act also contains an interesting letter dated April 10, 1986, written to the Consumer Complaints division of the Securities Exchange Commission in Chicago by a man who said he had met Denis Gorges, and that Gorges had claimed "he was a doctor of medicine and a doctor of philosophy in psychology... He said that the machine was classified by the Federal Drug Administration as a 'relaxation and learning device.'" The letter describes how Gorges convinced the man to buy a Synchro- Energizer, even though the man said "I did not get any of the results described in the articles or which he said I would get." The man purchased the machine, at Gorges's urging, but after protracted use still did not get the desired or expected effects: "the only results I got were a feeling of depression, restless sleep pattern, and constipation." The man then asked to return the machine and get his money back, citing Gorges's previous promise to him that "if anyone wanted to return the machine he would give back the money." The writer continues, "After much discussion, he finally told me that approximately one-third of the people who use the machine had adverse effects from it and that if I wanted to return it he would give my money back to me. He insisted that I send back the machine by United Parcel Service and insure it for $5,000.00, the amount that I had paid for it." The writer continues, "I shipped the machine back to him on October 29, 1985. He told me he did not get the machine and that I should make a claim to UPS. I made a claim to UPS and after two and a half months they produced a receipt signed by 'Doctor,' a last name with initials that I could not read. At first Gorges told me he did not know anyone by the name of Doctor. I relayed this to UPS: they spent more time investigating and accused me of trying to defraud them of the money in conspiracy with Gorges. "My understanding," he continues, "is that UPS got a handwriting expert; he said that the receipt was signed by Gorges using the name 'Doctor.' They also threatened to prosecute Gorges because they said a similar incident had happened not long ago. After four months, Gorges signed a UPS form saying that he had received the machine."

"I then requested my money from him," says the letter writer, "and he has refused to give it to me because he says that I purchased 'an interest in the organization' and business investments are not refundable under the law." He concludes by writing, "Enclosed is a letter from the FDA which indicates they not only did not classify this machine, they consider it to be dangerous if used by a layman." FALSE ACCUSATIONS During that time and since then, Gorges and his company have continued to send out threatening letters to users and distributors of competing devices. He apparently also began making highly questionable claims about some of his competitors. One of these competitors was David Siever, maker of the DAVID devices. A letter from Siever's attorney to Gorges states that they were advised from various sources that Gorges had stated: "1. that my clients stole their machine and board design from you; 2. that your are suing Comptronic Devices and that the Siever company is consequently tied up in litigation; 3. that a persn or persons have died while on the David I machine; 4. that David Siever is being sued; 5. that David Siever has been convicted of a criminal offence and 'is on his way to jail.' "These are blatant lies and we believe you to have made these statements maliciously, with forethought and with the clear intention of appropriating business to your company at my clients' expense... Furthermore, we know that you have photocopied portions of the Comptronic Promotions brochure and are using it as your own. We demand that you immediately cease this defamatory conduct." According to David Seiver, "Gorges has harassed 40 to 50 of our customers for no good reason. There is no patent infringement. He is defaming the character of people in the industry with the stories that he spreads. Gorges is a very dangerous person." I was soon to learn that Gorges had apparently been spreading defamatory stories about other people, including me. Randall Stephens, owner of a mind-spa in California called the "Universe of You" asserted in a written statement that Gorges had "at one time or another related to me the following information: 1. That everyone using light and sound brain wave entrainment equipment was out to get him, to steal from him, cheat him and that he had proof they had done so. That anyone who designed, sold, manufactured, and used any device using light and sound ... would be prosecuted by him, the FDA, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General, would be fined, put out of business and jailed. That he had already put some people out of business, specifically the makers of a machine called MC Squared [ed. note: MC2 remains in business to this day]. 2. That Michael Hutchison of Megabrain did drugs. That he would put Michael Hutchison in jail and take over Megabrain. That Michael Hutchison had signed a contract with him which Michael Hutchison had broken ... That he was bringing a law suit against Mr. Hutchison and that he would put him out of business. 3. That John David of the John David Institute of California was homosexual, was charged with having sex with minors, that he dealt Cocaine, that there were law suits pending on these charges, that John David was using dangerous and illegal equipment, and that he had broken contracts signed with Mr. Gorges' Synchro Tech Corp. 4. That Mr. W.A. Robinson of Psych Research, Inc. had signed and broken contracts with him. That Mr. Robinson had accepted 10's of thousands of dollars to develop a machine named the Inner Quest and then market that machine as his own, thus cheating Mr. Gorges ... 5. That David Siever, creator of the David 1 machine had stolen his ideas to create the David 1. that his equipment was illegal and was smuggled into the U.S.A ..." "In my opinion these statements represent a general pattern of behavior toward Mr. Gorges' peers... He often put down equipment and devices other than his own as ineffective and fraudulent and derided the people who created them with personal inferences and statements about them, and threatened to take various actions againsts them." I was also informed by a number of people, including Dr. Daniel Kirsch, president of Electromedical Products, Inc., that Gorges had claimed to him that he, Gorges, "owned" Megabrain and had "control" over the Megabrain Workshops. Kirsch, in a July 1990 conversation with MEGABRAIN REPORT said, "Gorges told me that he had bought Megabrain, Inc... He said that he was arranging all the seminars and everything, that it was all new, things would be different - he bought it. That was about two years ago." In response to these and other allegations, my own attorney, Jerry Simon Chasen, and I were forced to send a letter to Gorges (dated November 8, 1988) warning him about "libelous and defamatory statements made by you

about [Michael Hutchison] and Megabrain, Inc..." and threatening legal action if he did not cease and desist in this "offensive and damaging behavior immediately." I was extremely puzzled by the alleged claims by Gorges that he "owned" and "controlled" Megabrain and the Megabrain workshops. How, I wondered, could anyone make such obviously baseless statements? THE FORGED DOCUMENT AND A DAY IN COURT I did not have to wonder for long. A few days later, in a complaint dated November 11, 1988, Gorges along with Christine Zerrer, operator of a NYC Synchro-Energizer center, brought a legal suit against me, Megabrain, Inc. and organizers of a New York City Megabrain workshop, asking the court to issue an Order "permanently enjoining" us from "conducting, arranging, producing or hosting... any seminar, workshop lecture, or other demonstration which in any way displays or promotes the device known as the D.A.V.I.D..." and awarding Gorges and Zerrer damages of over $50,000. When I received the papers I was astonished to find that the suit was based on a "Professional Agreement" I had supposedly signed, a document that stated: "Megabrain and or Michael Hutchinson [sic] and all associated parties agree not to promote or display any technology that is in violation of U.S. Patent #4315502 ... i.e., David I, MC2, Alpha Pacer or any other technology proved illigal [sic] or potentially harmful to the public." I was even more astonished to see a signature that was supposed to be mine at the bottom of this document. The contract was a forgery. I had not signed it. In fact, the signature not only did not even look like my signature, it even seemed to misspell my last name - just as it was misspelled in the document itself as "Hutchinson" rather than "Hutchison." Gorges had in fact sent such an agreement to me months before. But my attorney, Jerry Chasen, and I had discussed it and found its terms absurd, and decided against becoming involved with Groges. Attorney Chasen had sent a letter to Gorges stating that its terms were "unacceptable" and "overreaching." Significantly, the letter from Chasen to Gorges is dated April 20, 1988. The document with my clumsily forged signature was dated Jan. 15, 1988 - before either Chasen or I had even received a copy of the document! The line for the signature of a witness was left blank. At the hearing, I testified that I had not signed the document, and pointed out its dissimilarity to several of my authentic signatures on sample documents. Zerrer, however, initially testified that she had actually seen me sign the contract! However, the court transcripts show then that as questioning progressed Zerrer seemed to grow less certain: "Q. Did you see the people fully signing that document? A. [Zerrer]. I believe so... Q. Did you see Michael Hutchison affix his signature? A. [Zerrer] I believe so." It was pointed out to Zerrer that the bottom line of the document, the line that said "Witness," was blank, and under questioning she admitted she had not been asked to witness the agreement, and that in fact she had been "in and out of the room answering phone calls" during the time. Zerrer admitted that several months before, while in Ohio, she had seen Gorges pull out "a folder with a number of agreements" that I had supposedly signed and brandish these "agreements" to a number of people. "He [Gorges] read through them," Zerrer testified, "and said these are all agreements that I have, that Michael had signed." Soon the judge stepped in with serious questions of his own, telling Zerrer that "what we have here is a very serious problem ... and what I am disposed to do is to have copies of this testimony sent to the District Attorney of this County for further investigation to determine whether or not perjurious testimony has been given." As the judge's questions continued, Zerrer became emotionally agitated, and, breaking into tears, asked the judge a question that is recorded in the transcript as: "Looks so serious?" "This is very serious," the judge replied. "Perjury is very serious and somebody is going to go to jail." After Zerrer was dismissed as a witness a discussion among the lawyers and the judge took place, and the judge examined a number of documents - two of which, as examples, bore my actual signature, and two of which, the ones being contested, were forged. The judge concluded: "Based on the extensive hearing we had today in which the two witnesses were examined, I have observed the witnesses and the testimony and their demeanor and observed what would be characterized as credibility, and based also upon examining the various documents and information, and two which were admittedly signed by Mr. Hutchison and on the other two he disclaims he signed ... it is the decision of the Court that the testimony of Mr. Hutchison is credible and believable and, therefore, I find that he did not, is not bound by this agreement because he did not execute the document." The judge concluded by saying "I'm also going to request a transcript of this record to be sent to the District Attorney's office for information to determine whether or not perjury has been committed in this case and recommend further prosecution to find out same." Upon leaving the court our attorney stated that not only had the judge decisively thrown Gorges and Zerrer's case out of court, but that it

amounted to an enormous repudiation of their charges. In fact, said our attorney, it was only the second time in his 15 years as a litigator that he had seen a plaintiff come into court as accuser seeking damages and go out under the threat of being investigated for perjury. Another attorney, after reading the transcript at the request of MEGABRAIN REPORT, raised his eyebrows and said, "Wow, that judge really got mad at her! Obviously he saw what was going on." PATENT, PATENT, WHO'S GOT THE PATENT? Oddly, Gorges's threats and bluster are all based on his contention that he holds a patent on a sound and light device and that all other sound and light devices are "infringing" on his patent. In fact there are questions about the validity and the extent of his patent - it's well-known that similar sound and light devices had been in use and even being sold commercially long before Gorges' patent, and that such devices may invalidate Gorges's patent. Jack Schwarz, widely known among New Agers for his feats at self-healing and self-regulation, for his books about techniques for altering consciousness, and as the leader of a spiritual community called the Aletheia Foundation, had created, used and sold a sound and light device in which lights were placed in goggles and flickered at varying frequencies in the beta, alpha, theta and delta ranges and used in conjunction with sounds delivered over headphones, as early as 1972 or 1973 (or nearly 10 years before Gorges's purported patent was granted). This device was called an "Integral Stimulating Intensity Stroboscope" or ISIS, and was "designed for the purpose of aiding one in relaxation and meditation - a learning tool." Other evidence of preceding devices includes a sound and light device patented in 1974 by New York City scientist Seymour Charas (U.S. Patent #3,838,417, "Visual Color Response Apparatus"), which combines a flashing visual light stimulus of variable frequency between 1 and 16 cycles per second (from delta frequencies up to beta) combined with an audio headset "for substantially simultaneously producing an audio response in the observer correlated with the visual response." This patent was not cited as a preceding U.S. Patent Document in the "References Cited" section, or even cited as "Prior Art," in Gorges' own patent, which is dated Feb. 16, 1982. What's more, even earlier, in 1973, a scientist named Richard E. Townsend had published an article in the journal Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology (1973: 34: 97- 99) titled "A device for generation and presentation of modulated light stimuli." His device utilized LEDs, three per eye, held "1 cm from each closed eye by use of goggles with each eye cup to the center of which the 3 diodes were attached." These kinds of claims may call into question the validity of Gorges' patent. According to Robert Austin, manufacturer of the MindsEye sound and light machines, the report by Townsend is "of interest as the first published description I have found describing goggle mounted incandescent bulbs or LEDs for photic driving. A similar though more cumbersome device was described in the same journal later in 1973 by a research group at UCSD School of Medicine." The importance of the Townsend article, Austin contends, "is that someone was using (and had publiished a description of) a device similar to that for which Gorges received a patent. This single reference may invalidate such a patent, certainly the most important part of it." Kim Graf, barrister and solicitor representing David Siever's Comptronic Devices stated in a letter to me that they considered "his [Gorges'] so-called patent infringement claim to be unfounded and frivolous." Another attorney consulted by MEGABRAIN REPORT pointed out that even though he has threatened lawsuits against numerous people for patent infringement, the fact is that he has not in actual fact sued anyone for patent infringement. This fact is important, according to the attorney, because of the legal doctrine of laches, which has to do with the failure to take action, or failure to protect. The fact that even though he has been aware of so-called patent infringements for years Gorges has not yet taken any legal action to protect that patent, could work against his patent: "Failure to take action," the attorney told us, "constitutes a defense to a suit for patent infringement under the legal doctrine of laches." If the other sound and light machines are in fact infringing on his patent, why hasn't Mr. Gorges sued the manufacturers rather than threatened them for year after year? Because, some of the manufacturers have told MEGABRAIN REPORT, his patent is very limited and does not apply to their devices at all. NOW I SEE THE LIGHT - BUT IS IT FULL SPECTRUM? Gorges' apparent tendency to make questionable claims extends to his claims about his own devices, such as the Synchro-Energizer and the "Relaxman." One of those claims, which Gorges and his distributors make repeatedly, is that his devices use "full spectrum" lights, compared to most of the other sound and light machines, which use red LEDs. There is abundant evidence of the benefits of true full spectrum light, much of it deriving from the work of pioneering light researcher John Ott. Full spectrum light has been found effective in treating jet lag, psoriasis, jaundice, SAD (seasonal affective depression disorder), reducing fatigue, improving visual acuity, improving calcium absorption, enhancing concentration and much more. I

suspect this is one explanation behind Gorges' aggressive propaganda campaigns against "the dangers' [however fanciful] "of red LEDs." In essence it seems to be a marketing ploy: full spectrum light is good; his device (he claims) has "full spectrum light," and the others don't. Full spectrum light may indeed be a better light source for brainwave entrainment devices, but at this point we cannot know, for despite Gorges' claims, MEGABRAIN REPORT has been told by experts that the Relaxman does not have full- spectrum lights. "Full spectrum light" means light that is similar in composition to sunlight or natural outdoor light. All life on our planet has evolved in and is dependent on light from the sun and sky, i.e. full spectrum light, which is a specific balance of visible color and invisible ultraviolet wavelengths. The sunlight spectrum can be charted as a curve (or spectral distribution curve) that moves from extremely low levels of irradiance in the invisible ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths (from about 290 to 380 nanometers) and rises sharply through violet, reaches a peak level of irradiance in the blue and green wavelengths (440 to 570 nanometers) and then begins to drop off again through yellow, orange and red (570 to 700 nanometers) and finally drops sharply off toward nothing through the invisible infrared range (800-1500 nanometers). There are a number of light bulbs, such as the Vita-lite flourescent light and others, that approximate the spectral distribution curve of natural outdoor light. These lights are known as "full spectrum" lights. However, the lights used in the Synchro Energizer and Relaxman devices are, according to a number of experts, not full spectrum lights at all. They are small incandescent bulbs, very much like the standard light bulbs you screw into your lamp fixtures. The light comes from a filament that gets so hot it glows. The spectral distribution curve of these incandescent bulbs is dramatically different from natural or true fullspectrum light - it moves from extremely low levels of irradiance in the violet and blue ranges and curves slowly upward through yellow and orange and peaks in the red and invisible infrared frequencies. According to the experts, approximately 80 percent or more of the light emitted by such incandescent bulbs is in the invisible infrared part of the spectrum. That is, they're a relatively inefficient light source, with a slow rise time, and the visible light they give off tends to be concentrated on the red side of the spectrum. And most of their output is in the form of infrared wavelengths, which means (among other things) heat. The bulbs used by Gorges' devices are simple incandescent bulbs, say experts who have examined them - "very red," according to three separate sources. And yet he and his company continue to claim otherwise. For example, in a recently published magazine there is a two-page advertising spread for his devices that claims "The Ultimate in Coherent-Full Spectrum Light." The copy of the ad boasts that "The SynchroEnergizertm uses only full spectrum frequency white light..." In an interview in the same magazine, Gorges cites some of the health benefits of full spectrum light discovered by John Ott and others, and then states, "I believe that stimulation with pulsed full-spectrum light in the Synchro Energizer configuration has many of the benefits that have been demonstrated with these large-scale, high-intensity full- spectrum lighting systems, and even some benefits they don't." Unfortunately, among the light experts consulted by MEGABRAIN REPORTS, we could find no one who even knew of any company anywhere in the world that actually manufacturered true full-spectrum light bulbs in the miniature size of the incandescent bulbs used in the Relaxman and SynchroEnergizer. We have also been told by several sources that representatives of Synchro Tech have been claiming that the Synchro Energizer equipment is endorsed by John Ott. "That was their major claim, that their lights were endorsed by John Ott," said one former Synchro Tech associate (who has since begun selling other devices), who heard the Synchro Tech representatives making this claim at a recent trade fair in Cleveland, Ohio, the home town of Gorges. But when MEGABRAIN REPORT spoke with John Ott we found he was quite upset by such statements. "I've never even seen any of Gorges' products," he told us. "Gorges called me about a year or so ago and said he had a large number of medical clinics all over the world. He asked me for information on full spectrum lighting. I sent him some material and later began hearing from different sources that Gorges was stating that I endorsed his product. It's just not true." Ott also told us that he was not aware of the existence of any small full spectrum lights of the size used in Synchro Tech equipment. RESEARCH, RESEARCH, WHO'S DOING THE RESEARCH? Another of Gorges' contentions is that his device has been the subject of numerous serious scientific studies, while other devices have not. Caroline Walter of Syncro Tech, in one of her letters to Maryellen KrygowskiVisconti, claims "The FDA has on record 14 university based institutional review board reports which have agreed on the safety and effectiveness of research on Synchro- Energizer technology..." However, Walter Schmidt, as noted earlier, was not able to find any reference to these studies in the FDA files. As he told me, "There are no FDA files, that's the point! ... I even had a letter that went out to that effect, that essentially there were no files on the subject."

As an example of the type of "scientific research" that has been done of the Synchro Energizer equipment, Gorges has cited to me, and to others, work by researchers Tom Fine and John Turner at the Medical College of Ohio. However, when I recently spoke with Dr. Turner, of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Medical College of Ohio, he told me, "We have never done any research with the Synchro Energizer." He explained that, "In 1986, in response to a request from Gorges offering funding, we proposed physiological testing of their machine called a 'synchroenergizer'. This never materialized. Nothing was done. Several months later, we were informed by another party that Gorges was publicly claiming that the synchroenergizer was being researched at the Medical College of Ohio. I quickly informed Gorges personally and by mail to desist from any further such statements." Another "scientific study" Gorges and his representatives have used to promote the Synchro Energizer is one done at the University of California at San Francisco by Dr. Cary Howard and associates. The study ("A Comparison of Methods for Reducing Stress Among Dental Students," Journal of Dental Education, Vol. 50, No. 9, 1986) compared the Synchro Energizer with a popular relaxation method called "Progressive Relaxation Training" (PRT) or the "Jacobson technique." Both groups were tested for a variety of personality and stress factors; then both groups relaxed using ither the SE or PRT, both groups received positive suggestions. The study showed that both groups showed reduced stress, and thus is cited by Synchro Tech representatives as evidence of the benefits of the SE. However, what is not mentioned by Synchro Tech are the key findings of the study: first, the PRT group, "showed a significant increase in life satisfaction, while SE subjects indicated a decrease in satisfaction." The study concluded that "in this study [the SE] did not appear any more effective than a technique requiring no special apparatus or financial investment." And as Dr. Howard pointed out recently to MEGABRAIN REPORT, "We have never tested the effectiveness of the SE by itself, i.e. without accompanying positive suggestions." Later Dr. Howard undertook another study of the SE at Leeward Community College in Hawaii. An article about Dr. Howard's work appeared in a local newspaper. This article, according to Dr. Howard, "is being used to promote the SE." The article states (without any supporting evidence) that the SE "has been shown to be an effective relaxation tool." The writer also cites "preliminary evidence" that the SE "enhances learning by promoting brain synchrony, or 'hemispheric integration,' and can improve both long- and short-term memory, creative ability and mental efficiency." This article, distributed at seminars and other places by Syncrho Tech representatives is, as Dr. Howard points out, is "misleading," since it never actually reports the findings of her research. She did report these findings in a "Preliminary Report on Relaxation": "Students using the Synchro-Energizer did not show significantly greater stress and anxiety reduction than students practicing progressive relaxation training (This confirms earlier findings in a similar study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco." And: "There was no significant memory improvement in any group... Among other things this may suggest that the Synchro-Energizer does not produced enhanced memory through promoting brain synchchrony." Looking back on these studies that are being used to promote the SE, Dr. Howard told MEGABRAIN REPORT, "I have discovered that many of the initial claims made for the machine were never tested as reported by Syncho Tech. I personally worked with the Synchro Energizer over a two year period and introduced it to colleaques and students. There were no conclusive results proving its benefit from the two preliminary research studies I helped conduct, because it was used in conjunction with positive suggestions and deep breathing techniques. There was no evidence of memory improvement or accelerated learning ability. I have come to the conclusion that there is no inherent merit in using the machine. In fact, in some people it produces headaches and irritability. I cannot recommend it, and I regret that some of my exploratory research studies are being used to promote sales of the Synchro-Energizer." Reporter Timothy Maier is another of a number of individuals who have found some of Gorges's claims about research questionable. "For example," he wrote in the Baltimore Business Journal, "Don Schuster, psychology professor at Iowa State University, said the results of his research, which Gorges used to promote the device, are not complimentary. "Schuster said the Synchro Energizer did not help the average individual to relax, nor did it produce an atmosphere conducive for learning. Instead, he said 'it has a learning disadvantage.'" "Other scientists and doctors Gorges listed," Maier continued, "could not be located..." CHEAP KNOCK OFFS One of Gorges' continuing complaints against competing devices is that many of them are what he calls "cheap knock offs," while his Relaxman is of far higher quality. According to electrical engineers and other

investigators this is not the case. Several of these individuals, independently of each other, have approached me or MEGABRAIN REPORT in recent months to report that, in the words of one engineer, "The circuitry of the Relaxman and the MC2 are virtually identical." The similarities are so close, in the opinion of these experts, that it could not be a coincidence - both of the devices, for example, incorporate certain unusual elements in the circuitry that are not necessary, and in both devices these unnecessary elements are the same. One MIT-trained electrical engineer sent me a diagram of circuitry in both the MC2 and the Relaxman, and pointed out that: "Both implementations of the audio circuits have identical overall designs. It seems too much of a coincidence that not only do both circuits have the same unique errors, but that both circuits also share what appears to be idiosyncratic component value selection."* If it wasn't such an impossibile thing, one might even be excused for wondering if the same person didn't design both circuits. This engineer included with the circuit diagrams a lengthy note that pointed out that in both designs "the use of a 10 micro-farad capacitor in two places tends to accentuate the higher harmonic frequencies, while the intent of the filtering is to attenuate it! The output capacitors should have a higher value." In another place, he wrote, "both machines use resistors of similar values, when the SAA 1099 data sheet recommends something else entirely there." He also pointed our that in both machines a certain resistor, at the same point in the circuitry of both machines, and the 0.01 micro-farad capacitor near it are supposed to be a RC [resistor-capacitor] filter, but, he says, "this design is faulty since the negative input of the op amp is a virtual ground, therefore the 10 micro-farad capacitor shunts the RC filter to ground. This has the effect of making the 0.01 micro-farad capacitor next to useless." Finally, he wonders, "Why are both manufacturers using RC filters when an op-amp is right there? Why not use an active filter!" This engineer concluded, "I could go on, but you should get the point by now!" This is interesting, in light of an interview with Gorges published in the Summer, 1988 issue of Reality Hackers. At that point, Gorges' initial Synchro Energizer, which then cost over $8,000, had been left in the dust by far more sophisticated devices that were much smaller, and cost only a few hundred dollars. Among the devices that were then competing with Gorges was the small pre- programmed MC2. Gorges, perhaps eager to find a smaller device, was selling devices that had been manufactured by another competitor, Rob Robinson, of Psych Research. According to Randall Stephens, owner of the Universe of You, who was then using the Synchro Energizer, "Gorges was selling the InnerQuest unit at that time, with red lights and the whole bit, despite his propoganda. That's one of the things that really pissed me - he sends me a machine to sell that had red lights in it and all this time he's been going around with this light propoganda ... They did not have the InnerQuest logo on them, they had Synchro Energizer stamped on them... And we were supposed to get them from Gorges at $1200 wholesale and sell them for $1600 retail... And then after I found out they were made by Psych Research, I found out that Rob Robinson was producing them for him for $250! And he was charging me $1200, I couldn't believe that!" One reliable source, who used to work for Gorges and does not wish to be identified because he fears reprisals, told MEGABRAIN REPORT: "You're aware he used to sell the InnerQuest I for $1800? It was not just identical to the InnerQuest I, it was the InnerQuest I, he just stenciled his logo on it. Absolutely. It was the InnerQuest I, all he did was restencil it." But apparently Gorges was looking for a new, smaller, less expensive device. According to the Reality Hackers article, "Denis Gorges' strongest ally and future hope lies in Ron Lodsdon, a brilliant young (32 year old) electrical engineer..." Logsdon, the article continued, had played a key role in designing the MC2, but then had parted from the manufacturers of the MC2 amidst what the magazine called "a good deal of acrimony," and was then (summer of 1988) beginning work with Gorges. The makers of the MC2, said the article, "were left with the rudimentary MC2 while he [Logsdon] kept all the software which was still at the drafting board stage. In joining up with Gorges, he plans to extend the dynamics of the basic MC2 and open up its software capabilities." Soon thereafter, Gorges began selling his "new" device, The Relaxman. I had several conversations with Logsdon during that period and the fall of 1988. He contended to me at that time that he was the designer of the Relaxman. (He soon left Gorges, as have so many of Gorges' former associates and distributors, amidst "a good deal of acrimony.") According to Rob Robinson, who was then selling Gorges the Innerquest, which Gorges then resold under the Synchro Tech imprint, "In touring through what he said was his manufacturing plant - I also found out that is was nothing but a subcontractor - I passed the little room where they did their so-called R&D work, and there laid out on the bench was an MC2, gutted, and the circuit board all laid out and a large drafting paper there where they were drawing the circuitry. I took a couple of minutes to really look and see what they were doing, they weren't trying to repair it or modify it or anything, they were drawing the circuitry. The only thing they did then was change the power supply component to make it put out enough volts to power the incandescent bulbs. In about six weeks, two months later, comes the Relaxman... The only difference is they have a different power supply that takes a couple volts higher to power the incandescent bulbs, and they built in a battery source that the MC2 doesn't have. But ten programs, same lengths, same purposes, same

functions, the keypad ... he didn't do an original thing at all, he didn't innovate a thing, he simply copied the MC2 and put the other glasses with it." When MEGABRAIN REPORT asked Larry Gillen, whose company, Light & Sound Research, Inc., manufactures the MC2, about the alleged similarities between his device and the Relaxman, he pointed out that "the MC2 was introduced in August 1987. The Relaxman came out eight or nine months later." And what about electrical engineer Ron Logsdon? According to Gillen, Logsdon did indeed work with Light & Sound Research, and then left and did work with Gorges "in the spring of 1988." Also, stated Gillen, during the period the MC2 was being designed, in 1987, the name they considered using for the device was, oddly enough, the Relaxman. This information may cast some light on why the circuitry of the Relaxman (which Gorges sells for about $650) is "virtually identical" to that of the older MC2 (which sells for about $250). Gorges accuses devices like the MC2 of being "cheap knock offs" of his Synchro Energizer. If that is so, then, one must wonder, what is the Relaxman? SECRET MIND MACHINES FOR THE SAUDIS? Another continuing pattern of behavior of Gorges is making extraordinary and grandiose claims about the sales of his apparatus. One recent British magazine article says that Gorges "claims, discreetly, that the Saudi Arabian royal family are clients. 'They're ordering substantial quantities of machines. I can only infer they are for the military," said Gorges. We have also heard through several other sources that Gorges has made such claims to potential distributors and investors. Upon investigation, MEGABRAIN REPORT was told by a reliable source that Gorges had indeed had contact with a member of the Saudi royal family, but that it had been several years ago. At that time, Gorges sold this member of the Saudi royal family a single Synchro Energizer. Our source stated that since then, that member of the Saudi royal family had had no further contact with - and bought no Synchro-Energizers from - Gorges. When we read him the Gorges statement about "substantial quantities of the machines" being sold to the Saudi royal family, our source laughed, and said, "We don't have any knowledge of such sales... I couldn't tell you 100 percent he's not, but I know he's not doing it to our knowledge... We bought just one, and that was it... Several years ago." The story of the Saudi military use of Gorges's device comes hard on the heels of statements by Gorges in a 1988 interview in Reality Hackers. According to that magazine, "There are 150 Synchro- Energizer centers going up in the Middle East, mostly on military bases. The Kuwaiti government is buying them up..." However, at this date, two years later, I have been unable to find any evidence of even one, let alone 150 Synchro-Energizer centers in the Middle East. HOW BIG ARE YOUR SALES ? SOOOOOOOOOOOO BIG. In some ways the principle seems to be similar to the idea that if you put your letter on some impressive and imposing letterhead, it will be more convincing: if you describe your sales as exceedingly vast, people will be more impressed, more likely to buy your machine, and your story. Too often, this technique works. A recent example of a highly questionable and grandiose claim made by Gorges, gullibly accepted by a reporter and printed in a recent article about sound and light devices in Longevity magazine, is the claim that Gorges has sold 150,000 of the Relaxman since it appeared in 1988 (accompanied by an equally extraordinary claim about the multi-station Synchro- Energizer 4A unit: "the company says about 26,000 are already being used in 'mind spas,' research clinics and universities around the world"). Former associates of Gorges interviewed by MEGABRAIN REPORT have scoffed at those figures as grossly exaggerated. One of our sources, a former leading distributor for Synchro Tech, who has since severed his relationship with Gorges, recently told MEGABRAIN REPORT that during a gathering of Gorges distributors last fall, he was taken on a guided tour through the factory where the Relaxman was then being made. "I began to look carefully at the serial numbers being stamped on the machines," he told us. "At that time they were approaching 2000." Larry Hughes, co-owner of Altered States center, who once distributed Synchro Tech equipment but has since ceased to do so, laughed in disbelief when he heard the 150,000 figure. "The last Relaxman we had here, in our last shipment," he told us, "which was in the first quarter, about March, 1990, was just over 3000." Another former associate of Gorges who has since broken with him says the 3000 figure "sounds about right." TEN MILLION CENTERS ON THE MOON BY 2000 !

Another way Gorges attempts to inflate the size and influence of Synchro Tech and the Synchro Energizer is to claim that there are numerous SynchroEnergizertm "centers" all over the world. For example, in an interview in the Summer 1990 edition of Mondo 2000 (the magazine says he "comes across as the archetypal New Age huckster"), Gorges, speaking about himself and Synchro Tech, says "We have broad worldwide group of 58 centers in this country and abroad." A two-page Synchro-Energizer advertisement in the same issue claims "There are over 50 SynchroENERGIZERtm centers worldwide," and lists among them "Altered States in Los Angeles." MEGABRAIN REPORT spoke with Jeff Labno and Larry Hughes, owners of Altered States. Labno told us that Altered States had formerly distributed Synchro Tech devices, but had ended their relationship with that company and Gorges. "We did a lot of research," said Labno, "and discovered many details, which you're aware of. So then we started ordering machines from the other companies. Like the MindsEye, the Courier, the DAVID Jr. IQ Jr, MC2, Innervision, etc.... Now we can say we carry a large selection of quality machines here." We read him the advertisement claiming that Altered States was a "SynchroENERGIZERtm center," and asked if Gorges or Synchro Tech had any ownership or any other sort of control over Altered States. "No he does not," said Labno. Did he ever? "Never," said Labno. Larry Hughes expanded on this by pointing out that Altered States began operation as a flotation center nearly a decade ago, and that even when they were distributing Synchro Tech products "they constituted only a small part of our business. I would say 80 to 90 percent of our business comes from income from flotation." In addition to flotation and a variety of sound and light machines, Altered States sells and rents sessions on a wide variety of mind machines, none of them in any way associated with Gorges or Synchro Tech. What about all the other centers that Gorges grandly claims as Synchro Energizer Centers? Said Labno, "He's treating his dealers as if they were franchises of Synchro Tech. Of course, they're not. In his mind he's thinking of them as if they are. He's trying to form some corporation, legal corporation, to have everyone absorbed into his scheme. And that hasn't occurred, so he's just talking as if it is in reality." Something of the sort seems to be the case with Gorges' talk about his "worldwide" organization of SynchroENERGIZER centers ("By 1995 we plan to have 2,500," he told one magazine). For example, he has bragged widely about the supposed success of his products in Japan. The same British journal in which Gorges described his "substantial sales" to the Saudi Arabian royal family states, "Gorges claims that Synchro Tech have just done a $16 million deal with the Japanese for Energizer centres and that $200 million of capital is already in the bank to fund further expansions." In an "interview" distributed as part of an advertisement for Gorges's Relaxman, Gorges says "Our current centers in Japan (5), with 15 in 1990 are 2-5 million dollar investments each, fully computerized, ultra high tech meta brain/mind gyms." In fact, Gorges has even obtained videotape footage of two of the "ultra high tech brain/mind gyms" in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, and sources claim he proudly shows it as footage of "SynchroEnergizer centers" to potential distributors or investors. MEGABRAIN REPORT sat down recently for a meeting with Mr. Yosuke Morimoto, the president of MM International Co. Ltd., the company that owns and operates an expanding chain of brain fitness centers in Japan under the trade name "Brain Mind Gyms." These include the very same "ultra high tech" brain mind gyms in Tokyo and Osaka that Gorges, and advertisements for Synchro Tech, have been claiming are "SynchroENERGIZERtm centers," and which are exhibited in the videotape footage Gorges has been showing to potential investors and distributors as "SynchroENERGIZERtm centers." We asked Mr. Morimoto if his company's Brain Mind Gyms are in some way a part of what Gorges claims is "a broad worldwide group" of "SynchroENERGIZERtm centers." Said Mr Morimoto, "Our centers in Tokyo and Osaka are not Synchro Energizer Centers, they are Brain Mind Gyms. They are owned by MM International Co. Denis Gorges and Synchro Tech have no financial interest whatsoever in our Brain Mind Gyms in Japan. He is not an owner. He is not a partner." The only association Gorges has had with these Brain Mind Gyms, according to Mr. Morimoto, is that some of the equipment for the centers was, in the past, purchased from Synchro Tech. However, said Mr. Morimoto, his company had decided to sever even those tenuous links to Gorges. At the same meeting we spoke with Mr. Morimoto's associate Mr. Mitsuhiro Takemura, owner of a company that at one time imported Synchro Tech products, such as the Relaxman, into Japan. Mr. Takemura told us that he had completely ceased importing Synchro Tech products, and in fact had not imported any since last year. Both Mr. Takemura and Mr. Morimoto were aware of much of the information about Denis Gorges contained in this article, and were at pains to emphasize to us that Gorges owned no part of their businesses in Japan, and, to their knowledge, did not have any "SynchroENERGIZERTM centers" in Japan at all. In essence, it seems that Gorges claims that any center that has purchased or distributes or uses one of his products is a "SynchroENERGIZERtm center." This is an effective method of self- aggrandizement, but it bears little relationship to reality - a parallel situation might be if a company like Tunturi, which makes exercise bicycles and sells them to thousands of gyms, Nautilus centers, fitness centers and health spas, were to publish advertisements boasting "We now operate an organization of 10,000 TUNTURItm centers worldwide!"

ANOTHER MISSPELLED SIGNATURE As this article was being prepared, I learned that the forgery of my misspelled signature on a paper distributed by Gorges is just one example of what may represent more. Randall Stephens, owner of a mind center in Corte Madera, CA, that once used the SE but has long since switched to other devices, told MEGABRAIN REPORT that when he was attempting to sever his relationship with Gorges, and to begin working instead with the InnerQuest machines, Gorges came to his office and began threatening to put him out of business. Later Stephens noticed that the file containing copies of his contracts with Synchro Tech were missing from his office. Among the documents removed from his office, according to Stephens, were several letters between him and Rob Robinson of Psych Research, maker of the InnerQuest. According to Stephens, his lawyer wrote numerous letters to Gorges asking for copies of the contracts between Stephens and Synchro Tech, and finally, under threat of a court order, obtained copies of the documents from Gorges. "But when they came," says Stephens, "they weren't the ones I'd signed. They'd been altered, and material added. And when my files had been stolen, I couldn't find those letters from Rob; so when Gorges sent these copies of my contracts back to my lawyer, he also, apparently by mistake, sent back copies of the letters from Rob Robinson. There was one letter from Rob to me I'd even doodled on, and when we got those letters back from Gorges, there was my dooodle! And I said, 'My God, there's only one way anybody could ever get those letters, there's only one copy, and I had them and they were stolen from my office!'" Not only had the contracts been altered, according to Stephens, but, "In addition, one of the contracts did not have my signature on it... It was my name, but not my signature - it's even misspelled, Randell, with an e, instead of my actual name, Randall, with an a." "See how he traps himself all the time?" Stephens told MEGABRAIN REPORT. "He keeps doing that - he keeps commiting self- sabotage and trapping himself ... See, everything he projects about everyone else in this field - that they're cheating, and stealing his patents, and all that kind of stuff - is exactly what he does... He's got a lot of paranoia in him - its the world against him. That's the way he looks at it. So for him, that's the world he creates." THE COMMON THREAD In the aftermath of our discovery of Walter Schmidt, Deep Brain remarked to MEGABRAIN REPORT, "You know what strikes me as a common thread through everything with Denis Gorges? It's the difference between Denis and a legitimate company. In a legitimate company, if they tell you they've done something they're proud of, they invite you to call up their references: 'Call up Chevron, call up Pacific Bell, they'll tell you how delighted they are.' And so you call them, they tell you 'Yeah, we purchased these machines, they're working real great!' Or Walter Schmidt. 'What's his number?' 'Here's his number, call him up and he'll verify everything.' That's what a legitimate company does. Denis is exactly the opposite - there's no way you can ever verify anything that he says, because everything always leads to dead ends. The only reason he really gets away with what he gets away with is because people don't bother to push and try to verify it in the first place, or if they run into a dead end they don't try to get past it. "I think this article in MEGABRAIN REPORT will make a lot of people stop and think, 'Well, gee, maybe I should have checked some of this stuff that Denis was telling me.' And maybe they will do some thinking for themselves." Discussing the various revelations of the Walter Schmidt affair, Deep Brain told us he felt "elated and excited. What I'm excited about in all this is that everyone was scared of Denis and what he potentially could do... in the media and so on. With this new information," Deep Brain said with some satisfaction, "the fear that people have of him will change to joy that finally the facts are known, the truth is revealed, and finally we can move on in our industry." EDITOR'S NOTE: After this article first appeared, Denis Gorges threatened me with a multi-million dollar law suit, though he never made clear what the grounds of the suit might be. He appeared to be furious. On the other hand, I heard from several people he spoke with that Gorges was stating that "The Megabrain Report article is the best thing that's happened to me - I've earned millions as a result of it!" Some time after that, Denis Gorges disappeared from sight. He was reported to have died. However, by some reports, he is now in hiding.

AT THE CROSSOVER POINT - or New Breakthroughs In the Twilight Zone

by Michael Hutchison

Interesting how things fall together. The book Megabrain included discussions of some of the intriguing effects of theta brainwave activi ty (i.e. brainwaves in the range of 4 to 8 Hz). Much research had established that the theta state (characterized by dominant or high amplitude theta brainwaves) was associated with vivid hypnogogic imagery, sudden bursts of insight, and intense memories of childhood. Most of us experience it briefly as we drift off to sleep. Unfortunately, as scientists and meditators have found, it is not easy to enter or remain in the theta state at will: the natural tendency is to slip fleetingly through theta and down into sleep. In the 1970s researchers Elmer and Alyce Green at the Menninger Foundation began experimenting with biofeedback to train subjects to enter and remain in the theta state. The results were surprising and extraordinary: subjects who learned to enter theta showed enhanced immune functioning, heightened creativity, and experienced profound "integrative experiences" in which the subjects felt that their lives were transformed. During that time biofeedback researcher and clinician Dr. Thomas Budzynski also began to explore theta, which he dubbed the "twilight state," and found that the theta state was characterized by hypersuggestibility and hyperreceptivity. It was, he discovered, an ideal state for accelerated or superlearning, and a state in which suggestions for behavioral change had dramatic and longlasting effects. He created a biofeedback device - the Twilight Learning System - that helped users get into theta and then automatically activated a tape player that fed them information or suggestions as long as they remained in theta. Megabrain also cited research by Dr. Gary Lynch, Dr. James McGaugh and others suggesting that theta was a key to memory and learning, that it was the natural rhythm of the hippocampus - the brain's gateway to memory and learning. I speculated that one of the reasons the theta state produced such vivid memories of childhood was that the natural dominant brainwave activity of children is in the theta range. As adults, however, our dominant waking brainwave activity is in the beta range, and we rarely experience more than fleeting moments in the theta range. Memories laid down in childhood, it seemed, were state-dependent or state-bound: to gain access to them, you had to be in the state in which they were created, i.e. theta. So it made sense that as biofeedback techniques helped subjects enter the theta state they would suddenly gain access to those state-bound memories. This would explain Budzynski's findings that theta was the ideal state for "rescripting" or "reimprinting" the brain, eliminating destructive behaviors or attitudes that were a result of "scripts" laid down in childhood (during times when the child is in a theta state). I also speculated that somehow by entering the slower, more coherent brainwave range of theta, the brain was enabled or stimulated to go through a sudden, dramatic and profound reordering process much like that described by Ilya Prigogine as "escape to a higher order." The evidence was compelling that if people could enter this beneficial brain state using biofeedback training, then the new brain machines could speed up this process enormously. Recently a wealth of new information about the benefits and characteristics of the theta state has emerged. In MBR #1 we described the exciting findings of Dr. Eugene Peniston and Dr. Paul J. Kulkosky, who discovered that alpha-theta biofeedback training had unprecedented effects in the treatment of alcoholism: subjects not only had unprecedented success in overcoming their alcoholism (a success rate approximately 400 percent higher than those subjects going through standard medical treatment for alcoholism), but also underwent dramatic personality transformations. Among the extraordinary changes noted in their subjects, Peniston and Kulkosky found that those who had the alpha-theta training showed significant increases in warmth, abstract-thinking, stability, conscientiousness, boldness, imaginativeness and self-control, and significant decreases in behaviors labelled schizoid, avoidant, passive-aggressive, borderline, paranoid, anxiety, somatoform, dysthymia, psychotic thinking, psychotic depression and psychotic delusion, among others. Control groups using standard medical treatment did not show these changes. In MBR #1 we suggested that mind machines could represent an important shortcut, providing a much more rapid way of producing the beneficial slow brainwave states: "if some of the mind machines are in fact effective in quickly putting users into slow brainwave states, and, in the 'bicycle training weheels effect,' can teach users how to

enter those states themselves, then they can be invaluable in speeding up the healing and personal transformation process not only for alcoholics and drug addicts but for all of us who seek integrative experiences and increased creativity, health and well-being." We have recently learned that Dr. Peniston has had similar remarkable success in using theta to treat PostTraumatic Stress Syndrome among Vietnam War vets: while in theta much of the painful material is able to emerge, be fully experienced and dealt with, yet without the horror and agony and pain usually associated with the emergence of such material. In another important study linking theta with beneficial life changes, this one at the Center for Alcohol Rehabilitation and Educational Services in Medford, Oregon, researcher Rita Sullivan used a Twilight Learning System to give alcoholic subjects EEG theta brainwave biofeedback training coupled with suggestions delivered while in the theta state. She found the subjects not only were far more successful in reducing alcohol consumption, but also showed a marked improvement in quality-of-life, as measured by the Oregon Quality of Life Questionnaire. MAPPING THE CROSSOVER POINT Recently, a number of researchers have begun using multi-channel EEGs, such as the CAP Scan and the Neurosearch 24, to explore in more detail what happens in the brain when it goes through these apparently transformational moments. What they have found is that when a subject becomes deeply relaxed, alpha brainwave activity increases through the whole brain. As relaxation increases, the subject begins to produce more and more theta activity. As theta amplitude increases, alpha seems to recede or diminish, until the subject reaches a point, easily ascertained by the EEG, at which theta supercedes alpha. Exactly at that point, what the researchers are calling the "crossover point" or the "critical point," the subjects experience important, emotionally loaded, even life transforming moments. These frequently consist of creative insights, vivid memories from childhood (so vivid that the subject would experience it with a feeling of "being there"), or, as in the case of the Vietnam vets, the emergence of suppressed or repressed experiences. Subjects consistently report these moments as profound, moving, life transforming, even spiritual moments. Interestingly, when the researchers replay the moment-by-moment topographic maps of brainwave activity, each subject can identify the "Aha experience" or the moment of insight or childhood memory as occuring just at the crossover point, the time when theta activity superceded alpha. The question arises: if being at the crossover point can have such profound benefits, what would happen if you could learn not just to "cross over" that point briefly, but stay there for long periods? A number of researchers have asked that question and begun to find out the answers. Since the EEGs can be linked to biofeedback signals, such as tones, they have now begun letting subjects monitor their own brainwave activity and learn how to reach the critical crossover point and to stay there for extended periods. For example, the user might hear one tone indicating alpha activity, another indicating theta, with the tones rising or falling in amplitude with increases or decreases in alpha or theta. The user simply uses relaxation techniques (or one of the brain machines) and listens to the biofeedback until he or she reaches the crossover point, at which time another tone is heard. The user then learns to stay at that point. This is an extraordinary breakthrough. The EEG equipment being used by these researchers is moderately expensive. However, it would be a relatively simple electrical engineering project to put together a device specifically designed to provide biofeedback in the form of different tones for alpha and theta and a third signal indicating the crossover point. Such a device could be used alone, or in combination with any of the currently available brain machines, and could assist the user in learning to enter that extremely beneficial, transformational state rapidly and reliably. In light of suggestions and evidence that brain machines can help speed up the process of attaining alphatheta brain states for many individuals (see the discussions in the MEGABRAIN FORUM elsewhere in this issue), it seems a logical next step to produce an instrument that uses brain machine stimulation, in the form of sound, light, CES, etc., to alter brainwave activity and move it toward the desired goal, the crossover point. Such a device could combine the active stimulation with biofeedback technology that would alert the user when he or she is at the critical point and teach him or her to maintain that critical point, so that using the "training wheels" effect, the user can learn to enter that extraodinary state at will.

The technology to produce such a device already exists. The work of Peniston, Budzynski, Sullivan and others suggests that such a device could have profound effects when used in a therapeutic setting. Equally exciting, it could enable all of us to gain rapid access to long lost childhood memories, integrative experiences, and greater self awareness. Mind-machine manufacturers take note. Perhaps some mindmachine hacker is already out there putting together this "Crossover Point Trainer" in his garage workshop. I hope so. I can't wait to try it out. One of the researchers who has been investigating this crossover point is William Beckwith. We asked him to write about his experiences and his ideas for MEGABRAIN REPORT, and he has provided us with the eloquent, wide-ranging, brain-stretching essay that follows. MOVING BEYOND METAPHORS OF THE MIND ADDICTION, BRAIN WAVE PATTERNS, AND THE REALITY OF THE INNER CHILD by William J. Beckwith Alcohol and chemical dependency treatment in the U.S. at present follows assumptions growing out of the Twelve Step Model of AA. This model, as put forth by John Bradshaw, Anne Wilson Schaef, Charles Whitfield and others, assumes the importance of early childhood experiences on the later development of what has come to be called "codependency." There is no cure for codependency, only perpetual "recovery," with the negative connotation of a lifelong illness. Recent research and clinical studies, however, have provided data that conflicts with important aspects of the codependency theory. Dr. Eugene Peniston, in his work with Dr. Paul Kulkosky at the VA Medical Center in Fort Lyon, Colorado, has demonstrated convincingly that alpha-theta brainwave training has a statisticallysignificant effect on recovery and sustained prevention of relapse in alcoholics. Specifically, a thirteenmonth follow up study showed that their biofeedback protocol has only a 10% failure rate as compared to relapse rates of 60% or more in conventional detoxification and counseling programs. Peniston's work demonstrates that a cure for major addictions is not only possible, but available. There remains a question as to how alpha-theta brainwave training achieves these results. Peniston's published work has concentrated on methodology and the statistical significance of his follow-up studies rather than proposing a mechanism for how the Peniston-Kulkosky effect works. Others have attempted to explain the effect as well as make use of it. Two very different models have been proposed by Dr. Lester Fehmi and Dr. Carl Sonder. Fehmi's model is based on his Open Focus training program, which assumes that addicts have narrowly focussed attention and compulsively dwell on real and imagined problems. He uses brainwave training and guided imagery to break the "closed focus" habit that excludes access to other thoughts and feelings. Sonder, in contrast, has based his proposal on the Hobson- McCarley analytical model of memory encoded during sleep by theta waves originating in the "primitive" limbic structures of the brain. Studies have shown that signals originating in the brainstem activate theta rhythms in the hippocampus which proceed through the cortex to the neocortex during periods of REM sleep. Hobson has recently revised his theory to acknowledge the psychological significance of dreams and reduced the role of the brainstem to that of a "switch" controlling the onset of new dream episodes. Sonder, however, in his clinical work, has continued to focus on the limbic system. A third option is available. Another theory of memory encoding was outlined by Stanford neurosurgeon Dr. Karl Pribram in his book Languages of the Brain based on holography. It drew on the work of English physicist David Bohm who proposed that the physical universe is a gigantic hologram, connected in undivided wholeness by an "implicate order." Dr. John Cowan has proposed that the membranes of the axons connecting the neurons of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex are a potential source of coherent energy. Since these axons form parallel columns perpendicular to the cortical surface, synchronous excitation of these neurons could result in the formation of standing waves of various frequencies, similar to a tunable laser or maser. Experimental confirmation of this theory exists. Emission of coherent microwave radiation (i.e., maser emission) from the surface of stimulated axons in blue crab neurons was established by Allan Frey in 1968 and confirmed in later studies. This is paralleled by the work of Dr. Glen Rein, a neurochemist conducting research on "scalar" fields at Stanford University. His theory of "crystalline transduction" proposes that electromagnetic fields can be converted into

scalar fields in the liquid crystals of the cell membranes of neurons. Scalar fields present fascinating possibilities. Dr. Eldon Byrd, in the first issue of Megabrain Report described scalar fields in the following way: I look at scalars strictly as information... Could it be that we live in a sea of information? Not in the form of electromagnetic energy, not acoustic energy, but a whole other form of energy which we currently have no instruments to measure. It's a sea of information. It's just there. It doesn't take any time for it to propagate from one point in time and space to another because it has nothing to do with time and space. Scalars are just information, and they are not bound by the same laws that govern matter or energy. A hologram results from the destructive and constructive interference of two coherent electromagnetic energy wave patterns superimposed in space. As a field of interference, a hologram is independent of direction and velocity. It is pure information. A hologram is also independent of space and time: illuminate a small portion of the hologram, and spherically distributed information of the whole is available in the part. A hologram is a scalar field. The holographic model of memory storage fits the reality of a quantum universe. The Hobson-McCarley analytical model of memory is grounded in the Newtonian paradigm. In working with clients using the Peniston protocol, as they learned to increase their alpha amplitude and produce theta waves without losing consciousness, a critical point was reached when theta amplitude began to exceed alpha amplitude. There were profound alterations in client mood and behavior. Cross-lateral brainwave synchronization was also increasing at this time. This is consistent with the research of Peniston and Fehmi, and was an important factor in the developing holographic model. The critical point referred to above was often accompanied by spontaneous surfacing of previously inaccessible memories, often from early childhood. Other clinical indications were the seemingly miraculous resolutions of complex psychological problems - often not directly related to the presenting condition of substance abuse. There was a sudden re-ordering of the entire personality in ways that could not readily be explained by the Hobson model. Two examples illustrate this. The first client was referred for brainwave training by a psychiatrist who had prescribed a regimen including Prozac and Activan. At the beginning of the program, pre-testing with standard psychometric instruments indicated a probable schizophrenic disorder, or an anxiety disorder in a paranoid personality. Hypochondrical features were also disclosed. Presenting symptoms included severe anxiety attacks, depression, sleeplessness, low energy levels, and cognitive impairment. After the brainwave training program, posttesting revealed the client to be within normal limits: there was no clinical diagnosis. Academic performance had returned to normal, depression and anxiety symptoms had vanished, chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms were in remission and there was a marked positive change in interactions with family and friends. Perhaps most telling, the attending psychiatrist discontinued all medication. The second client came into therapy with a family history of alcoholism stretching at least three generations. Pre-testing revealed a possible schizophrenic disorder, a severe clinical depression syndrome, an obsessive-compulsive disorder and a severe borderline personality disorder. Previous cognitive therapies and AA attendance had been completely ineffective. In the first week of treatment, after autogenics instruction and temperature biofeedback training, persistent migraine headaches ceased. In the third week of brainwave training, the long-standing depression lifted and did not return. Craving for alcohol vanished as well, as did the previous anxiety attacks. Imagery arose spontaneously during later sessions concerning childhood sexual abuse, and was recognized by the client as a major source of current dysfunctional behavior. An untargeted side-effect of the program was the disappearance of an eating disorder; the craving for binges on junk food vanished and eating habits normalized. There was a significant shift toward "normal" ranges in clinical post tests. "Traditional" psychotherapy cannot explain these kinds of sudden cures. Even the concept of brief psychotherapy does not apply, since outcomes were achieved that were not anticipated or sought. The "Inner Child" was not only healed, but healed by nothing more than relaxation training, positive imagery and entry into an alpha-theta state at least four times a week. Two other facts are notable. First, the dominant waking brain wave frequency of children under the age of six is in the four to eight hertz range associated with theta in adults. The pattern of these waves, however, more closely resembles that of adult alpha waves. These lower frequency theta waves in adults are usually associated with reverie, dreaming, fugue states and hypnagogic imagery. They usually occur only in the transition from wakefulness to sleep. As Dr. Thomas Budzynski and others have shown in recent years, however, theta brainwave production in adults is also a vital component of learning and memory encoding. Our clinical experience in Houston has indicated that EEG brainwave training can provide reliable access to the alpha-theta consciousness state of early childhood, with results extending beyond the treatment of substance abuse. Other addictive behaviors, eating disorders, and chronic pain clients experienced

measurable shifts toward "normality" as shown in pre and post-test psychological evaluations. This provides a physical basis for the "inner child" metaphor of codependency. The surfacing of memories from early childhood fits Charles Tart's observations of "state- dependent memory," i.e., that information learned while in an altered state of consciousness is more difficult to access when in another state of consciousness. Second, the greatest shifts in client mood and behavior occur when brainwave frequencies occur near the interface of adult alpha and theta rhythms. Specifically, this means waves in the range of seven to eight hertz. Insufficient data is currently available due to equipment limitations, but I suspect that the crucial "window frequency" will turn out to be 7.8 hertz. This is the so-called "Schumann frequency": the natural resonant frequency of the earth's electromagnetic field. The production of synchronized, coherent electromagnetic energy by the human brain at a given frequency leads to a "laser- like" condition increasing the amplitude and strength of the brainwaves. It also generates a scalar field containing the total "information" of that individual. Additive increase of alpha and theta brainwave amplitudes does appear clinically as training sessions progress, requiring constantly higher thresholds to be set on the CAP Scan to provide an optimal amount of client feedback. The observed brainwave amplitude fluctuations and reversals result in precisely the condition that can produce a "Prigoginian reordering" of the "chaos" of an "abnormal" client personality into a "higher order," or what we would term a "healthier" personality pattern. A possible mechanism for this reordering is the interaction of the client fields with the electromagnetic and scalar fields of the earth generated by Schumann frequency resonance. This could result in a holographic transfer of information from the larger scalar field, or other scalars in resonance with it. It could also explain the rapid shifts in client mood and behavior mentioned above. (Such a transfer phenomenon could also be the physical reality behind Carl Jung's metaphor of the "collective unconscious.") In using the Peniston effect, we are profoundly altering the state of consciousness of the client. We are training adults to produce a brainwave pattern that they have "outgrown." We are facilitating access to the consciousness state of early childhood, where rapid learning was easy - and possibly to the unitative consciousness state described by mystics of all religions. Alpha- theta brainwave training is not the only way to accomplish this shift in consciousness, but it is certainly one of the most reliable and demonstrable. If there is indeed a physical reality to this "Inner Child" whose traumas and obsolete behaviors are said to produce dysfunctional behavior in up to 90% of all people, then better methods need to be used than those current in the field of psychology. We have the clinical evidence. We have a viable model based on the paradigm of the "New Physics." We have the technology. Perhaps it is time for a "New Psychology" to be born as well. William J. Beckwith is an ordained minister, counselor, and consultant in Houston, Texas. He holds Master's degrees in divinity and religious psychology, has undergraduate degrees in biology and chemistry, did doctoral research in neurophysiology, and is currently conducting research toward a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. He was formerly a consultant to the Texas Meta Center, and is completing a book on spirituality and psychology. He can be contacted at 6210 Paisley, Houston, Texas 77096.

HAPPY BRAIN, SAD BRAIN: BRAIN TECH AND CEREBRAL ASYMMETRY

by Michael Hutchison

LET A SMILE (RIGHT SIDE) BE YOUR UMBRELLA Stop now and note your emotional state: are you happy, sad, upbeat, depressed, eager? All right, now, keeping the left half of your face motionless, vigorously contract the right side of your face several times smile energetically and forcefully, each time contracting not only the muscles in your cheeks that draw the lip corners up but also the muscles around your right eye. Stop now and pay attention to yourself. Has your emotional state changed? You have just been practicing one of the most recently discovered examples of neurotechnology (i.e. the systematic application of a body of knowledge [techology] to your brain). If you are like most people, contracting the right side of your face probably triggered positive emotions, joy, cockiness, a lifting of the spirits. If you had contracted the left side of your face you probably would have felt an inexplicable sadness and depression. The link between left side of the face activity and sadness and right side of ther face activity and happiness has been discovered, and verified in a series of studies, by Canadian researchers (in the journal Neuropsychologia, 27: 923-925). In two of the studies the researchers, Bernard Schiff and Mary Lamon, simply asked the subjects to vigorously contract either the right or left sides of their face. They found strong evidence (in over 90% of the subjects) that contorting one side of the face produces emotions, with the left side of the face producing sadness and negative emotions, right side producing positive emotions. In another study subjects were asked to describe an emotionally ambiguous picture after performing the contractions. Subjects tended to describe it negatively after contracting the left side of the face, positively after the right. The research emerged from Schiff's experiences as a therapist, when he noticed that clients often began therapy with great facial asymmetries which disappeared as their distress diminished. In another study, Schiff reversed the studies described above and worked from actual feelings toward facial expressions, and found that stress itself could cause subjects to exhibit such facial asymmetries. Most of us have probably played the game of placing a pocket mirror down the center of photographic headshots (such as those in school yearbooks) to see the enormous differences between faces made up of two left sides (i.e. the "right" side actually a mirror image of the left side) and two right sides. Schiff and Lamon's studies add a new dimension to this, and to the simple act of consciously observing peoples' faces, since it's clear that peoples' facial expressions, and their patterns of facial symmetry and activity, reveal much about their emotional state and their personality. Since Schiff and Lamon's subjects reported that their emotional responses were independent of conscious thought, these studies challenge the long-dominant view that emotion is invariably secondary to some form of thought or consciousness and add to the growing neuroscientific evidence that emotions can precede and often determine conscious processes. The researchers concluded that, "Unilateral facial contractions appear to induce emotional experiences without cognitive mediation." "One implication," they observed, "is that assymetries in facial expression, whether spontaneous or deliberate, may actually influence the emotional experience." Which suggests that we can deliberately influence and alter our emotional state by means of facial expression. Let a smile be your umbrella, indeed, provided the smile is on the right side of your face. SUN BRAIN, MOON BRAIN Interestingly, several other groups of scientists working independently of Schiff and Lamon have recently published a flurry of studies that cast light on the actual neurophysiology underlying the link between facial asymmetry and emotions. Using EEG testing, these scientists have discovered that the difference between a happy disposition or a melancholy one (and between left-face and right face activation) may lie in a specific pattern of brainwave activity. Specifically, these scientists have found that "EEG asymmetry in anterior regions of the brain" can predict and diagnose emotional states and emotional styles.

What is this EEG asymmetry? Stated simply, people with more activity in the left frontal cortex than in the right tend to have a more cheerful and positive temperament - they are self-confident, outgoing, interested in people and external events, resilient, optimistic and happy. On the other hand, people whose EEG shows more activity in the right frontal cortex than in the left tend to be more sad and negative in their outlook - they see the world as more stressful and threatening, are more suspicious of people, and feel far more fear, disgust, anxiety, self-blame and hopelessness than the left-activated group. Looking at this in terms of evolutionary biology, we might say the high-activity left-frontal people show more "approach" behavior, while the right-frontal actives show more "withdrawal" behavior. Clearly the survival and evolution of the human race required both types of behavior, but the new evidence suggests that ordinarily the left frontal region of the brain exerts some control over the right frontal cortex, "turning off" the negative or withdrawal behavior when it no longer serves a purpose. However, it now appears that in some individuals, high levels of right frontal activity may have overpowered or short-circuited the normal ability of the left frontal cortex to turn off or exert control over negative feelings. These discoveries have been reported in a recent outburst of articles in scientific journals (mainly in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology), but are the result of over a decade of research by a number of scientists, led by Dr. Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues (including Dr. Jeffrey Henriques, also of UW, Madison, and Dr. Andrew Tomarken, a psychologist at Vanderbilt). Let me summarize some of their fascinating findings. In one recent study, Davidson and Tomarken gave a group of 99 women a personality test that classified them on a scale from positive outlook to negative. They also studied their patterns of brainwave activity using an EEG. The results were clear: those with the most right-frontal activity were also those whose personality tests showed the most pronounced negative outlook, while those with the most left-frontal activity had the highest scores for positive outlook. This emotional difference between right and left was also evident when the scientists worked in the other direction, working backward from facial expressions to brainwave patterns: they measured observable facial behavior during experiences of happiness and disgust, while simultaneously measuring brainwave activity to observe patterns of hemispheric activation during the experience of happiness and disgust. They found that disgust was clearly associated with right-sided activation in the frontal and anterior temporal regions, while happiness was accompanied by left-sided activation. NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE BRAINS OF FILM CRITICS In one study, Dr. Tomarken found that these brainwave patterns could predict "affective responses to emotion elicitors," i.e. how the subjects would react to film clips that were preselected to elicit positive or negative emotions (the positive film clips were of a puppy at play, or an amusing gorilla taking a bath; the negative clips showed gory surgery scenes). Those with more right- frontal activity showed far more powerful negative emotions, such as fear and disgust, when viewing the surgical scenes than did those with more leftfrontal activity. On the other hand, those with more left-frontal activity derived far more pleasure and delight from the positive films than did the gloomy right-frontal subjects. Significantly, these effects were independent of the subjects mood ratings at the time at which their baseline EEG was measured, just before viewing the films. In other words, things that might produce delight and euphoria in some people will leave others cold, unmoved, or even suspicious; and things that some folks find only mildly unpleasant will fill others with enormous revulsion, disgust and horror. And these responses can be predicted, simply by observing their brainwave patterns. Now imagine these different types of people trying to communicate to each other their feelings about something more emotionally complex than a frolicking puppy or open-heart surgery- something like life, and the experiences of day to day existence. Imagine an activated left-frontal husband with an activated right- frontal wife... DEPRESSION IN THE BRAIN There is also evidence that these brainwave asymmetries may be linked to depression. Henriques and Davidson tested the EEGs of a group of normal subjects who had never been treated for depression, and a group of subjects who had been previously depressed and later successfully treated for depression. They found that the previously depressed subjects had far less left-frontal activity, and far more right-frontal activity, than those who had never been depressed. In a later study Davidson found that patients who had just been diagnosed with depression and were about to begin treatment had less left-frontal activity than non-depressed subjects. "You find similar brain patterns in people who are depressed, or who have recovered from depression, and in normal people who are prone to bad moods," said Davidson. "We suspect that people with this brain activity pattern are at high risk for depression."

THE CRY-BABY BIOMARKER There is evidence that these brainwave patterns and emotional "styles" may be hereditary or geneticallyinfluenced. Davidson has studied the behavior and the EEG patterns of 10-month old infants during a brief period (one minute) of separation from their mothers, and found that "those infants who cried in reponse to maternal separation showed greater right-frontal activation during the preceding baseline period compared with infants who did not cry." Observed Davidson, "Every single infant who cried had more right frontal activation. Every one who did not had more activity on the left." He concluded that "Frontal activation asymmetry may be a state-independent marker for individual differences in threshold of reactivity to stressful events and vulnerability to particular emotions." These clear links between frontal activation asymmetry have led many researchers to believe that these brain patterns can be useful for diagnosis, particularly for diagnosing people at risk for depression. Says Davidson, "We believe that in the face of life stress like losing a job or a divorce," those with right-frontal activation "are likely to be particularly susceptible to depression." (These recent experimental findings support earlier work, such as that of Pierre Flor-Henry of the University of Alberta, who found that when he gave baribiturates to the right brain only, subjects reported euphoria, and when he gave it to the left, subjects became depressed. A neurosurgeon reported recently that after he had removed part of the right frontal lobe during surgery the patient's personality was transformed, becoming much more positive and affectionate. A 1984 study in the journal Brain of patients who had suffered strokes reported that those with lesions in their right frontal cortex were "unduly cheerful." And recent PET scan studies at U.C.L.A. and in France have revealed that severely depressed patients show a dramatic decrease of activity in the prefrontal lobes on the left compared with non-depressed subjects.) TURNING UP THE JUICE IN THE JOLLY LOBE The next step, of course, is to move from simply observing the existing brainwave patterns and using them for diagnosis to actively developing strategies and techniques for altering the patterns. As Dr. Davidson pointed out, "If you learn to regulate your negative feelings better, it may turn out that you have also learned to turn up the activity in your left frontal lobe." Well, here we are where we started out: It should now be clear that our original exercise in neurotechnology, in which we contorted the right side of our face to produce positive emotions or good feelings, is one technique for "turning up the activity in your left frontal lobe." We know that the brain is cross-wired with the body, so that the left hemisphere is linked to the right side of the body. Thus, by activating forcefully the right side of the face, it seems we are also activating the left side of the brain, the side associated with positive feelings. Another method for doing this, an ancient yogi pranayama technique, is breathing through the right nostril to activate the left hemisphere. The yogis called this the "sun breath," in comparison with the "moon breath" of the left nostril/right hemisphere. MIND TECH, BRAIN COHERENCE AND EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION But of course this raises some interesting questions for those of us who are familiar with modern braintechnology. One of the clear effects of some of these tools has been to alter brainwave activity, both in frequency and in amplitude. One of the claims by some makers of light and sound devices, for example, has long been that these devices can "harmonize," "balance" or "synchronize" the activity of the brain's hemispheres. Similar claims have been made about motion systems (such as the Graham and SAMS Potentializer and the Integrated Motion System), ganzfeld devices, flotation tanks, cranial electrostimulators, and binaural beat frequency tapes (as suggested, for example, by the name "Hemi- Synctm"). Not only have these claims been made, but there is some compelling evidence (such as EEG brain maps) that some sort of shift in inter-hemispheric brainwave patterns is produced by these devices. If in fact these mind-tech tools can reliably alter brainwave hemispheric asymmetry and produce more symmetrical brainwave patterns, or if we can learn to use them to target and selectively activate one region of the brain (such as the left-frontal cortex), it makes sense to believe that they might have a profound impact, not only on the treatment of depression, but in helping non- depressed individuals learn to reject tendencies toward negative emotions such as fear, sadness, suspicion, self-blame, retreat and disgust, and replace them with authentic feelings of joy, self- confidence, delight and an optimistic engagement with the world. Certainly, much research needs to be done in this area, particularly research that uses modern brainmonitoring equipment such as topographic brain-mapping EEGs to observe the effects of mind machines, and can then link these machine-induced changes in brain activity with changes in emotional states (I suspect even more interesting links between brain activity, brain machines and emotions would emerge from the use of PET scans, though unfortunately this technology is still too costly for the budgets of most mindmachine research projects). But if, as Dr. Davidson says, positive emotions and healthy emotional states

may come from simply "learning to turn up the activity in your left frontal lobe," we may find that mindmachines can be effective tools of personality transformation, emotional self-mastery and continuing delight.

BRAIN TECH BREAKTHROUGHS IN TREATMENT OF LEARNING DISORDERS

by Michael Hutchison

Several years ago I received some calls and letters from a man in the middle west who suffered from a severe learning disorder. He asked if he could come to the coast and work with me at Megabrain - he told me he'd do just about anything to get a chance to try out some of the brain machines, on the off-chance something might be able to help him. Touched by his willingness to give up everything and relocate in a strange city in hopes of, as he put it, "getting smarter," I invited him to come out. For the first few months the man I'll call "Bill" was a dedicated worker, a good-hearted, warm and loving person, but it was clear he had severe problems: a low IQ, difficulties in reading, writing and expressing himself, and such a lack of self-esteem that he was always apologizing in advance for any mistakes he might make, telling he how he wasn't sure he could to a certain task, how he was afraid he might screw it up. Among the heap the academic journals I'd been reading I recalled some studies in which psychologists had used biofeedback to treat learning disorders. Basing their work on discoveries by neuroscientists that certain learning disorders (specifically Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD], known commonly as Hyperactivity) were linked to abnormally slow brainwave activity in specific parts of the brain, including the premotor cortex and the superior prefrontal coretx, which are used when people pay attention or keep still, these therapists had used biofeedback EEG to teach their ADD-Hyperactive subjects to speed up their brainwave activity into the beta range (over 14 Hz). The results had been impressive: average increases in IQ of 12 to 20 points or more. One subject had showed an IQ increase of an astounding 33 points as a result of using biofeedback to speed up his brainwave activity. Curious, I hooked Bill up to a Neurosearch 24 - a 24 electrode brainmapping EEG that provides you with a color topographic map of brain activity. As the EEG was running, I instructed Bill to perform different tasks: do a mathematical calculation, read a passage from a book, recite a poem, visualize himself running, and much more. As the topographic maps rolled across the computer monitor I was astonished: virtually all of Bill's brainwave activity was in the theta range (4-8 Hz), with some in the slower delta range, present in deep sleep or coma, and with some in alpha; there was no activity at all in the beta range, none above about 10 Hz. Here was a clear case of learning disorder; no wonder Bill had such a hard time reading, writing and expressing himself - he was in a semi-comatose state all the time. I had to leave the next day for a month and a half long trip to Europe, but I asked Bill to try doing a one hour session each day on one of our light/sound machines at a frequency of 18 to 25 Hz or greater. I also asked him to make regular use of one of our CES devices, since I had recently read a study by a CES researcher in Texas, Dr. Alan Childs (executive medical director of the Healthcare Rehabilitation Center and assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Texas, Austin), who had used CES to treat patients who were suffering from "attention-to-task deficit" as a result of head injury. After three weeks he had found the patients showed "striking and significant improvement in the post treatment scores," in such areas as mental speed, visuomotor functioning, impulse control, visual and auditory perception, mental control and concentration and much more. Childs had also used CES to treat patients suffering from short-term memory disorder and amnesia as a result of traumatic head injuries, and had great success in restoring memory. Bill assured me that he would make regular use of both the light/sound machine and the CES. When I returned six weeks later, Bill was a completely transformed person. He was now reading and writing rapidly and confidently. What was more striking, he was now filled with self-assurance, and his voice had changed from a tremulous timid semi-whisper to a resonant baritone. He was now taking charge of certain aspects of the office business, and making suggestions about how we could operate more efficiently. I began finding Post-It notes pasted all over the place with messages from Bill containing suggestions for new undertakings, keen observations and funny jokes. Sadly, Bill was suddenly called back to his home in the midwest due to an illness in the family - the family where he had been so bitterly unhappy. I insisted he take a CES device and light/sound machine with him. Several months later he called, and I could hear by his voice that he was slipping back into his old and in his words "stupid" self. He was not using the machines, his family didn't approve. I got a Christmas card from

him some months later. I haven't heard from him for a long time now, and I fear I won't hear any more. If you're out there reading this Bill, get in touch. We miss you. That was my introduction to Learning Disabilities, and the possibilities of treating these disabilities with brain technology. In recent months there seems to have been increasing interest and research in this area. In the wake of the biofeedback studies I mentioned above, several researchers have suspected, like I did in the case of Bill, that brainwave entrainment in beta frequencies using light/sound devices might be a more rapid way to achieve these sharp increases in IQ than the multiple training sessions and frequent visits to the doctor's office required by traditional EEG biofeedback training. Harold Russell, Ph.D. and John Carter, Ph.D., for example, presented some preliminary research at the 1991 annual Association of Psychophysiology and Biofeedback conference suggesting that attention deficit disorder can be treated by photic stimulation brainwave entrainment. They found that light/sound stimulation at beta frequencies (18-21 Hz) improved the cognitive functioning of ADD hyperactive children. (Those who showed a greater than 10 point difference between their Verbal and Performance scores of the WAIS IQ test could improve their IQ significantly following stimulation of the brain hemisphere that performed worst: i.e. students with a lower Verbal score were given stimulation with beta frequencies over the left hemisphere, and improved their Verbal scores significantly; those with lower Performance scores would receive light/sound stimulation of the right hemisphere, and again improved their Performance scores significantly.) They and others are now interested in exploring the effects of goggles in which the light bulbs are placed around the eye, leaving an open visual field, so that subjects suffering from learning disorders can wear the goggles, and be exposed to the beta- frequency flickering lights, as they read, work, and go about their daily activities. COLORED LIGHTS USED FOR LEARNING DISABILITIES. Another recently completed (12/91) study of the effects of photic stimulation - in this case colored light stimulation - has produced exciting results. Carol J. Rustigan, a Learning Disability Specialist at California State University, Sacramento summarizes her work in a paper called "The Effects of Colored Lights and Relaxation Exercises on Learning Disabled Adults' Visual and Learning Skills." Rustigan compared the effects for 17 learning disabled adults of 20 sessions of listening to relaxation tapes (control group) with 20 sessions on a Lumatron (experimental group). The Lumatron, developed by Dr. John Downing, is based on the theory that light stimulation of the optic nerve sends stimulation not only to the visual cortex but also to many other brain centers, including the hypothalamus, the brain's master controller, and thus has profound effects on physical and emotional well-being. Rustigan was aware of past research linking learning disorders with vision problems and treatment of learning disorders with visual stimulation (including work by Jacob Lieberman showing that learning disabled children and adults significantly benefited from colored light [Syntonic] therapy, in the areas of memory, visual field expansion and reading skills - Lieberman's book Light: Medicine of the Future is reviewed elsewhere in this issue of MBR). She had done preliminary research herself indicating that colored light therapy could have significant effects in the treatment of learning disabilities (1989-90). But many of her subjects in this pilot study had commented upon how relaxing the colored lights sessions had been. The question was raised as to whether it was the colored lights or the relaxation that had produced the dramatic improvements in learning. So Rustigan designed this study so that there would be a direct comparison of the effects of relaxation exercises with the effects of colored lights stimulation. All her subjects had learning disabilities, including visual stress symptoms when reasding, a slower than normal reading rate, and retention difficulties. The subjets were randomly divided into a relaxation exercise group and a Lumatron group after having taken tests in reading (Nelson Denny Reading Tests) that measured both vocabulary and comprehension; tests in auditory memory (Weschler Memory Scales including tests for Logical Memory [measured immediate recall of logical material presented orally], Memory Span and Associate Learning); and several tests for visual acuity. Both groups had 20 sessions - one group 20 sessions of listening to relaxation tapes, the other 20 sessions on the Lumatron. The results were clear. In the reading tests, the colored lights group showed a significant increase in the number of answers attempted (on both the Vocabulary and Comprehension test), which demonstrated substantial gains in that group's reading rate. The colored lights group also showed significant increases in the number of Comprehension questions they answered correctly, implying that their comprehension skills increased concurrently with their faster reading rate. The colored lights group also showed signficant increases in the auditory processing of information, including increases in auditory retention skills on the

Weschler Memory Scale (Logical Memory), which supports the findings of Lieberman and Downing that the benefits of this type of photic stimulation therapy are not limited to visual perception. The relaxation group, on the other hand, showed no significant changes at all on any of the scales. "It is possible," Rustigan observes, "that an increase in the number of light sessions ... would have yielded even greater research results. Lumatron practitioners generally have prescribed up to 60+ colored lights sessions (with music)... Since many learning disabled adults have responded favorably to multisensory input, future studies designed to study the effects of colored lights combined with relaxation exercises or music could be very beneficial." Rustigan concludes that "The results of this research study determined that the effects of colored lights significantly benefited learning disabled adults. Documented gains in reading rate, reading comprehension, and auditory memory skills carry promising implications for learning disabled adults confronted with inhibitive visual, reading, and retention difficulties." NOOTROPIC DRUGS AND LEARNING DISORDERS Several studies of cognition-enhancing drugs have recently come to my attention that lead me to believe certain of these substances may have great benefits for ADD sufferers. A German journal of psychopharmacology has reported that the effects of Piracetam on the EEG spectra of boys with learning diorders was compared with the effects of a placebo in a double-blind study. Intriguingly, "piracetam caused a decrease in the amount of delta activity and an increase in the average EEG frequency." By speeding up brainwave activity and decreasing delta activity, the drug should increase alertness, concentration and learning among the learning disabled. In a recent double-blind placebo-controlled study in Pakistan, researchers compared the effects of another "smart drug," Hydergine, with a placebo on improving cognitive functions and behavioural symptoms associated with learning disorders in children. They found that the Hydergine group showed significant improvement in speech (acquisition of new words, comprehensibility/meaningfulness of speech), sociability, attention/concentration, comprehension and memory. They also showed improvement in behavior (emotional lability and cooperativeness). (For more about Piracetam and Hydergine, see "Cognition Enhancing Drugs and Peak Performance Pills in MBR #1)

RIDING THE BIG WAVE: ULTRADIAN RHYTHMS AND BRAIN TECH

by Michael Hutchison

Not knowing that one has a time structure is like not knowing that one has a heart of lungs. In every aspect of our physiology and lives, it becomes clear that we are made of the order we call time. Because the clocks and calendars of social activity are designed for economic efficiency or convenience, an individual may have to learn to detect his own cycles, and become aware of scheduling to protect his health. Dr. Gay Gaer Luce Report of U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare RIDING THE BIG WAVE Back in the early 1980s, when I began exploring the effects of the flotation tank, I was intrigued to find that my experiences in the tank were quite different at different times of day. For some reason there was an enormous difference in "feel" between an early morning float and one in the late afternoon, and between an early evening or a late night float. I talked with other floaters about this and found that they too had noticed how the time of day influenced the quality of their float. One lawyer loved to hop in the tank for a 6 a.m. float on days when he had court appearances - he would emerge an hour later feeling charged with an electrical power and energy. But he noticed that when he floated in the evenings he emerged feeling relaxed, drowsy and ready to go to sleep. An architect with multiple sclerosis would usually go in for a float around noon, and said that he would quickly sink into a state of profound rest, with no thoughts - he felt his body was healing and restoring itself, and called it his "healing time." But he noticed that when he went in after work in the late afternoon his experience was quite different - as he floated his mind was busily visualizing and working on his current architectural projects. As I began experimenting with longer floats - staying in the tank for eight or ten hours at a stretch - I found that there was a wave- like quality to the float. At first I might sink rapidly down into a deeply relaxed state in which I had no awareness of time, no thoughts - a deep theta state. But after a period of time, like a diver slowly rising toward the surface, I would slowly regain consciousness, my mind would become more alert, my thoughts more intentional. Gradually my body would become more active - I would feel the need to stretch, move, tense and release my muscles. And then, after rising to the surface, my consciousness would again turn downward, and I would sink into the depths, returning to the dreamlike imagery of theta, or the bliss of total emptiness. I began to think of it as "riding the big wave." As I paid attention, I found that these waves of rising and falling awareness were rhythmical - I seemed to pass through one complete cycle of rising and falling about every 90 to 120 minutes. Upon further exploration I found that different parts of the wave seemed most conducive to certain types of consciousness or certain types of work. For example, the tank was often a great place to get writing done - at times I could spin out page after page of wonderful prose, and store the words clearly in my mind, ready for access when I sat down at my typewriter. But I quickly found that the writing only happened when I was at a certain point on the wave. As I sank deeper, a different type of creative thinking would take place - I might see or "feel" the entire structure of a book at a single flash, experience spontaneous images, bizarre thoughts, unpredictable flashes of insight. And then I sank even deeper, into a place beneath consciousness - a state that was not sleep, but was without content. But when I emerged from that deep wordless and thoughtless place, I rose back up through the mysterious, unpredictable twilight theta space again, where I would often find my brain filled with sudden new ideas, mental fireworks, chains of thoughts veering off in unexpected directions - it was as if the time in deep unconsciousness had charged my brain with new energy. And as I rose higher up on the wave I would once again be at that point where I found the words running through my mind, and, if I wanted to, I could write whole chapters, articles, stories. And then I would rise even higher on the wave and become too conscious to write - it would be time to stretch, scratch an itch, think about what I would cook for dinner that night,

remind myself to take my shirts to the cleaners, make active plans. And as the mundane thoughts passed, I would once again begin to slip downward, sinking deeper, riding the wave... As I became more aware of the wave-like nature of consciousness, I also discovered that there were certain points on the wave ideally suited for certain types of activities or non-activities. For example, I discovered that if I offered myself suggestions while moving downward into the theta range, and just before slipping into that level of deep theta where I was no longer actively conscious, then the suggestions seemed to become implanted and take root while I was in the deepest part of the wave, before I rose again into consciousness; and having taken root, would have powerful effects in my life. On the other hand, it seemed to me that if I offered myself suggestions while I was moving upward on the wave, or was reaching the peak of the wave, the suggestions had little effect - it was as if my mind was too busy, or too conscious and analytical to take note of (or to permit me to believe) the suggestions. I made similar discoveries about learning - information that I heard over underwater speakers in the tank while sinking downward on the wave, and before passing into the unconscious deepest part of the wave, seemed to be learned most effectively. On the other hand, I felt like I was much more capable of making effective plans, organizing my activities, while riding upward on the wave. OBSERVATIONS OF THE CHRONOBIOLOGISTS What I was exploring, though I didn't know it at the time, was the realm of chronobiology (the interplay between biology and time). Scientists had long observed that humans were influenced by a variety of biological rhythms. These include the long rhythms of the human genetic lifespan, the yearly rhythm of the passing seasons, the monthly menstrual rhythms, the sleeping and waking rhythm of night and day, and the waves or cycles that rise and fall several times each day, including sexual arousal and hunger. These latter rhythms are called ultradian (pronounced ul-TRAY dian) rhythms (from the Greek ultra-dies, "beyond" daily, i.e. many times a day). And during the last few years chronobiologists and others have made some astonishing discoveries about ultradians and their influence on our bodies and minds. One key finding that has emerged in recent years is that humans have been genetically programmed to operate on a 90 to 120 minute ultradian rest-activity cycle, known as the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle (BRAC). This cycle seems to regulate a wide array of mind and body activities. HEMISPHERIC DOMINANCE. As I noted earlier, neuroscientist David Shannahoff-Khalsa of Salk Institute for Biological Sciences did EEG studies of both right and left brain activity simultaneously and found that hemispheric dominance shifted back and forth in a wavelike rhythm. The average time for the cycle from right to left back to right, he found, was about 120 minutes. BODY SIDE DOMINANCE. Not only the brain hemispheres, but the actual sides of the body switch dominance every 90 to 120 minutes, according to Shannahoff Khalsa and associates. By sampling neurotransmitter levels in blood taken from both arms every 7.5 minutes, the researchers found that catacholamines - dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine [adrenaline] - became more concentrated on one side or the other in a regular cycle that accompanies the basic rest-activity cycle. VERBAL AND SPATIAL SKILLS. Since certain types of mental activity are linked with specific hemispheres, Shannahoff-Khalsa's identification of a rhythmic shift of hemispheric dominance suggested that human mental activity might go through similar ultradian rhythms. Other scientists tested subjects at regular intervals on verbal (left-hemisphere) and spatial (right hemisphere) tasks. They found that when verbal ability was high, spatial ability was low, and vice versa, and this alternating pattern continued throughout the day and night in cycles of about 90 to 100 minutes. COORDINATION AND MEMORY.

Scientists studying subjects playing video games measured various skills, and found that hand-eye coordination, learning, and short-term memory all showed a pattern of peaks and valleys. The peaks in performance occurred about every 90 minutes. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. Scientists observed subjects who were left alone in a neutral environment - a quiet, sparsely furnished room - and found that they showed a clear basic rest-activity cycle of around 110 minutes. MENTAL ALERTNESS. When subjects were tested on complex tasks that demanded intense concentration and alertness, their performance rose and fell in an unmistakeable 90 to 120 minute cycle. CREATIVITY. Performance on a number of tests that measure creativity shows that levels of creativity rise and fall in the ultradian rhythm of around 90 minutes. SUGGESTIBILITY AND RECEPTIVITY. Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson found that people went through natural short (15 to 20 minute) periods of relaxation and heightened receptivity that he called "common everyday trances," and that these natural trances occur on a basic 90-120 minute cycle. OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. During high energy phases, according to psychologist Robert Thayer, people can be over-optimistic and tend to over-estimate their resources, and the time and energy required for a project. Similarly, during low energy phases, they can be over-pessimistic, tending to underestimate their own resources. REST AND HEALING. The peaks in physical activity and energy every 90 to 120 minutes are mirrored by troughs or valleys, with the deepest part of the trough being a period of about 15 to 20 minutes. A mounting body of evidence suggests that the body requires this short rest or recovery period, and uses it for essential healing, repair and growth, and to replenish its stores of neurochemicals. At the same time the mind shifts away from external matters into a "common everyday trance," a period of inward focus during which some sort of mental rest and reorganization takes place. Interestingly, this is a period of increased theta brainwave activity. Research indicates that this all-important period of rest, healing, inner focus and mental receptivity takes place in the approximately 20 minute transition period - the trough - between the low end of one 90-to120 minute cycle and the beginning of the next. Psychobiologist and hypnotherapist Ernest Lawrence Rossi, a leading authority on ultradian rhythms, calls this approximately 20 minute transition period or trough the Ultradian Healing Response. In sum, the 90-120 minute basic rest-activity cycle seems to regulate an overwhelming number of our bodymind systems. According to Dr. Rossi, "research indicates that all our major mind-body systems of selfregulation - the autonomic nervous system (activity and rest), the endocrine system (hormones and messenger molecules), and the immune system (disease fighting) - have important 90-to-120- minute basic rest-activity cycles." WHY YOU'D BETTER LEARN TO RIDE THIS CYCLE This basic cycle, according to BRAC discoverer Nathaniel Kleitman, is a fundamental and essental characteristic of the life process itself - it "involves gastric hunger contractions and sexual excitement, processes concerned with self-preservation and preservation of the species."

"When such fundamental human processes and learning and performance, digestion and bodily repair, and sex and personality all respond to the call of the 90-to-120-minute rhythms," observes Rossi, "when even our muscles, glands, circulatory system, and organs resonate to it, and our very brain and psychological state keep time to it - these rhythms, or whatever causes them, must reflect pervasive patterns of communication between our mind and body." ULTRADIAN STRESS. The basic rest-activity cycle seems to be programmed into our genes. In fact there is new evidence that the BRAC regulates the most basic life process, the growth and division of cells. The entire process of cell division and growth lasts about 90 to 120 minutes, with a 20 minute period required for the build-up of a biochemical that plays a key role in the process of cell division. For millions of years our ancestors lived in close harmony with the natural rhythms of life, rising with the sun, sleeping at night, and responding to the signals of the BRAC by resting and napping periodically during the day. Modern civilization, with its artificial lights, work schedules, and unremitting stress, tends to disrupt the 90-to120 minute BRAC. For many of us life is a process of repeatedly overriding or ignoring the signals from our bodies and minds that it's time to take a break. Many of us have completely lost touch with our basic need for periods of rest and rebalancing. The result of this chronic disruption and desynchronization of our most fundamental rhythm is that modern plague called stress. We all know the symptoms, starting mental and physical fatigue, manifesting itself as mood swings, forgetfulness, loss of concentration, irritability, and burn-out. When ignored, these symptoms of stress can lead to more serious stress-related disorders, including high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, suppressed immune function, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and, in all probability, various types of cancer. What the evidence shows, then, is that our mind and body operate on a basic wave-like 90-to-120 minute cycle. This ultradian wave is a key factor in our mental performance - our ability to learn, think, create, remember - and in our physical performance - our energy, reaction speed, strength, endurance and much more. Other capacities, such as our abilities to control stress, our sexual energies, our immune function, our abilities to heal ourselves, our sensitivity to emotions, and much more, are directly linked to this basic cycle. The message is clear: if we are at all interested in maximizing mental and physical performance, then we must become aware of and learn to make intelligent use of our ultradian rhythms. By becoming aware of our ultradian rhythms, we can both capitalize on our strengths - "peak the peaks" make most effective use of our down times - "trough the troughs." We can also, when necessary, learn to forcibly alter our ultradian rhythms. In Rossi's words, "By learning to heed the signs that we are entering the active phase of the ultradian performance rhythm, we can enhance our overall performance by focusing on demanding tasks while our energy and alertness are on the upswing. And by learning to heed the signs that we are entering the 20-minute rest-and-rejuvenation portion of the rhythm, we can properly restore ourselves so that we are at our performance peak when our energy and alertness rise again." MAPPING YOUR RHYTHMS WITH MIND MACHINES The essential first step toward making effective use of your ultradian rhythms is very simple: pay attention. What you have to pay attention to is yourself. Unfortunately our culture does not encourage us to pay attention to ourselves, to heed the signals of our mind-body rhythms. We are, in fact, actively encouraged to ignore and override our natural rhythms. Virtually every aspect of contemporary life - the drive to produce more and more at work, the proliferation of dazzling entertainments to distract our attention- -calls us away from ourselves, encourages us to ignore our natural ultradian rhythms, our life wave. Fortunately, we now have available to us a variety of tools that are ideally suited for helping us pay attention to those signals: mind machines. The following techniques for becoming aware of and making optimal use of your 90-to-120 minute ultradian life wave can be accomplished without mind machines, of course, by simply paying attention to yourself. But while the act of paying attention is fairly simple in itself, it is not easy to accomplish. We have to make an effort. Amidst the cacaphony of modern life, it's often hard for us to hear the messages being sent to us by our mind and body. Mind technology, however, is highly effective at blocking out the environmental distractions and disruptions. Mind machines, in a sense, act as blinders and earplugs - cutting off the external signals so that we can pay closer attention to our internal signals. By helping us direct our attention

inward, MTs can act as sensory amplifiers, helping us become aware of and keenly sensitive to the rise and fall of our natural life wave. STEP ONE: PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIGNALS The initial step is to find a comfortable place to sit down or stretch out - ideally, someplace quiet where you'll be free of jangling phones and other distractions. Put on your MT, and let go of concerns about external matters. If your device or tapes permit you a selection of frequencies, choose alpha. Now, as your turn your attention inward, pay attention to your internal mind-body signals and messages. Here are some of the signals and messages you might notice: ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? fatigue feelings of impatience, irritation, anger muscle tension mood changes a desire to stretch, yawn, sigh deeply drowsiness daydreaming or experiencing pleasant memories feeling contemplative, introspective feeling passive, receptive having fantasies, sexual arousal, idle thoughts feeling like taking a rest and letting go feeling like doodling or noodling

All of these are signals that you are on the down side or in the trough of your life wave, and that your mindbody would profit from a short period of rest and recovery. You can use your MT to help you relax, let go, and let your mind-body make the most of this healing period. Here are some other signals you might notice: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -you feel energized, rested and strong -your mind is focused, alert -you're eager to get to work, to accomplish specific tasks -you have a clear idea of what you want to do -you feel you can accomplish your goals effortlessly -you are coming up with solutions to problems, and having creative ideas -you are eager to play or engage in physical exercise.

These, of course, are signals that you are on the up side, or at the peak of your life wave, and that it's time to get things done. You may want to use your MT in an active mode, to focus and amplify your energies, to solve specific problems or projects, to engage in activities and creative pursuits. MAPPING YOUR LIFE WAVE In the initial stages of mapping your life wave, this act of using your MT to pay attention to your mind-body signals is something that should be repeated several times a day. Ideally, you can make notes in a daily or hourly calendar. A few words describing the signals you receive each MT session are sufficient - for example, "wiped out," "memories of 6th grade," "back pain," "psyched up for the board meeting," "bliss," "high energy," and so on. Over a period of days or weeks, you will begin to see patterns emerging. Perhaps you'll notice that you have a lot of your best creative insights at night or in the morning; that you feel most tired in the late afternoon, or just before lunch; that your back pain peaks at certain periods and goes away at others. ********************** INSERT LIFE WAVE CHART

********************** Soon, you should be able to point to your peaks and your troughs each day, and by connecting the dots you will be able to draw a line, tracing the rise and fall of your life wave throughout the course of your day. Our ultradian rhythms are flexible, of course, and can vary in response to external conditions, so your life wave map can never be exact, predicting your peaks exactly to the minute. However, your map will increase your awareness of your own rhythms, your ups and downs, your peak performance periods and the best times to take a relaxing MT break. DOWN IN THE VALLEY: THE "HEALING RESPONSE" Once you have used your MT learned to tune into your ultradian life wave, you can begin using your MT in ways that are specifically designed to take advantage of specific mind-body states, or points on your daily cycle. The single most important first MT application for most of us is to get the most out our body's natural rest and regeneration period, that 20 minute bottom-of-the- trough that Ernest Rossi calls the Ultradian Healing Response. By using MTs to enhance and deepen the body's natural tendency toward relaxation and rest we can "trough the troughs," or get the most and the highest quality rest and regeneration that is possible. One reason this 20 minute period can be so important is that it is characterized by what Milton Erikson called the "common everyday trance." As Ernest Rossi describes it, during this common trance, "we become more introspective. Our dreams, fantasies, and reveries - the raw material of growth in everyday life as well as in psychostherapy - become unusually vivid, as the window betgween our conscious and unconscious opens a bit." At these time, says Rossi, we gain access to our inner selves and our inner mind. "Because the inner mind is the source of our deepest knowing," he writes, "people may be at their creative best during these meditative moments, experience insights, fantasy and intuitive leaps." These moments, Erikson found, were the key to inner transformation and healing. In Rossi's words, "the secret of transformation from illness to health and higher levels of well-being" lies in "recognizing and facilitating a person's own mind-body resources during these brief natural windows of inner focus as they [arise] periodically throughout the day." NATURAL THETA STATE. The descriptions of the "common everyday trance" are virtually identical to what we have described in an earlier chapter as the theta state. And in fact EEG evidence has now revealed that during this natural rest period, brainwave activity tends to slow down from the beta-dominant patterns that govern our normal waking states of consciousness into relaxed state in which brainwave activity is predominantly in the alpha and theta frequencies. In other words, by becoming aware of our natural life wave, and "troughing the trough," we can enter a natural theta state, with all the well-documented benefits of theta. As we have seen earlier, theta is characterized by vivid imagery, sudden bursts of insight, and intense memories. Researchers such as Elmer and Alyce Green at the Menninger Foundation have found going into theta regularly somehow enhances immune functioning, heightens creativity, and can facilitate profound "integrative experiences" and life transforming moments. Erickson the hypnotherapist seized on these moments of common everyday trance to implant life-changing suggestions in the minds of his clients - the secret to his so-called "miracle cures". More recently, researchers have found that the theta state is characterized by hypersuggestibility and hyperreceptivity. It is, they have discovered, a state in which suggestions for behavioral change can have dramatic and longlasting effects. Again, by using MTs to accentuate, augment and deepen the body's natural theta state, we can learn to quickly and reliably put ourselves into hyper-receptive states. At these times, by combining MTs with suggestions to ourselves - verbally or in the form of images or feelings - we can intensify our Common Everyday Trance to implant powerful messages for personal growth, healing and transformation. We will explore a variety of techniques for using MTs to reach states of deep relaxation in the next chapter. By being aware that we have a natural tendency to be more pessimistic and to underestimate our own powers while in our trough, we can reassure ourselves and take a more realistic view of ourselves and our situation. Awareness of our position on the life wave helps us avoid being discouraged or disheartened, since we can remind ourselves that our current life rhythm causes us to see things a bit pessimistically. PEAKING THE PEAKS Once you've become aware of the rise and fall of your ultradian life wave, you'll be ready to "seize the hour" and make the most effective use of those times when you are at your peak. These are the times to undertake your most challenging tasks, to take advantage of your position atop the mountain peak to take a panoramic view of your life, to use your energies and enthusiasm to communicate your ideas and vi sions

clearly and compellingly to others. These are the times to schedule your important meetings, to set personal records, to exercise, to be with friends, to make love. But it's also useful to be aware that at these times we can be unrealistically optimistic, and overestimate our own powers. By being aware of this tendancy as it arises at our life-wave peak, we can remain optimistic, but temper our natural confidence with realism. The most common use of MTs is during the natural healing periods, the troughs. By using MTs to get the most out of these periods of profound rest and regeneration, you will have more energy, more power, more intelligence and more creativity for these peak moments: by troughing the troughs, you peak your peaks. But there are a variety of ways you can actively use MT during your peaks to increase the power and effectiveness of these heightened moments. Some of these involve activating "anchors" or using "cues" or personal signals to trigger heightened states that you have prepared yourself for in earlier MT sessions. We will explore the use of anchors, cues and post-hypnotic suggestions in later chapters. AROUSAL AND FLOW. It has been repeatedly verified that peak performance depends on optimal levels of arousal. Too much arousal is experienced as anxiety, and can cause performance anxiety, stage fright or choking, and performance deteriorates. Too little arousal means you're simply not alert enough - too laid back or too bored - to deliver a peak performance. One of the most valuable functions of MTs is as tools for controling arousal. A variety of MTs permit the user to either turn arousal levels up or down (by increasing or decreasing the frequency of the light flashes or the binaural beats, for example). So once you've mapped out your life wave, and are aware of your peak periods, you can make appropriate use of MTs. If you have to give a speech or make a presentation and your arousal levels are too high or too low, you can alter your levels of arousal until you feel you're at a level that is just right. We will look more closely at a number of techniques for altering arousal and maximizing your peak performance periods in Chapter 18, "Becoming the Ultimate Athlete." ULTRADIAN BREATHWORKS As we noted earlier, one key ultradian cycle is the wavelike shift in hemispheric dominance. Over a period that averages 120 minutes, but that can vary from 25 to 200 minutes, dominance shifts back and forth between hemispheres. Research by neuroscientist David Shannahoff-Khalsa of Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and others suggests that this dominance is mirrored by shifts in the flow of breath through the right and left nostril. In general, because the brain is "cross-wired" with the body (i.e. right hemisphere linked to the left half of the body, left hemisphere linked to right body) when the right nostril is more open - i.e. breath flows more easily through it - the left brain hemisphere is dominant, and vice versa. This discovery, as Shannahoff-Khalsa observed, "suggests we can exert more control over our day-to-day mental functioning. For example, certain cognitive functions, such as language skills, mathematics and other rational processes that are thought to be primarily localized in the left hemisphere" might be boosted by "forcibly altering" our cerebral dominance. And in the same way we might "accentuate the creativity that is thought to be characteristic of right-hemisphere dominance," through similar forcible altering. Chinese scholar and student of Taoism Daniel P. Reid points out that "Taoists have been aware of this for millennia." Reid notes that Taoist teachings have traditionally emphasized that "When air flows in through the right nostril, the body is geared for action. When air flows in through the left side, the body is prepared for physically passive mental functions. In Taoist parlance, the left nostril is identified with Yin, the right with Yang." In the Taoist tradition, Yin represents darkness, passivity, receptivity, woman, water, earth, softness, contraction, coldness, and is clearly congruent with our modern concept of the qualities of the right hemisphere. In the Taoist tradition Yang represents light, activity, resistance, hardness, expansion, outward movement, man, fire, heaven, and is also certainly in line with our modern view of the left hemisphere's logical, linear, verbal, happy, extraverted qualities. Like neuroscientist Shannahof-Khalsa, Taoist masters advise maintaining an equilibrium of Yin and Yang energies throughout the body by forcefully altering and balancing the flow of air through the nostrils. One technique for doing this is an ancient yogi pranayama practice: breathing solely through the right nostril to activate the left hemisphere (the yogis called this the "sun breath") or through the left nostril to activate the right hemisphere ("moon breath"). This can also be done by lying down on the side that is clear and breathing deeply through the nose - that is, lying on your right side will tend to open up your left nostril. Another technique is one I described in Chapter 3, forcibly grinning or contorting one side of the face, to activate the opposite side hemisphere. It is possible to use certain MTs to learn to selectively activate areas of the brain or specific hemispheres. Biofeedback specialists have found that, when they are given EEG feedback from specific areas of the brain, most people can learn to activate certain areas. Some of the biofeedback EEGs described earlier can be used as training tools for learning to activate specific hemispheres or areas of the brain. By using MTs to heighten our sensitivity to our rhythmic shifts of hemispheric dominance, just as we used MTs to increase our awareness of our ultradian life wave, we can learn to make optimal use of the particular powers of each brain hemisphere.

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN HEMISPHERES AND THE REST-ACTIVITY CYCLE Since the rhythm of the shift of hemispheric dominance may be shorter or longer than the rhythm of our 90to-120-minute ultradian life wave, we will find ourselves becoming aware of a variety of potential mind-body states as the two separate cycles move into different relationships between themselves. For example, many people find that reaching the peak in our basic rest-activity life wave, with its accompanying high physical energy, while the right hemisphere is dominant in the brain, seems to produce emotionally charged, highly creative and productive states. Peaking out in the rest-activity cycle while in a left-dominant state, on the other hand, can produce a more euphoric, extroverted state of absolute self-confidence and self-assurance. Tuning the Demons of the Double Whammy. For those who are not aware of the effects of their ultradian life wave and the characteristics of right hemisphere dominance, being in a right-hemisphere dominant state while going through the trough, or the bottom of the wave, can produce a sort of "double whammy" that is experienced as depression, fatigue or unpredictable mood-swings. On the other hand, once we've become aware of the potentials of this combination, we can use it, and "tune" it with a MT to project ourselves into deeply introspective states in which we find unexpected flashes of insight, or gain access to highly emotional images and memories. Theoretically, learning how to consciously control hemispheric dominance can be a powerful tool for boosting our ability to deal most effectively with the task at hand. If you're going into a conference, taking a written test, or faced with some other task that requires left hemisphere capabilities, and you find that you are in a right hemisphere dominant phase, for example, you might want to shift quickly into left hemisphere dominance. THE SYNERGY OF BALANCE However, as I mentioned in our earlier discussion, perhaps the most powerful application of MT to hemispheric dominance is to create a state of hemispheric balance. It's been discovered that during each cycle of shifting hemispheric dominance there is a period of time during which dominance is equally balanced between both hemispheres. And, researchers have suggested, it is during this period of time that the brain is at its most fertile and creative. Two brains are better than one. The two hemispheres are complementary, and when working together produce synergy, defined by Buckminster Fuller as "behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts." Whether we are in a peak period of our ultradian life wave or going through a trough period of deep rest and recuperation, we are at our best when the two hemispheres are functioning together, synergistically. In his studies of the brain wave patterns of hundreds of peak performance individuals, those with an Awakened Mind, C. Maxwell Cade found that "all the unusual abilities that some people are able to manifest ... are associated with changes in the EEG pattern toward a more bilaterally symmetrical and integrated form." As noted above, it's also clear that the sides of the body itself shift dominance regularly. It makes sense to believe that just as brain symmetry and integration of both hemispheres seem to be linked to peak brain performance, so the integration of the right and left sides of the body are keys to peak physical performance. Says David Shannahoff Khalsa, who discovered the switch in dominance of body sides, it may be crucial to identify and make use of the "crossover point." "My chief interest," he sais, "is in finding measureable changes that correlate with yogic medicine. The yogi, of course, tries to maintain a 'life force' understood to be the optimal balance of the two sides." It's clear that a highly integrated brain, a brain in which both hemispheres are functioning in symmetry, synchrony, harmony and unity is a key to peak states and peak human performance. The same may be true of physical balance between the two sides of the body. But throughout history, humans have found that it's not easy to intentionally bring both hemispheres to bear simultaneously (or to reach that ideal point of physical balance when both sides of the body are working together with optimal coordination). Much of our lives we spend swinging back and forth between left dominant states and right dominant states. This is where MTs represent a real breakthrough: they can effectively produce more symmetrical, balanced brainwave dominance. It's probable that they can also help the body become more integrated and balanced between right and left. And, the evidence suggests, by doing so they can assist in producing the optimal states associated with whole-brain, whole- body integration. SIDEBAR:

ULTRADIAN RHYTHMS AND OPTIMAL LEARNING PICKING THE RIGHT TIME One example of how being aware of your personal ultradian rhythm can enhance your MT use is in the area of accelerated learning. In the last few issues of Megabrain Report (such as in "Beyond Entertainment: How to Use Mind Machines for Peak Performance," MBR #4) I presented a number of strategies for using MT for

accelerated learning, including suggestions for In-Session Learning (presenting the material to be learned while actually in-session with your mind technology), Post-Session Learning, and Pre-Session Learning. Below are some suggestions for how you can enhance your learning powers by timing your sessions in accordance with your Life Wife. IN-SESSION LEARNING If you have charted out your Life Wave, or are generally aware of your ultradian rhythm cycle, you will be able to pick out the best times for accelerated learning sessions with your MT. For learning information that requires your active participation or attention, the best times are the 20-45 minutes after you have hit the peak of your wave. This period, while you're on the downslope of your ultradian rest-activity cycle, but before you hit your drowsy 20 minute trough, is a time you can relax easily, yet remain attentive enough to absorb the information well. The drowsy dreamlike trough period that follows then permits the information you have absorbed to consolidate and "set" in long term memory. Another good spot for active learning is the 30 minutes or so after you emerge from your ultradian trough. For learning that has to do with changing attitudes and beliefs, and other types of learning that you want to bypass your conscious mind and get directly into your unconscious, the 20 minute ultradian trough, with its natural increase in theta activity, and trance-associated increase in suggestibility is the ideal time. Many people find that they learn more rapidly and effectively when they receive the material in different states, ranging from relaxed alertness to drowsy twilight states. The best technique is to begin presenting the material to be learned while on the downslope of your ultradian cycle, continue presenting the material throughout the 20 minute trough period, and continue on into the upswing. POST SESSION LEARNING Since you want to emerge from your MT session rested, alert and lucid, you may benefit by timing your MT use to coincide with the trough period of your ultradian rest-activity cycle. This will permit you to emerge as your Life Wave is swinging upward toward its peak. The average (i.e. non-existent) person whose waking day ranges from about 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., might time this pre-learning MT session to take place during the midmorning slump/coffee break (usually around 10:30 a.m.), the after lunch daze (about 1:30 p.m.), the midafternoon siesta (about 3:30 p.m.), or the after- work recovery period (about 5:30 to 7 p.m.). PRE-SESSION LEARNING An ideal period for studying or presenting the material to be learned is when you are at your peak or moving past your peak. After a learning period ranging from a few minutes to 45 minutes, you will feel when your energies and attention is flagging. That's the time to begin your MT session, which should last through your ultradian trough period. Ideally your MT session should last for an hour, during which time the material can be assimilated without facing competing stimuli, thus permitting the "reminiscence effect." This relaxed session will permit you to emerge feeling refreshed and alert, with the material now a permanent part of your memory. Upon emerging, you may find it helpful to take a brief period to review the materials you learned prior to the session.

RECENT STUDIES IN SOUND AND LIGHT

by Julian Isaacs, Ph.D.

As Megabrain Report readers will be aware, light-and-sound devices (L/S) appear to be effective in promoting relaxation and stress reduction, and are also reportedly being used to facilitate a wide range of other functions including imagery production, intuition, creativity, accelerated learning, insomnia control, psychotherapy, hypnosis and the remediation of attention deficit disorder (ADD). While the effectiveness of S/L for relaxation appears reasonably well established, most of the other uses remain undocumented in terms of formal high quality research. This is one of the consequences of the newness of the technology and its marginal status within the academic community, leading to a lack of funding for investigation of S/L in university settings. However, a number of pioneers are establishing some very interesting preliminary evidence for possible applications of S/L, and a brief review of some recent studies may be useful in communicating the wide scope of the growing applications of S/L. All but one of the studies reviewed here have to be considered as pilot studies because they suffer from major limitations which prevent the cautious researcher from feeling certain that the effects reported were unambiguously due to the L/S treatment. But my point here is not to harp upon the weaknesses (IMPERFECTIONS OR SHORTCOMINGS) of these investigations, but rather to suggest that they be used to help guide the design of more controlled and extensive future research. AUTISM. The first two studies I shall review were conducted by Dr. Ruth Olmstead of San Diego. In her "Autism Study" she informally documents case studies of three autistic individuals, two children and a man. Autism is a little understood condition with early childhood onset where individuals appear to be out of contact with their environment, unable to integrate sensory inputs or to learn very effectively, do not relate to others, and are difficult to manage. The condition is also very resistant to treatment so that improvements of any sort are rare and therefore potentially significant. Dr. Olmstead used a DAVID 1 device and found marked improvements in all three cases she treated. Her first patient was a boy of 11, described as a low-functioning autistic with very poor communication skills who showed violent mood swings and frequent tantrums when she first encountered him (his father had to hold him down on the floor for 20 minutes during the first meeting!). After a total of 29 sessions of 35 minutes over a period of 8 months Dr. Olmstead reports that she "witnessed remarkable changes in his alertness level and in his ability to handle his environment without tantrums and aggressive behavior... he has not only demonstrated affectionate behavior with his father - previously not seen - but has also initiated personal contact with me, including hugs, taking and holding my hand, and clearly showing pleasure in arriving for his sessions". The second patient, a 28 year old man, had much better initial functioning but found it very difficult to communicate emotionally and lacked confidence in his ability to learn. After 21 sessions over a period of 10 months he became better able to integrate his internal states and halfway through treatment enrolled in a community college and "surprised himself" by his ability to keep up with the written text and by his ability to comprehend instructions. The third patient, another boy, had been evaluated as borderline autistic. He had very poor speech articulation and vocabulary, frequent tantrums and abnormal eating and sleeping patterns. After 16 DAVID 1 sessions over a period of nine months he was much calmer and no longer hyperactive, exhibited greatly improved speech articulation and vocabulary and had normalised his sleeping patterns. These results are very promising and certainly deserve follow-up by other professionals treating autistic patients. DYSLEXIA AND ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER. Dr. Olmstead's second paper, jointly authored with Aaron Kaufman D.O., "A Preliminary Report on a New Non-Drug Approach to the Treatment of Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder" very briefly outlines her past year's work using the DAVID 1. She reports using the device for treatment of early Alzheimer's disease, migraine, Meniere's disease, depression, emotional disorders, cerebral palsy and whiplash injuries, with overall "moderate to complete improvement". However, most of the two page report deals with the use of L/S

for correction of attention deficit disorder and dyslexia, with "essential cure of these disorders in virtually all cases treated" - a far-reaching claim ! Dr Olmstead has now created a special ADD program for the DAVID Paradise, together with an explanatory booklet and tape of relaxing music. Dr Olmstead's ADD program differs from the "classic" ADD L/S program developed by John Carter and Harold Russell, the original pioneers in the use of S/L for ADD. [For more information about Russell and Carter's use of S/L for treatment of ADD, see "Brain Tech Breakthroughs in Treating Learning Disorders," MBR #4 pp. 24- 25.] Her program consists of a relaxation L/S program to be used in conjunction with a special relaxation tape having music on it, combined with binaural beats. There is also an instructional booklet packaged with the tape. By contrast, the ADD program available from Synetics Systems, in their Mastermind devices, is in the classic pattern pioneered by Russell and Carter, in which half a minute of 10 Hz stimulation alternates with half a minute of 18 Hz stimulation for a total of 20 minutes. This latter is available through Tools For Exploration, although the user has to contact Russell and Carter's clinic for remote diagnosis, after which a release for the device is then generated. STRESS REDUCTION. The next group of five reports originate from two clinical psychologists, Drs Juan Abascal and Laurel Brucato, using the Synchro-Energizer and the DAVID in Miami at the Miami-Dade Community College and at Mind/World (now Mindworks), a psychotherapy and stress reduction center in Miami. The research was performed between 1989 and 1991. The reported studies are of variable quality, athough Drs Abascal and Brucato should be congratulated on some imaginative and trail-blazing work. In "Mindworld Study #2", done with co-experimenters Dominic Brucato, Sarah Cornell Abascal and Gerald Stephens, they document a pilot investigation of the use of S/L for stress reduction with 5 officers of the Metro-Dade Police Department. The treated group was given 10 L/S sessions of 35 minutes, together with two nutritional consultations, two consultations with a staff psychologist regarding goal setting and a massage. Prior to the start of the first session and after the end of the last session four physiological and two psychological measures were taken: heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension (EMG), skin temperature, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Coping Resources Inventory. This battery of measures seems a good choice, although the addition of an EEG channel and skin electrical conductance measure would have made the relaxation measures more complete (and more work to administer!). The treated group showed statistically significant reductions in heart rate compared to the 6 officers who served as controls. However, like some of their other reported studies, this study has some limitations. The most obvious problems are that first, the control group was composed of officers who originally were to participate in the study, had one session and then refused to participate further. The control group was therefore self-selected and this conceivably could have ensured that its members were less able to acknowledge and handle stress than the group which cooperated and became subjects. It is a definite no-no in experimental design to allow some non-random process to decide membership of the treatment and control groups, although one sympathises with the experimenters who were clearly very pressed for time and resources. Second, the post-treatment measures were performed immediately after the treated group's last relaxation session, so that it is very likely that the slower heart rate measured then was due to the session just completed, rather than being a sign of a longer term increase in relaxation level, yet it is the latter hypothesis which presumably was tested (the closest the write-up gets to specifying a formal hypothesis is: "pilot studies are being conducted in industry to determine what benefits can accrue from the regular practice of relaxation with L/S"). Third, the post treatment measures on the control group were performed several months after they were performed for the treated group. In this kind of study it's essential that the measurements on the two groups be performed at the same time because other factors could have elevated the control group's stress levels in the intervening period. These features of the study should lead to caution in interpreting the reported results. The next report by Drs Abascal and Brucato, "Results of Study #3 - Effects of 10 Mindflights" is a one page report of work in progress (the statistical analyses had not been performed when the report was written). Thirteen members of the Metro-Dade Police Department were given 10 L/S sessions and nutritional, counseling and massage sessions, similarly to study #2. No control group was utilised, so results have to be treated with caution since S/L probably has powerful placebo effects associated with it. The treated group showed a possibly significant reduction in heart rate (subject to the reservations expressed above about the

measures being taken immediately after the last relaxation session) and a substantial increase in available coping resources as measured by the Coping Resources Inventory. ANXIETY. In a single page abstract of Mindworld Study #4, "A Comparison of High Vs. Low Anxious Subjects in Response to Brainwave Synchronizer Assisted Relaxation Training", the authors report an unanalysed study in which the 41 college student subjects were split into three groups (low, medium and high anxious). The authors hypothesised that the high anxious group would show the greatest increase in relaxation levels, using the four measures of heart rate, blood pressure, state- trait anxiety (STAI) and Coping Resources. It was hypothesised that low anxious subjects might not show pronounced relaxation responses to the L/S treatment because they were already in relaxed states. Subjects were given 8 L/S sessions of 35 minutes. The results, although not statistically analysed at the time of the abstract's writing, were reported to favor the authors' hypothesis, with the self-report psychological measures (state-trait anxiety and Coping Resources measures) showing larger effects than the physiological measures which were predicted to be non significant. In their fourth and most fully written up study, "The Effects of Multiple Afferent Sensory Stimulation Enhanced Relaxation", Abscal and Brucato split their subject population of 33 Miami Dade Community College students into three groups, each of which performed six experimental sessions. One group received L/S treatment together with music (the "Mindflight" treatment), the first control group listened to the same music for the same length of time and the second control group rested quietly for the same length of time. Using this design enabled the component of relaxation due exclusively to the L/S treatment to be somewhat separated from that due to the music or to resting in a reclining position. However, the authors correctly point out that there could have been a placebo response favoring the L/S treatment because of its novelty and from subjects' expectation of relaxation from its use, since the L/S treatment was described as a "new and innovative technological breakthrough in relaxation" in the description of the study given to subjects as part of their orientation. The investigators did attempt to engender the same expectations in the two control groups, and apparently were successful in doing so, since all subjects thought that they were in the experimental treatment group, but the actual experience was surely very different for the group using L/S. The results of the study appeared to favor the combined L/S and music ("Mindflight") treatment. The measures used were heart rate, blood pressure, state-trait anxiety and Coping Resources. The heart rate measure was significant only for the L/S group and showed a reduction between pre session 1 and post session 6, but similarly to the other studies reviewed, the authors made this measurement right after the last relaxation session, thus confounding the long term establishment of a lower heart rate with short term effects from the session just completed. The authors reported that the skin temperature measures were confounded by differences in ambient temperatures in the rooms used for running the subjects. The blood pressure measure was not significant but the L/S group showed the largest decline over time. This would be an important factor to investigate in further research, since Herbert Benson in his work on the Relaxation Response established that regular meditation could lower blood pressure. Perhaps the most interesting results were those relating to the three psychological measures, state anxiety, trait anxiety and Coping Resources. Two groups showed significant reductions in state anxiety (anxiety experienced right at the time the questionnaire was administered), these being the L/S group and, surprisingly, the "just resting" group. As the authors point out, it is very likely that subjects in experimental sessions would experience less state anxiety in successive sessions, as they became comfortable with the session protocol. However, only the L/S group showed a significant reduction of trait anxiety. Trait anxiety is supposed to measure the long term disposition of individuals to experience anxiety, and is generally fairly stable over relatively short periods of time, so this result might be indicative of some cumulative reduction of anxiety in the L/S group. Similarly, only the L/S group reported a significant increase in coping resources, which seems to suggest that at the least, the L/S group perceived themselves as being less stressed by events after the series of L/S sessions than before, a promising result. In "The Therapeutic Uses of Light and Sound", the authors present a very interesting three page summary of their clinical findings regarding the use of L/S in psychotherapeutic applications. The summary is a preview of the series of reports which the authors intend to produce, detailing their clinical uses of S/L, which will eventually be compiled into a book. The authors have developed a stress-management "Core Program" which teaches relaxation training and "cognitive/behavioral interventions focusing on the development of internal locus of control and stress hardiness attitudes". Brucato and Abascal believe that L/S provides the quickest and most effective technique for producing deep relaxation and is superior to traditional relaxation techniques like progressive relaxation or autogenic training because it provides a much more interesting and

entertaining experience, reducing the likelihood of clients becoming bored and resistant. Because L/S is so effective in creating the relaxation response they recommend it for any counter-conditioning procedure where the client learns to remain relaxed in the presence of previously anxiety-inducing stimuli (as in Systematic Desensitization for phobias) and for application in treating anxiety based disorders such as phobias, insomnia, post-traumatic stress reactions, sexual dysfunctions, psychosomatic disorders, depression and pain. They also strongly recommend L/S for hypnosis where it helps to initiate and maintain trance as well as facilitating hypnotic age regression and imagery formation. They close their report by predicting that L/S will become a standard clinical tool by the mid 1990s. CHRONIC PAIN. The last paper I shall review here, "The Use of Repetitive Audiovisual Entrainment in the Management of Chronic Pain" was authored by Frederick Boesma and Constance Gagnon of the University of Alberta's Department of Educational Psychology. In their review of the chronic pain literature they remind the reader of the relationship between the psychological impact of chronic pain, methods of treatment and the perception of pain. Pain causes more suffering when the sufferer feels unequipped to deal with it - that the pain is out of their control. They also point out that treatment of chronic pain which is only medication centered may establish a vicious cycle of pain because the use of high levels of pain medication probably depresses the individual's natural production of endorphins, leading to a lowering of pain thresholds in the absence of medication. Effective treatment of chronic pain requires that the responsibility for pain control be shared between the patient and the medical profession - leaving all control in the hands of the doctor exacerbates the learned helplessness and consequent depression which tends to be created by chronic intractable pain. The investigators then review some research demonstrating that trance, relaxation and imagery procedures can elevate endorphin levels. These considerations provided the rationale for their study which was based on the loaning of DAVID Paradise L/S units to three chronic pain patients for use at their discretion. In this way the authors hoped to provide both an effective means for sufferers to rapidly reduce their pain by relaxation in the short term, and in the longer term to change their perceived control over the pain, providing weapons for fighting pain which the sufferers could use at their own discretion, reducing their helplessness, anxiety and depression and restoring some sense of control over the pain. The study followed three male chronic pain patients over periods of 9 to 17 months. Progress during treatment was monitored on three sets of variables: (i) the DAVID (helpfulness and use); (ii) Stress (amount of physical pain, medication usage, suicide ideation, anxiety/stress); and (iii) quality-of-life (coping ability, hopefulness, self esteem, family stability, rest/sleep). The participants were asked to rate these variables subjectively on a ten-point scale with 10 being the maximum and zero the minimum value. At each weekly visit to the pain clinic they were asked to report the magnitude of each factor and monthly scores were computed for each variable and plotted to reveal the effect of L/S treatment. Interestingly, the authors report that DAVID L/S treatment using blue filters "was more conducive to entrainment than red filters which tended to exacerbate pain and cause side effects such as headaches". The three patients were instructed to use their DAVID at least twice per day. For the first few sessions Ericksonian dual induction relaxation tapes were used (similarly to the HPP or Changeworks tapes). At the outset of the study all three individuals experienced much pain and stress caused by the disabling and psychological effects of their pain, to the point that two of them were seriously contemplating suicide. Although the data collected shows complex patterns, since pain is determined by many factors, including the patients' tendencies towards re-injuring themselves or performing activities until they became intolerably painful, the overall assessment of the usefulness of L/S given by all the men was very positive. The effect of L/S did not seem to diminish with time, but seemed to improve in effectiveness with use, as the patients learned to relax. The men's use of medication diminished and they learned to tailor the application of L/S to their own specific needs. Consistent usage of L/S seemed to be associated with lower pain levels, easier sleep and improved handling of stress. Long term usage seemed to reduce and then abolish the incidence of thoughts of suicide. The patients also reported that learning how to use L/S has given them greater control over their lives. In conclusion, the results of the studies reviewed are very encouraging. However, it gives pause for thought to appreciate that these studies were not supported by any external funding and that consequently they had to be conducted in a less exacting fashion than would have been possible if adequate funding had been available. In addition, the studies have not been published and there seems to be no professional journal available which unites all of the varieties of psychotechnology and provi des a medium of communication for this field. What is needed is an adequate forum for the publication of professional research into the

applications of psychotechnology and much more funding for the exploration of what is surely a rich field for investigation. Sooner or later a professional association and publication will be founded and at that point the field will start to consolidate. Until that time, it is to be hoped that interested professionals will continue to communicate their researches to Megabrain Report, which at present offers the only readily available outlet for news of psychotechnological research.

TOOLS FOR EVOLUTION ?

by Michael Hutchison

Mind technology is evolving rapidly. New tools and techniques are emerging with dizzying speed. There's a sense of constant innovation that feels very much like the excitement of the early years of the development of the personal computer. The Democratization of the Metanormal? There's no doubt we're in the midst of an unprecedented explosion of mind technology exploration and development. Many scientists and cultural analysts now believe such mind-enhancing devices may represent a historic breakthrough in human development. Think of the enormous implications: tools that will allow large numbers of humans to function consistently at levels of mental efficiency, creativity and intelligence that have in the past been attained only by the gifted few. It would be what Michael Murphy calls "a democratization of the metanormal." If such devices really do work, they could change not only our lives, but our concept of what it is to be human. Says Michael Murphy, "there's overwhelming evidence that most if not all of our human attributes have extraordinary or seemingly miraculous versions. We can now recognize the pattern of the extraordinary in human life to a degree that people in former times could not. From this pattern we begin to discern the outlines of a possible future, a future in which the extraordinary could become commonplace." Mind technology, it now appears, may be the means by which the extraordinary becomes commonplace. Imagine a world in which peak performance states have become commonplace, in which most humans use "nonordinary" capacities and powers much of the time. It would be different from our world not just by a matter of degrees, but qualitatively and essentially different - a new reality. What we are envisioning, of course, is a dramatic evolutionary leap, a radically new and different sort of life on this planet. The development of these extraordinary capacities, in Murphy's words, "herald an evolutionary transcendence. With them, a new level of existence has begun to appear on earth, one whose patterns cannot be adequately specified by physics, biology, or mainstream social science. Just as life once developed from inorganic elements and as humans developed from our primate ancestors, so now a new evolutionary domain is tentatively rising in the human race." ROOT HOG OR DIE I believe there's an evolutionary explanation for our culture's increasing fascination with tools for increasing mental powers. A driving force of evolution has been the process of adaptation to environmental pressures. Under the pressure of environmental changes - a climate growing colder or warmer, dryer or wetter - species either adapt or become extinct. It's a process evolutionary biologists call "environmental selection," and what others have called "survival of the fittest." Evolution is a ceaseless process. There is no guarantee that humans will continue to be a part of that process. Today we are under the pressure of enormous, unprecedented environmental changes. Our survival is uncertain. Over the past few million years, humans have responded to environmental pressures by developing new tools that gave them an advantage over other species - fire, flint stones, gathering bags, weapons. Perhaps today the humans "fittest" to survive are not the strongest or best hunters, but those most imaginative, adaptive, and capable of developing strategies to insure the survival of themselves, their offspring and (not incidentally) the species. The unprecedented problems the world faces today demand mental solutions, new ideas. Human survival may depend on our ability to increase our mental powers and develop new strategies for overcoming our present crises. That is to say, evolution may involve developing new mental powers. Perhaps we have reached our species'"childhood's end". Seen in this light, mind machines, devices that enhance our mental powers, may be seen as evolutionary instruments - tools for human survival. WAKING FROM THE DREAM

One way they may serve as evolutionary tools is by simply increasing our intelligence - making us smarter, able to create even better tools and devise better strategies for survival in this world, in this solar system, in this galaxy, in this universe. But they may serve as tools of evolution in another way - by providing us access to extraordinary states of consciousness that are themselves gateways into an entirely different sort of reality, in which questions of evolution and survival take on entirely new meanings. As the scientists investigating consciousness have discovered, the ordinary concept we have of human consciousness as something contained inside the human skull simply does not apply when we move into nonordinary states of consciousness - states such as may be experienced using mind machines, or reached through hypnosis, meditation, or the use of psychedelic drugs. In such states, reported by an immense number of people over the ages, it becomes clear that human consciousness is not bound by either the concepts of the realities of space and time. Stanislav Grof, M.D., observes that, "Modern consciousness research reveals that our psyches have no real and absolute boundaries; on the contrary, we are part of an infinite field of consciousness that eoncompasses all there is - beyond space-time and into realities we have yet to explore." Exploration of heightened states of consciousness using mind technology confirms for many that our consensus "reality" is only one aspect of existence. For most, the experience of this reality "beyond spacetime" is one of transcendence. The Mystical Revelations of Michael Jackson. The human spiritual craving or transcendental impulse, says Grof is "the most vital and powerful force in human beings." But it is a force that has been systematically repressed and denied by western culture, derided as superstition, wishful thinking and even pathological delusion. When such a powerful human force is repressed, it emerges in other forms. When people cannot transcend their individual identities and feel themselves a part of a larger, timeless whole, they will abandon their individual identities in other ways, and seek to feel part of a larger entity. It doesn't take a genius to look around and see a civilization in which most people willingly abandon their individual identities to lose themselves in television fantasies; in which mass entertainment substitutes for transpersonal experience; in which drugs, violence, soap opera, Michael Jackson, Oprah and the Super Bowl are the main socially approved paths to non-ordinary states of consciousness. Denied direct, transcendent experience "beyond space-time," we attempt to transcend (or escape) material reality by making our world itself something beyond space-time - a dream. As writer Michael Ventura observes, "We in the late 20th century live in the time-space of the dream. The dream's instantaneous changes, its unpredictable metamorphoses, random violence, archetypal sex; its constant cascade of supercharged imagery; its threatening sense of multiple meaning. For a quarter of a million years the dreamscape surrounded us only in our sleep, or in arts experienced by the very few, or in very carefully orchestrated religious rituals. Now, in our electronic environment, the dreamworld greets us when we open our eyes... What distinguishes the 20th century is that each individual life is a daily progression through a concrete but fluctuating landscape of the psyche's projections. The surrealism, simultaneity, sexuality and instantaneous change that occur in our dreams also occur all around us. So the condition of our subconscious is now also the condition of this physical environment we've built for ourselves... We reel between dream and dream - between the dreams of our sleep that speak to us alone and the dreamscape of this waking world in which we make our way through millions of dream fragments that collide around us..." The Democratization of the Abnormal. Michael Murphy talked of a "new evolutionary domain" in which the extraordinary becomes commonplace - a democratization of the metanormal. But, denied access to the transcendent, ours has become world in which another more sinister sort of extraordinary has become commonplace - a democratization of the abnormal. But the way out of the dream, of course, is to wake up. Says Grof, "Experiential self-exploration is an important tool for a spiritual and philosophical quest. It can mediate the connection with the transpersonal domain of one's own being and of existence." Many have found that mind technology provides an effective tool for experiential self-exploration. To some it may seem odd and paradoxical that machines - the synthetic, hard, material devices of this electronic temporal reality - may serve as gateways to the spirit, tools of transcendence. But in fact this fusion of spirituality, or the "inner quest," and science, the "external quest," is the central force of the emerging new paradigm. Again I quote Stanislav Grof (whose work and writings, including Adventures in Self Discovery and his recent The Holotropic Mind, are at once visionary and supremely practical): "The rapidly processing convergence between the new science and the mystical traditions of the perennial philosophy offers an exciting perspective of a future comprehensive worldview that will heal the gap between scientific research and spiritual quest. Such an encompassing new paradigm could become an important catalyst in the evolution of consciousness that seeems to be a critical condition for the survival of life on this planet."

MEGABRAIN "SOFTWARE" PROGRAMS, APPLICATIONS AND TECHNIQUES

by Michael Hutchison

In "Beyond Entertainment: How to Use Mind Machines for Peak Performance and Self-Transformation," published in MBR #4, I presented a variety of "Techniques for Making Mind Machines a Powerful Tool for Attaining Specific Goals and Improving Your Mind." The article contained some strategies, systems, applications and techniques for using mind tools for deep relaxation, breath awareness, mindfulness, accelerated learning, self-hypnosis and suggestion, self-regulation and exploration, pain relief, rescripting, and focusing. I promised that in future issues there would be more information about these and other techniques and applications. The accompanying article is the next step in what will be a continuing series of techniques, applications and procedures for the use of mind technology.. As I observed in MBR #4, one key to the mass popularity of PCs was the development of a huge variety of software - programs that enabled users to apply the massive computing power of the hardware toward specific tasks, ranging from word processing to spreadsheets to publishing to game playing. Without such software, the hardware would have remained virtually inaccessible to most users. Today, the hardware of brain technology exists. What has been lacking is the software - the programs or systems or techniques or operating environments that will allow the user of the mind machine to apply its sophisticated circuitry toward specific tasks and applications. What follows are some mind machine programs, or what I'm calling Megabrain Software In general, and except where otherwise noted, Megabrain Software programs are effective with virtually all of the mind technologies now available, including light/sound, binaural beats, cranial electrostimulation, movement devices, acoustic field generators, flotation tanks, ganzfelds, biofeedback. What's more, they're also effective with various combinations of brain technology used synergistically (i.e. light/sound stimulation while on a motion system, CES with a ganzfeld, binaural beats and hypno-subliminal audiotapes while floating, and so on). For convenience and brevity, I use the abbreviation MT - for mind technology or Megabrain tool - and it will refer to all the varieties of MTs mentioned above. END SIDEBAR

RESCRIPTING: FROM YOUR BRAIN TO MEGABRAIN: THE USERS' GUIDE TO MIND MACHINES Most people live ... in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. - William James Varieties of Religious Experience In "Beyond Entertainment: How to Use Mind Machines for Peak Performance and Self-Transformation," MEGABRAIN REPORT #4, I presented a variety of techniques for using mind tools for personal growth. That article stated that I would provide more in-depth treatements and explorations of some of those techniques in future issues of MRB. Since the process called Rescripting aroused considerable interest among readers, what follows is more information about Rescripting. SCRIPTS AND IMPRINTS All of us have certain chronic or recurrent states and behaviors that we would like to change. Some of these may be harmful, self- defeating, self-destructive or habitual states and behavior patterns. Or, they may

simply be states or behaviors that we have found to be unfulfilling, or unrewarding, or that keep us from living up to our full human potential. These unsatisfactory states or behaviors are often the result of experiences that have been imprinted on our psyches in moments when we were highly receptive or suggestible - particularly in childhood. Knowing what we do about mental imagery, and how our mind tends to work in terms of a progression of mental images, and being raised as we have been in a world of movies and television shows, it makes sense to speak of these internally guided behaviors as scripts. Since rescripting is such a powerful therapeutic tool for changing harmful or unwanted behaviors, I had initially thought about presenting it in Part Four of the book, which deals specifically with therapeutic applications of mind tools. However, rescripting is so useful for non-therapeutic uses - such as enhancing athletic skills, learning abilities, creativity, and helping you attain peak performance states - that I felt it was important to present the techniques now. Let's take for an example the imprints having to do with the expression of sexual energies. As sex researcher John Money of Johns Hopkins notes, "Perfectly nice, reasonable mothers and fathers go berserk when they encounter the first appearance of normal sexual rehearsal play in their children." The scene might seem to be innocuous: The infant begins to do something that is perfectly natural, perhaps playing with its genitals. A parent notices the child's sex play and immediately threatens or punishes it in some way, by shouting at it in an angry voice, or by slapping its hands or shaking it. At that point an imprint is created. Perhaps the parent shouts, "You're bad!" or "You're naughty!" At that point a script has been laid down. As a result, the child's feelings about sex are altered in a way that will influence its behavior for the rest of its life, and thereafter sex is linked with feelings of guilt, fear, or being bad or naughty. Or, a young girl is scolded and spanked by her father for disobeying him. He shouts at her that she must learn to obey him. A script is laid down. Years later in her adult life, the woman finds herself acting out that script, in which pain, fear, humiliation, rebellion and anger are automatically activated any time a male says something to her in a disapproving tone of voice, or from a position of authority, and she responds with inappropriate rage. That is to say, many of our unwanted, harmful or negative states and behavi ors are the result of conditioning. If we could remember those childhood experiences when the scripts were created, we could rationally go back and expose the script as the false creation it is. "Oh yes, I remember it well, I was three months old and I was just touching my penis. Well, Mommy was simply tired and became angry; that doesn't mean I'm really bad; that doesn't mean it's really naughty to experience sexual pleasure." However, it's extremely difficult to remember those childhood experiences. They usually remain unconscious, because they are state dependent - or, even more resistant to memory, what the scientists call state bound. WHY SCRIPTS REMAIN UNCONSCIOUS They are state bound because, to begin with, as children, we spend much of our time in a dominant theta brain wave state, while as adults we spend most of our time in a dominant beta brain wave state, and pass through theta only fleetingly, usually as we nod off to sleep. That means that very little of anything that really happened to us in childhood is accessible to our conscious adult minds: we're simply not in the same state. We might think we remember what happened to us in childhood, but it is like trying to remember the true reality of a dream while you're wide awake. In addition, most of the childhood experiences that create our harmful or unwanted states and behaviors happen when we, as children, are in an even more dramatically altered state of consciousness - fear, shock or trauma. This, as biofeedback therapist Dr. Thomas Budzynski points out, tends to put a child into a trancelike state by shifting hemispheric dominance to the right hemisphere, which functions in a highly emotional, largely non-verbal way. In this theta, right-hemisphere dominant, trance-like state, the child's mind is totally exposed, open, receptive, suggestible. What is "learned" during that state is learned in the most direct and intense way possible. Says Budzynski, "If you slap a child, or in any way get it into an altered state ... and then say something to the child, you're going to be laying down a script in the right hemisphere, which may not have access later on to consciousness in the left hemisphere, but nevertheless will alter the behavior and attitudes of that child as an adult." The script remains unconscious for several other reasons. Since the infant is often still in a preverbal state when the script is laid down, when it grows up it cannot approach or remember this experience or imprint verbally - it is only a feeling.

It is also inaccessible to the conscious mind because, as recent discoveries in neuroscience have revealed, it has been coded into memory via the limbic system, and thus can only be approached not through logical, verbal or intellectual analysis, or the other "higher" mental faculties of the neo-cortex, but through the preverbal, emotional, primitive awareness of the limbic brain (this provides one explanation for the inability of the various types of "talk therapy" to deal with such early experiences - how can one talk about something for which one has no words?) The script is also unconscious because it is not simply a memory, but a state of being - something that happens all over the body simultaneously: it is imprinted not just as certain words, images, emotions or ideas, but as a whole-body state of muscular tightness and rigidity, and respiratory tension. Most importantly, the script is unconscious because it has been intentionally forgotten. The experiences that create these inappropriate scripts are traumatic experiences, and thus, like victims of war, disasters, car or plane crashes or other traumas, victims of childhood traumatic experiences tend to have amnesia about those experiences. It is as if the mind, having had such powerful and painful information pierced into its deepest, most sensitive areas, attempts to heal itself, burying the memories away, in an attempt to spare the victim further pain. The script or imprint becomes hidden, or, as psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich would say, it becomes armored. But while the experience and the script are hidden and forgotten, they continue to operate in the individual's life. Budzynski points as examples to scripts such as "You're no good!" and "You'll never learn!" as particularly powerful and insidious. The parent rages; the child is terrified and goes into a trance-like hypersuggestible state; the angry parent shouts "You'll never amount to anything!" And like an actor unconsciously but dutifully following the script under the watchful eye of a tyrannical movie director, the child grows into an adult, and wonders why he or she continues to engage in self-destructive or self-sabotaging behavior, when in fact he or she is simply obediently following the script that has been laid down in the unconscious, proving over and over to Mommy or Daddy that "I'll never amount to anything." THE MIND-MOLECULE CONNECTION: BODY AS A WEB OF THOUGHT These scripts are so insidious and deeply imbedded that they become "wired" not only into our brains, but into our very cells, where they manifest themselves as chronic or recurrent physical conditions. In this way state dependent learning becomes a mechanism for transmitting and creating chronic mental and physical illness. Psychologist Ernest Rossi explores this "mind-molecule connection" in The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing, where he describes how "languages of the mind," such as words, ideas, sensations, are communicated to and integrated in the limbic system of the brain, where they are translated into the "languages of the body," in the form of neurochemical messenger molecules, which flow throughout the entire body, communicating directly with the organs and cells. These neuropeptides or "communicator molecules," we now know, carry messages that are the physiological equivalents of mental experiences. That is, they are like molecular emotions and thoughts, or pieces of intelligence, circulating and carrying mental experiences throughout the body. The body, then, must be seen as a field of intelligence. Mind is not located in the brain, but circulates throughout the body: the body is a web of thought, a network of mind. And in turn, each part of the body communicates its own information, thoughts, emotions in neurochemical form to other parts of the body, and to the limbic system, where the language of the body is translated into the words, ideas, emotions and sensations that are the language of the mind. Mind is a network of molecules, a web of body. Purely "mental" traumas or events, that is, are translated into neurochemical molecules that shape our health and behavior by brain-body influences that go clear down to the level of the cell and the gene. And purely "physical" traumas or events, such as illnesses or injuries, can be translated into molecular information that becomes mental events stored away in our memory. This vision of the our mind and body as "a web of self-interacting impulses of intelligence" provides us with a neurobiological explanation of how traumatic events, imprints and scripts can become embodied as chronic physical conditions. What we see and experience can enter us via our limbic brain and become a physical part of us, circulating through our physical web of intelligence, and transforming our field of intelligence, or being, permanently.

In the sample scripts we've been exploring above, negative scripts or imprints enter the limbic system and become molecular emotions that change the body on a cellular level while the child is in a right-hemisphere dominant theta state. This is a state in which the mind is extraordinarily receptive to new information, in which it learns and incorporates behaviors that continue to operate throughout life. That is, the response to the script or imprint is "learned," i.e. becomes a habitual pattern, by entering our field of intelligence as molecular information that transforms our body on cellular and even sub-cellular, genetic (and most of all unconscious) level. Theoretically, we could detect our own unwanted habitual scripts and patterns, and intentionally try to alter them. However, the "learning" that has created the patterns is very much state dependent. It takes place in the highly charged, theta frequency, limbic-dominant state. The only way to correct or undo the negative pattern, then, is to enter a mind-body state (field of intelligence, network of mind) like that in which the original learning (or mislearning) took place. This explains how and why many body-centered psychotherapeutic techniques (such as Rolfing, rebirthing, Holotropic breathing, Bioenergetics) work: they encourage the subject to become deeply relaxed, or highly charged emotionally, so that theta waves, right hemisphere and limbic system activity all increase, allowing the subject to reenter or reaccess the original bodymind state, where the trauma, imprint or script can be experienced, articulated, and replaced by new learning, imprints or scripts. Another effective technique for reaching these buried scripts and imprints is hypnosis. Like the body-centered therapies, it, too, moves beyond the limitations of logical, verbal or intellectual analysis, or the other "higher" neo-cortex faculties, to work through the preverbal, emotional, primitive awareness of the limbic brain, activate the mind-molecule connection, and provide access to the self-interacting field of intelligence, the bodymind. RESCRIPTING Seen in this light, the new mind technologies clearly provide the most effective tools yet developed for counteracting these deeply imbedded scripts. Like the body-centered therapies, mind tech works directly on the bodymind to slow brain wave activity, activate the right hemisphere, and alter limbic activity such as breathing patterns. But new mind tools go far beyond the body-centered therapies by directly entraining and slowing brain wave activity into the appropriate theta frequency range, effectively blocking out the distractions of normal life and the reminders of adult consensus reality, and (in the certain cases, such as LS, acoustic field generators, flotation, ganzfeld) by actively disrupting logical and customary adult thought patterns and injecting the user into a whole-body non-linear unpredictable experience that triggers the emotional limbic brain to resonate and activate the mind- molecule web of information, and permit access to state dependent and even state-bound childhood experiences. In addition, brain technology permits the user or an associate to make use of the powers of hypnosis to, in Rossi's words, "access and reframe state-dependent memory." It is a process that is called "rescripting." Thomas Budzynski, who uses LS for rescripting in his own practice as a therapist, describes the process: "The technique involves, first, the uncovering of the scripts, second, the creation of counter-scripts which present a more positive outcome, and third, the repeated presentation of the counter-script, preferably while in a deeply relaxed or hypnotic state. The L/S is used both to facilitate the uncovering and the rescripting itself." Budzynski notes that "the L/S, during the uncovering, can help produce this deeply relaxed state and, possibly, entrain the EEG pattern that was dominant at the time of the trauma [i.e. theta]... During the rescription phase," Budzynski continues, "the L/S again helps produce the deep relaxation (or facilitates the hypnosis) as the positive outcome scene is repeatedly imagined." It's important to point out that while Budzynski refers specifically to LS, the rescripting techniques he describes can be just as effectively applied using other types of brain technology. STEP ONE: UNCOVERING The first step toward rescripting, after using your mind tool to relax and access State Zero, is uncovering. As the word implies, the process is something like taking the cover off of a boiling pot and watching what bubbles to the surface. Though not essential, you may find it facilitates the process to have a specific question you wish to deal with during that session: some particular state or behavior that causes you problems, perhaps. You may want to state clearly to yourself, I want to use this session to investigate my anger (my smoking, my back pain, my mother). In this way your unconscious mind has a context in which to work and reveal itself.

On the other hand, some of the most powerful and life-transforming uncovering experiences have happened spontaneously, and in unpredictable ways, when users simply took the attitude that they simply wanted to let go and find out what was going on in their unconscious. Whichever approach you take, the most important thing is that you enter the session with a conscious commitment to release, let go, give up control, and let yourself be carried along on the currents of your unconscious. Making notes. During the session you may find suppressed or long- forgotten memories surfacing spontaneously in the form of visual flashbacks or images. If you have a friend, your friend can facilitate the uncovering process by gently and unobtrusively asking you what you are seeing and feeling. Many users have found that an inexpensive tape recorder (voice-activated is preferable though not necessary) is the most effective way of recording spontaneously arising material. Simply place the recorder beside you, and whenever possible - without disrupting the flow of imagery and without becoming so conscious of speaking that you cause yourself to "pop out" of state - describe your experiences. You'll find that a sort of verbal shorthand is the most effective way of doing this. Just a few words (e.g. "summer nights ... seven years old ... boys in trees ... great sadness..." etc.) can act as touchstones later, bringing to consciousness complex and detailed scenes and ideas. Whether speaking to a recorder, a friend or therapist, or simply using your memory, the intention, of course, is to observe what is happening, note what is being revealed, yet permit it to continue without disrupting the whole process by pulling yourself out of state. Ideomotor Finger Signals. You may want to expedite the process of uncovering by using ideomotor finger signals. Once you are in a deep trance, you may ask, for example, if the problems you want to deal with are the result of a single traumatic experience. If so, you may continue using your ideomotor signals to narrow in on the date (how old were you when the experience occurred?), the location, etc. You may combine this with suggestions that you can visualize the experience. Again, a friend or a therapist can facilitate this process by asking questions and observing your ideomotor finger signals. Dealing with Emotions. No matter what technique you use, you can be sure you are getting close to the original scripting experience when you begin to experience intense emotions, such as grief, rage, fear. Dr. Budzynski points out that "Uncovering is a very sensitive and potentially anxiety-evoking process" and recommends it be attempted only by trained mental health professionals. However, you may feel confident that you can confront these past experiences. If you are working with a friend, that may give you the confidence that you will not be alone in confronting these past events. You will also find it extremely useful to know and use the Release Technique. There is also a way you can provide an additional safeguard against being confronted with material you are not ready to deal with. This is by providing yourself with a third ideomotor finger signal in addition to the "yes" and the "no" signals - perhaps the movement of a thumb. This third signal indicates to you, "I don't want to deal with this material at this time." When you are in the midst of uncovering and receive this third signal, back off, and wait to delve more deeply until a later time. STEP TWO: RESCRIPTING Once the harmful script has been uncovered, the next step is to develop a counter-script. Budzynski mentions several types of rescription: "The client can change the way he or she was thinking in the situation (cognition), or the external behavior (behavior), or the words that were said (verbal), or any combination of the three. Usually, a change in external or verbal behavior will produce a change in the other person's behavior and therefore, a different, hopefully more adaptive, outcome." While in your deeply relaxed state, you should recreate the original traumatic experience or unwanted scripting experience, using as much concrete detail and as many sensory modalities as possible. However, as the scene is recreated, you should alter it in such a way that it produces a positive outcome. Budzynski describes a case of a woman who had an inexplicable pain in her arm who, upon going into hypnosis and using ideomotor signals, revealed that while she had been hospitalized and unconscious after a fall from a horse, and while a nurse was inserting an IV needle in her arm, a visiting relative remarked, "Gee, that looks like it would sting!" The woman's unconscious mind, in an altered state, apparently took this as a command. "The rescription was simple," says Budzynski, "an old but wise 'Dr. Welby' type physician was introduced to the scene. When the triggering remark was made, the wise physician said, 'Oh sure it stings for a few seconds, but then it feels as good as new.' When the client awakened, the pain was gone!" RESCRIPTING WITH SUBMODALITIES

It's clear the mental images we use influence how we feel. One way to change the mental images is to do a whole-scene rewrite, changing the content of the mental image. But another powerful way to alter the meaning and influence of our mental images is to change the submodalities of the image. Submodalities, according to NLP creator Richard Bandler, are "universal elements that can be used to change any visual image, no matter what the content is." There are visual, kinesthetic and auditory submodalities, but I will focus on visual submodalities here. For example, suppose you have a very unpleasant memory you would like to rescript. As you look at that unpleasant memory, see it as a black and white movie, and make it get dimmer and dimmer, so that it almost fades away. Turn it down entirely... now see how that scene makes you feel. You may find that much of the emotional content of the scene - your unpleasant feelings - have faded away with the image. Think of a very pleasant scene. Now turn up the brightness and the colors on that scene, and see how that makes you feel. Usually, increasing the brightness and color of an image will increase the intensity of the feelings it causes. As Bandler points out, we're all aware of this link between mental imagery and behavior: ""People talk about a 'dim future' or 'bright prospects.' 'Everything looks black.' 'My mind went blank.' 'It's a small thing, but she blows it all our of proportion.' When someone says something like that, it's not metaphorical; it's usually a literal and precise description of what that person is experiencing inside. If someone is 'blowing something out of proportion,' you can tell her to shrink that picture down. If she sees a 'dim future,' have her brighten it up. It sounds simple... and it is." The best way to find out what changing submodalities can do to change your experience and help you in your rescripting process is by experimentation. Take an image and go through each of the following submodalities and see how it changes your experience. At first, just change one submodality at a time, so you can learn what its effect is, without mingling it with the effects of other submodalities. Here are some of the visual submodalities, as suggested by Richard Bandler. Try them out on a pleasant experience before unleashing them on unpleasant ones. Color. Change color intensity from vivid brightness to black and white. Distance. Move the image from very close to very far off. Depth. Vary your image from three-dimensional to a flat two- dimensional surface. Duration. See the difference between a quick flicker of an image to a longlasting one. Clarity. What's the difference in experience between a fuzzy, soft- focus image and a hard-edged crystal clear one? Scope. Explore the difference between an image on a screen in front of your eyes to an expanded image, to a fully encompassing image that surrounds you, so that if you turn your head to either side you can see more. Movement. Vary the mental image from a still photo or slide to a slow motion movie to lickety-split fast time. Forwards/backwards. What happens when you take a scene and run it backwards, from the end to the beginning? Many of us find it funny. That's a great way to deal with unpleasant experiences - run them backwards and make them ridiculous and laughable. Or, run the unpleasant scene backwards to its beginning, then run it forwards again, but this time with the content changed to make it very pleasant. You can also put the scene into the "erase" mode, so that as it runs backwards it's being erased. A good way to get rid of unpleasant scenes. You will also find it valuable to perform similar experiments with taking a mental image and seeing what happens when you change one at a time a kinesthetic submodality (weight, size, pressure, shape, temperature, movement, balance, texture, rhythm, etc.) or an auditory submodality (pitch, tone, timbre, tempo, volume, duration of sounds, distance, voice, words, etc.) Once you've discovered the effects of these various submodalities one at a time, you can combine them and apply them to rescripting past experiences. It can prove to be a life transforming power. As Richard Bandler

remarks, "What's amazing to me is that some people do it exactly backwards. Think what your life would be like if you remembered all your good experiences as dim, distant, fuzzy, black and white snapshots, but recalled all your bad experiences in vividly colorful, close, panoramic, 3-D movies. That's a great way to get depressed and think that life isn't worth living. All of us have good and bad experiences; how we recall them is often what makes the difference." CHANGING YOUR POINT OF VIEW Another powerful technique for changing the impact of past events is to change the perspective you choose to experience them. Film- makers pay extremely careful attention to what they call POV, or point of view, because they know that the POV of a scene can determine its entire impact and significance to the audience. Do we view a scene from the POV of one of the actors in the scene, or do we see the scene from a distance, with a frame around it? Imagine how different the shower scene from "Psycho" would feel if it had been filmed from the POV of some objective observer. POV has the same powerful determining influence in the mind movies that make up your memories. Remember some horrible thing that happened to you - really experience it as it happened. Now try to fully experience an extremely pleasant memory. Is there a difference in the point of view? Perhaps you see one of the memories exactly as you did when it happened, as if you are actually inside your body looking out through the eyes that are seeing the events happen. This is called being associated. Perhaps you see one of the memories from a different point of view than through your own eyes - maybe you see the scene from above, as if you're perched in a corner of the room by the ceiling; perhaps you see it as if you're watching a movie. This is called being dissociated. Now, take - the good one and the bad one - and whichever way you experienced them, go back and experience them from a different point of view. If you were associated in your happy memory, now do it in a dissociated way, seeing yourself from a distance, or as if in a movie. If you were dissociated, step into your body, experience the scene in the same multi-sensory way you did when you were truly in it. How does it change your memories? For most people, recalling an event in an associated way causes them to reexperience the feeling response they originally had. Recalling an event in a dissociated way, for most people, permits them to observe themselves having the original feelings without actually reexperiencing them. This can be immensely valuable. You can choose to recall your happy memories in an associated way, feeling all the pleasurable emotions and feelings that accompany them, and recall all the unpleasant memories in a dissociated way, with all the information about what happened, but without the negative feelings. As Richard Bandler points out, "Why feel bad again? Wasn't it enough to feel bad once?" But many people go about it in exactly the opposite way, and associate with all their unpleasant memories, while storing their pleasant memories as distant, dissociated images. Then they feel all hurt and angry about unpleasant events that are long past, while not feeling any of the pleasure out of what should be their best memories. Since mind tech can increase enormously your powers of memory and visualization, you will find it useful to go back through your most strongly unpleasant memories and run through them from a dissociated POV. As you experience them, explore the effects of dissociation - what's the best dissociated viewpoint for being able to see the memories clear enough to learn from them but keeping them far away enough (or dim enough, or small enough) so that they don't stir up your feelings. Experience a variety of good memories by being fully associated, soaking in the pleasure and good feelings of each one. In essence, you're teaching yourself to associate with good memories and dissociate from bad ones. Richard Bandler points out that learning how and when to associate or dissociate is "one of the most profound and pervasive ways to change the quality of a person's experience, and the behavior that results from it. Dissociation is particularly useful for intensely unpleasant memories." Dissociation can be extremely valuable for victims of rape, child abuse, and experiences of war or other traumatic experiences such as post-traumatic stress syndrome. Running the Movie Backwards. Here's a powerful technique Bandler developed for using association and dissociation to rescript intensely unpleasant memories or to change current unwanted behavior patterns, such as phobias. First, imagine you're sitting in a movie theater. As you watch the screen, you see a black and white slide or still image of yourself just before the unpleasant past event or before the phobia or other unwanted behavior pattern begins. Now, see yourself in the projection booth of the movie theater. You can see yourself sitting below you in the theater, but you can also see the image of yourself on screen. That is, you can watch yourself watching yourself. It is, in other words, a way of doubly dissociating yourself from the behavior or memory.

From this point of view, allow the black and white slide on screen turn into a black and white movie, and let it show you going through the unpleasant experience or phobic response or other unwanted behavior from beginning to end. Then, when it reaches the end, stop the image as a black and white slide, and then jump inside the movie and run it backwards. Except as it runs backwards, you're inside the movie and it's in full color. Run it backwards quickly - it should take only two or three seconds. If it seems hard to believe that rapid change can take place so fast, Bandler points out that "The brain learns by having patterns go by rapidly. Imagine if I gave you one frame of a movie every day for five years. Would you get the plot? Of course not. You only get the meaning of the movie if all those pictures go by really fast. Trying to change slowly is like having a conversation one word a day." RESCRIPTING FOR INCREASING LIFE SATISFACTION These techniques for rescripting and changing memories by changing point of view need not be limited to dealing with clearly traumatic childhood experiences. Even the most healthy and well-adjusted individuals have areas in which their lives are unsatisfying, their life strategies are unproductive, or in which they feel they are not living up to their fullest potential. One friend of mine I'll call Ed, for example, is a successful businessman with a rewarding and fulfilling personal and family life. However, he found that he had a nagging dissatisfaction with his own inability to loosen up, let go and express himself in front of an audience. As he explored this in a series of sessions on an LS machine, he found that there was part of him that would have liked to have been an entertainer. He began recalling experiences from his own childhood that had to do with performing. He had vivid memories in which he had tried out or wanted to try out comedy acts and song-and-dance routines in front of his father. His father had been a hard- driving business executive, who had little time to sit down and let himself be entertained by his six year old son. Ed remembered one time when he did a slapstick comedy routine for his father, who sat watching impatiently without laughing. The result was that Ed, receiving no encouragement or praise from his father, had early on felt that he was not particularly skilled as an entertainer, and soon stifled this aspect of his personality. Ed began a rescripting process by going back to those childhood experiences in which he tried out his act on his father. Now, however, Ed created a counter-script in which his father explained to Ed that he was sorry he was too busy to pay attention, that it was his fault, not Ed's fault, and had nothing to do with Ed's intrinsic talents or worth. In the counter-script, Ed was once again his six year old self, and his father now sat down and Ed did his magic tricks, his slapstick gags, his soft-shoe and tap dance routines, and his father laughed uproariously, applauded often, and ended by giving Ed a bearhug, telling him how much he loved him and what a talented boy he was. Ed also found that while his memories of performing for his father were vivid associative experiences, his memories of some of his experiences of performing in school plays or singing in a school vocal group were dim and dissociative - he saw himself as if from the back of the auditorium. He began reexperiencing those memories in an associative way, fully enjoying them. Predictably, Ed felt a sense of release and change in his own adult life. He became more self-confident, and found he had a great desire to perform. He sat down at the piano, which he had not played seriously for over 20 years, and began playing again. Soon he had joined a small band and had tremendous fun playing gigs around town. He is now considering trying out for a part at the local playhouse. Like anchoring, rescripting gains in power with repetition, and the more vivid the rescripted experience (engaging several senses and with concrete details) the more power it has to counter the old script. Rescripting requires sensitivity and imagination. As the name implies, you must become a scriptwriter, taking old scripts that don't work, looking at them with a creative eye, and like a skillful screenwriter, turning them into scripts that work. In this, as in all the techniques in this book, practice makes better. THE SWISH One powerful rescripting technique developed by Richard Bandler and widely used by practitioners of NLP is called the Swish pattern. NLP teaches you how to do a Swish pattern while in ordinary waking consciousness. However, I've found that using this (and other NLP techniques) in the midst of the deep relaxation and State Zero brain tech experience boosts it to a higher order of effectiveness. I have used this technique in many of my Megabrain Workshops, and have found that it can produce rapid and dramatic effects. In essence, a swish pattern takes something unpleasant or undesired - a memory, an image, a behavior or habit, a state - and causes it to automatically trigger something pleasant or desired. Or, as Richard Bandler

says, it "directionalizes the brain," by making use of the human tendency to avoid unpleasantness and move towards pleasantness. Here's how it's done. Identify Cue Image. Let's say you want to change bad habit X (smoking, biting your fingernails, overeating, etc.). Once you have used your mind tool to get into a deeply relaxed, trance state, or State Zero, the next step is to identify the cue image, that is, what you actually see as you begin to engage in habit X. For smokers, it may be your hand moving toward your pack of cigarettes, or the pocket or purse where you keep them; for nail biters, it may be the image of your hand moving toward your mouth. Since this is the cue for a habit you don't like, you should make something about this image unpleasant - the more unpleasant the better. Create Desired Outcome Image. The next step is to create a second picture - an image of yourself as you would be if you had already made the desired change in your behavior. This image should be really attractive and pleasant. You may have to try several images, or make several adjustments in your image, until you get something that you really like. Swish. Now switch the two images by "swishing" them. Start with the first cue picture big and bright. Then, put a small, dim and dark version of your desired outcome image in the bottom right-hand corner of your visual field. Then, in a flash, actually see the small, dim image growing larger and brighter and covering up the first image, which is simultaneously getting smaller and dimmer. As this happens, say to yourself "swish!" with excitement and enthusiasm. Having done this, blank your image screen for a second, then do it again. Repeat the swish. Do it several times. Test. One way of testing is to try to call to mind that first image. If the swish has been effective, it will be hard to create this first picture - as soon as it comes into your mind it should fade out and be replaced by your desired outcome image. The key to the swish is speed, vividness and repetition. Once you're in your theta state, or your trance, perform the swish pattern over and over, taking only a second or so for each repetition. If you experience this swish pattern intensely enough, you should find that whenever you begin to act out your old, harmful habit, you will immediately find yourself switching to your new behavior. In a very real sense, you will feel compelled by your old behavior to act in a different way. As Bandler observes, "You could call this pattern 'trade compulsions.'" External Cues. At the end of last chapter we explored ways of externally generating cues, and discussed how to use a signal to anchor a peak state or a behavior changing reminder. In the same way, you can program yourself to automatically activate a Swish pattern. If the behavior you want to alter has to do with eating, you may want to suggest to yourself during your mind tech session that opening the refrigerator door will be a cue for you to activate a Swish pattern. During the initial stages of rescripting behavior, frequent repetition of the Swish increases its power. Use your onboard cue generator. Set your timer or MotivAider to activate a Swish every five or ten minutes, for example, and the power of the rescripting mental images will be greatly increased. RESOURCES One way to experience first-hand a variety of rescripting and other mind-altering techniques is to listen to the six-tape series called NEUROSONICS: THE PERSONAL ENHANCEMENT SERIES. Written and narrated by NLP co-founder Richard Bandler, it is a compendium of some of his most effective NLP techniques, and enormous fun. These tapes work very well in combination with LS machines, floating and other mind tech. I also highly recommend Richard Bandler's Using Your Brain for a Change (1985), and the books he did in combination with NLP co- founder John Grinder, Frogs into Princes (1979), Reframing (1981), and Tranceformations (1981), all from Real People Press and available in most bookstores. For more on Rescripting, see Thomas Budzynski's excellent articles, particularly "Brain lateralization and rescripting," Somatics, 3, 1-10 (1981), and "Clinical applications of no-drug-induced states." In B. Wolman and M. Ullman (Eds.) Handbook of States of Consciousness (Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1986). Also valuable is Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by John C. Lilly (Julian, 1972). See also

Software for the Mind: How to Program Your Mind for Optimum Health and Performance by Emmett Miller (Celestial Arts, 1987).

THE BRAINWAVE INVESTIGATION

by Michael Hutchison

The brain is powered by electricity. Each of its billions of individual cells "fires" or electrically discharges at a specific frequency. The electrical activity of the brain can be monitored by placing sensors or electrodes against the scalp, which register the minute electrical signals happening inside the brain, much the way a seismograph can detect tremors taking place inside the earth. These electrical signals are known as the electroencephalogram; the device that registers them is called an electroencephalograph, or EEG. What the EEG reveals to us are not the firings of individual brain cells, but the cooperative or collective electrical patterns of networks or communities of millions of cells firing together - fluctuations of coherent or synchronous energy pulsing through the networks of the brain. These collective energy pulsations are called brain waves. Since the first EEG was devised early in this century, scientists have found that the brain has a tendency to produce brain waves of four distinct varieties, which they have called beta, alpha, theta and delta. BETA. The most rapid brain waves, beta waves, range in frequency from about 14 cycles per second (called 14 Hertz, abbreviated Hz) to more than 100 Hz (some scientists now refer to brain waves above 30 Hz as Gamma waves). When we are in a normal waking state, eyes open, focusing on the world outside ourselves, or dealing with concrete, specific problems, beta waves (particularly beta waves between 14 and 40 Hz.) are the most dominant and powerful waves in the brain. Beta waves are associated with alertness, arousal, concentration, cognition and - at excessive levels - anxiety. ALPHA. As we close our eyes and become more relaxed, passive, or unfocused, brain wave activity slows down, and we produce bursts of alpha waves, which range in frequency from about 8 to 13 Hz. If we become quite relaxed and mentally unfocused, alpha waves become dominant throughout the brain, producing a calm and pleasant sensation called the "alpha state." The alpha state seems to be the brain's "neutral" or idling state, and people who are healthy and not under stress tend to produce a lot of alpha activity. Lack of significant alpha activity can be a sign of anxiety, stress, brain damage or illness. THETA. As calmness and relaxation deepen into drowsiness, the brain shifts to slower, more powerfully rhythmic theta waves, with a frequency range of about 4 to 8 Hz. Theta has been called the "twilight state," between waking and sleep. It's often accompanied by unexpected, dreamlike mental images. Often these images are accompanied by vivid memories, particularly childhood memories. Theta offers access to unconscious material, reveries, free association, sudden insight, creative ideas. It's a mysterious, elusive state, and for a long time experimenters had a difficult time studying it because it is hard to maintain for any period of time most people tend to fall asleep as soon as they begin generating large amounts of theta. DELTA. As we fall asleep the dominant brain waves become delta, which are even slower than theta, in the frequency range below 4 Hz. When most of us are in the delta state we're either asleep or otherwise unconscious. However, there is growing evidence that individuals may maintain consciousness while in a dominant delta state. This seems to be associated with certain deep trance-like, transcendent or "nonphysical" states. TAKING CHARGE: BIOFEEDBACK AND BRAIN POWER CONTROL YOURSELF

Stop a moment. Now, change your brain wave activity into an alpha rhythm... The question immediately arises, How? How do I know when my brain waves are in alpha? And how is it possible to change my brain waves intentionally? One of the central assumptions of western physiology has been that there is a fundamental distinction between parts of the human body that we can consciously control - the so-called "voluntary" components - and those parts over which we have no conscious control - the "involuntary" or autonomic components. These involuntary components traditionally included brain waves, as well as such things as the expansion and contraction of our blood vessels, blood pressure, heart rate, the secretion of hormones, healing and the activity of the immune system. Then the lightning bolt hit. With the development sensitive instruments that could measure minute changes in the body, scientists found that if they monitored the activity of one of the so-called involuntary processes of a human subject and fed it back to the subject with some sort of visual or auditory signal, the subject could learn to bring that process under voluntary control. They called this process biofeedback. DISCOVERING THE BODYMIND In a burst of studies throughout the 1960s that caused a sensation in the scientific world, biofeedback researchers proved that subjects could take voluntary control of virtually any physiological process - even the firing rhythm of individual nerve cells. One researcher, John Basmajian, hooked up subjects so they could monitor the firing rhythm of a specific neuron (called a single motor unit). Each time the neuron fired, the subjects would be fed back a sound like a drumbeat. Amazingly, the subjects quickly learned how to control the rhythm with which the cells fired, creating intricate drum rolls, gallops and beats. Elmer and Alyce Green of the Menninger Foundation wrote with excitement, "It may be possible to bring under some degree of voluntary control any physiological process that can continuously be monitored, amplified, and displayed." This was a momentous discovery - it meant that the long-held belief of a clear separation between voluntary and involuntary components of the human system was not accurate. It meant such processes as the secretion of hormones and the operation of the immune system could theoretically be intentionally controlled. It also meant that the whole foundation of mind-body dualism upon which all of western thought had been based - that there was a clear and necessary separation between the mind and the body - had to go out the window. For clearly there was some link, still mysterious, between mind and body. It was the beginning of a great paradigm shift that was to lead to the development of such fields as psychoneuroimmunology and psychobiology, and to the emergence of a new vision of the mind and body as a single, indivisible unit, a field of intelligence, a bodymind. INSTANT SATORI MACHINES AND THE ROYAL ROAD TO BLISS The 1960s was a time when large numbers of people were extremely interested in experiencing peak states. For many, psychedelics were the most quick and reliable mind expansion technique. But drugs, while powerful and effective state change tools, had drawbacks. They were illegal, which caused much inconvenience. The state changes they produced were long-lasting and durable, which made it next to impossible to change back into ordinary brain states on demand. This too caused much inconvenience, not to mention bad trips. They also had unknown long-term effects on health. So, many people were eager to find a "drugless high," or some way to expand consciousness without the drawbacks of psychedelic drugs. The Beatles, among others, had become followers of a guru who taught them meditation. They began singing the praises of meditation as a way of reaching heightened states of consciousness without drugs. The guru appeared on the Johnny Carson show, wearing his white robes, giggling, and holding a flower. Meditation was In. Millions of people began trying to meditate. Millions of people were disappointed to find that meditation took practice and discipline, and did not instantly catapult them into enlightenment. Many of those most interested in exploring mind expansion were young psychologists and other scientists who had chosen the brain as their field of study. It made sense to them to focus their research, and use whatever technology was available to them, such as EEGs, to explore what was going on in the brain during experiences of expanded consciousness, such as meditation. When they looked at the EEG tracings it quickly became clear that meditators produced a lot of alpha waves. Some of these young researchers, led by Joe Kamiya, developed a type of EEG that was "tuned" to respond to alpha waves by producing a tone: brainwave feedback. When people used EEG biofeedback, they could quickly learn to produce alpha waves simply by doing things that produced the tone, such as sitting with their eyes closed, in a relaxed, passive state. The researchers noticed that people who went through this alpha feedback training process experienced interesting changes - they became more calm and relaxed in their daily lives, they tended to give up such habits as smoking and heavy drinking, and they learned how to produce alpha waves at will, even when not hooked up to the biofeedback system. This was exciting. I remember it well. What a mysterious thing - changing what's happening inside your head. And when you do it, how exciting, what fun, and what a sudden surge of power.

ON THE JOYS OF OBSERVING YOUR OWN BRAIN I had gotten my first taste of it when I had overheard someone talking about an experiment going on at New York University, and wangled my way into the experimental group by claiming to be an NYU student. I learned to generate alpha waves by making a machine go click click click. For long delightful periods I would sit there with the machine caressing me with timeless strings of beautiful clicks. It was delightful and mysterious, and a large part of the delight and the mystery was that I was listening to the activity of my own brain, and becoming aware of every subtle little change that took place within it, learning that if I thought of certain things the clicks would stop, and if I thought of other things, or stopped thinking, the clicks would start. To me it was amazing to learn that I could in fact change my brain, and the things that were going on inside it. What a revelation. Until then, I had always assumed that whatever was going on in my mind sadness, anger, confusion, joy - was simply "going on," and that it would keep going on until it stopped going on and something else started going on. But as I sat by the alpha trainer learning to spin out lovely chains of clicks - and learning to make them stop, if I wanted to - I learned that you could change your mind. It struck me as being a process something like changing tv channels. If you don't like the soap opera that's on channel 2, change to the western on channel 4. I was filled with a sense of power. Not the power to stop speeding locomotives, or leap tall buildings at a single bound. But much more modest and personal power. The power of being aware of my own mind, of learning how to pay attention to how I was paying attention, and knowing that I had some control over it. I loved the sessions, and would have kept coming back to the lab for years, except suddenly the experiment was over. No more sessions. And so my experience of EEG biofeedback was over. Or, as I was later to find out, put on hold for the next 12 years. But meanwhile, the word was leaking out. You could get high on alpha feedback. Some researchers even suggested that the alpha state was synonymous with meditation. This was Big News, and the mass media soon latched onto it. Sensational stories about "instant nirvana," and "mechanical meditation," claimed that the Alpha State was not only the same thing as meditation, but could also be a quick cure for stress, one without all the mystic voodoo and spiritual trappings that most people associated with meditation. As research psychologist Joe Kamiya, who was the pioneer investigator of alpha feedback, remembers it, "a surprisingly large number of people seemed to conclude that alpha would be the royal road to bliss, enlightenment, and higher consciousness. Nirvana now, through feedback." Sales of "alpha machines" boomed. Thousands of people sat around learning to get into alpha. The upshot of all this hullaballoo was predictable. Mainstream psychologists, determined to establish psychology as a hard science, were uneasy with talk of nirvana, bliss and higher consciousness, instant or otherwise. Mainstream psychiatrists and the medical establishment already up in arms about the so-called Psychedelic Revolution - felt a clear duty to suppress this nascent "mind-expansion technology." Except for those who undertook EEG studies for the express purpose of "debunking" alpha feedback, EEG feedback research was not encouraged - the grants and research fellowships went elsewhere. Some determined psychologists continued to do EEG research, but for the next 20 years, their research was largely ignored by mainstream psychologists, or dismissed as "fringe" science. As a result, by the early 1970s the popular craze for alpha machines came to an end. In part, it was because of the concerted opposition of the medical, scientific and cultural mainstreams. In part it was simply because it is in the nature of crazes to come and go. Another reason personal alpha trainers didn't really catch on was that the machines themselves were still too crude (this was before the invention of the microprocessor, which would later make it possible to shrink such devices down from the size of a suitcase to the size of a pack of cigarettes). Another reason was that people had exaggerated expectations. They'd heard that alpha was a mystic state, satori, bliss and sudden illumination. So they tried it out, and found that it was ... well ... okay. As I say, it could give you a feeling of power, but it was a very modest and subjective sort of power, the usefulness of which was not immediately apparent. Also, most of these expectant seekers of bliss only used their devices sporadically and for relatively brief sessions, while later research was to reveal that many of the most profound benefits of alpha EEG training depended on "massed practice" - substantial blocks of training time. Meanwhile, ironically, as the public and mainstream psychologists lost interest in EEG biofeedback, some of the hardcore EEG researchers began making some discoveries that were in actual fact earthshaking and dazzling. DISCOVERING THE TWILIGHT ZONE Earlier, in the 1960s, Japanese scientists had conducted a series of EEG studies of Zen monks going into deep meditative states. They had found that as monks went into meditation they did indeed go into alpha, but the most skilled meditators sank right through alpha and began producing the slower theta waves. And, intriguingly, even in the depths of theta - for most people the gateway to sleep - the monks were not asleep but extremely mentally alert. Interestingly, the more meditative experience a monk had, the more theta he generated. And the only ones who were able to get into this deep theta state quickly and at will were those monks who had more than twenty years of meditative experience. Excited by this work, biofeedback researchers Elmer and Alyce Green of the Menninger Foundation decided to explore the effects of theta, and

designed a biofeedback device that enabled them to train subjects to enter theta. As they observed many people experiencing theta, the Greens concluded it was "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 hypnagogic memory." The Greens next designed a study in which one group learned to enter theta for a period of time every day, while another group - called a control group simply became very relaxed. They discovered that the theta subjects frequently reported vivid memories of long-forgotten childhood events: "They were not like going through a memory in one's mind," said the Greens, "but rather like an experience, a reliving." They also found that those producing theta waves frequently became highly creative, and had "new and valid ideas or syntheses of ideas." They were also surprised to discover that the subjects they taught to enter the theta state reported that they had life-altering insights, or what the Greens called "integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological well-being." They fell in love, discovered new talents, decided to change jobs and strike out in new, more satisfying directions. In essence, these people felt their lives had been transformed. When they gave them psychological tests, the Greens discovered that the theta subjects were "psychologically healthier, had more social poise, were less rigid and conforming, and were more self- accepting and creative" than the control group. Finally, and most astonishingly, the Greens were surprised to note that those taught to enter the theta state became very healthy. While the control group (the one not producing theta) continued to have its normal number of illnesses, the theta group had almost no illness whatsoever. It seemed the Greens had stumbled onto something unprecedented. They reported that the theta state caused people to "experience a new kind of body consciousness very much related to their total well-being." Physiologically the theta state seemed to bring "physical healing, physical regeneration." In the emotional domain, the theta state was "manifested in improved relationships with other people as well as greater tolerance, understanding, and love of oneself and of one's world." In the mental domain, the theta state produced "new and valid ideas of syntheses of ideas, not primarily by deduction, but springing by intuition from unconscious sources." All in all, it seemed as if there were something magic about the theta state. Working independently of the Greens, biofeedback researcher and clinician Dr. Thomas Budzynski also sensed something magic about the theta state. He conducted extensive research into the properties of theta, which he dubbed the "twilight state." People in theta, he found were hypersuggestible, as if in a hypnotic trance. They are also able to learn enormous amounts very quickly. Theta, Budzynski suggested, is the state in which "superlearning" takes place - when in theta, people are able to learn new languages, accept suggestions for changes in behaviors and attitudes, memorize vast amounts of information. Said Budzynski, "the hypnagogic state, the twilight state, between waking and sleep, has the properties of uncritical acceptance of verbal material, or almost any material it can process." "MIRACULOUS RESOLUTIONS" AT THE CROSSOVER POINT These findings about theta were exciting, but never became widely known. Then in 1989, Drs. Eugene Peniston and Paul Kulkosky of the University of Southern Colorado (who had learned some of their techniques from the Greens at the Menninger Foundation) conducted studies in which they used EEG biofeedback to train a group of chronic alcoholics to increase alpha and theta activity, while another group served as a control group. They discovered that the alpha-theta group showed an extraordinary recovery rate many orders of magnitude greater than the control group. More impressively, after thirteen months they showed "sustained prevention of relapse." (A further follow-up study three years later has showed the same sustained prevention of relapse.) And, in the most intriguing findings of all, the alpha-theta group showed a profound transformation of personality. Among the extraordinary changes in MMPI clinical scales noted in their subjects, Peniston and Kulkosky found significant increases in such qualities as warmth, abstractthinking, stability, conscientiousness, boldness, imaginativeness and self-control, and significant decreases not only in depression, but also in anxiety and other problems. Overcoming addiction. Transforming personality. These were magic phrases. The Peniston studies emerged at just the right time. Years earlier, in 1978, Dr. James Hardt, of Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, had published several papers documenting his EEG feedback research findings that alpha feedback training produced profound changes in personality traits, including dramatic reductions in anxiety (both state and trait anxiety), and changes in the same MMPI clinical scales documented over a decade later by Peniston and Kulkosky. But Hardt's while Hardt's message had aroused little interest, the Peniston studies emerged into the "morning after" the Reagan era's exaltation of selfishness and self indulgence, when concern with addictive behaviors and personality transformation had become subjects of urgent interest to millions of people: millions of people who were going to 12 step programs modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous to overcome their "addictions" to everything from sex to overeating to shopping, and who were seeking to transform their present addictive personality by stripping away their false masks and communicating with their "inner child." With its implied message that EEG alpha-theta feedback could help individuals overcome all sorts of addictive behavior patterns and find a happier, more integrated personality, the Peniston- Kulkosky work aroused enormous interest and excitement among biofeedback researchers and clinicians. Modifying and expanding upon the work of

Peniston and Kulkosky, many researchers and clinicians have now begun using multi- channel "brain mapping" EEGs to explore in more detail what happens in the brain when it goes through these apparently transformational moments. What they have found is that when a subject becomes deeply relaxed, alpha brainwave activity increases, and slows down. As relaxation increases, the subject begins to produce more and more theta activity. As theta amplitude increases, alpha seems to slow further until it descends into theta. At that point, according to some researchers, at what the researchers are calling the "crossover point" between alpha and theta, the subjects experience important, emotionally loaded, even life transforming moments. These frequently consist of creative insights, vivid memories from childhood, or, in the case of the Vietnam vets suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (or adults who were abused as children), the emergence of suppressed or repressed experiences. Subjects consistently report these moments as profound, moving, life transforming, even spiritual moments. One of these clinicians, Houston therapist William Beckwith, has reported that in his clients the crossover point is "often accompanied by spontaneous surfacing of previously inaccessible memories, often from early childhood," as well as "the seemingly miraculous resolutions of complex psychological problems." THE MAGIC RHYTHM AND THE GATEWAY TO MEMORY Meanwhile, other scientists, intrigued by the fact that the theta state seemed to increase learning, and also seemed to produce frequent vivid memories, began investigating the relationship between theta and memory. They found that for memories to be formed the brain must undergo a process called Long Term Potentiation (LTP), which involves electrical and chemical changes in the neurons involved in storing memory. When LTP does not happen, information that enters the brain is not stored, but totally forgotten. Neurophysiologists Gary Lynch and associates of UC at Irvine, discovered that the key to LTP is theta brainwaves. "We have found the magic rhythm that makes LTP," said Dr. Lynch. "There's a magic rhythm, the theta rhythm." CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND THETA As virtually everyone who uses a mind machine discovers, theta seems to trigger the sudden reliving or vivid remembering of long-forgotten childhood memories. One explanation for this link between theta and childhood is that, while adults rarely produce theta, children are in a theta state most of the time - up to the age of six or beyond, children produce mostly theta waves, and then the amount of theta progressively decreases as the child grows into adulthood. In other words, children spend most of their time in what we adults would call a trance-like, altered state of consciousness, and one that is extremely open and receptive, highly conducive to the learning of new information and the creation of memories. In recent years a large number of scientific studies have explored a phenomenon called "state bound" or "state dependent" learning. In essence, they have found that things experienced in one state (of consciousness) are far more easily remembered later when we are once again in that same state. Things learned when we're happy are remembered best when we're happy, what we learn when cold is remembered best when we're cold, and so on. This provides an explanation for the appearance of childhood memories to adults who are in theta. Children spent most of their time in the theta state. But as adults, we rarely experience a true theta state. Most of us have a few seconds of it as we fall asleep, and that's all. During those brief moments in theta we may experience sudden flashes of memory, vivid images, odd disconnected ideas, but we're quickly asleep. Virtually all of our memories from childhood, then, are state dependent - they're laid down while we're in one state, but it's a state that we almost never experience as adults. To remember them, we have to get back to the state in which they were first created. One of the characteristics of mind machines is that they are capable of putting people into the theta state and keeping them there for long periods of time while they remain awake. Mind machines can put us back into the childlike theta state. That means that all those memories, creative ideas, spontaneous images, and integrative experiences that occur during theta become available to our conscious mind - we become consciously aware of what had been stored in our unconscious mind, and we remember it when we emerge from the theta state. This is one of the reasons that psychologist Thomas Budzynski has called one type of mind machine "a facilitator of unconscious retrieval." THETA AND INSIGHT For thousands of years humans have been aware of the enormous creative values of the theta state. Budzynski notes that "Shamanistic and other primitive ceremonies often included procedures designed to produce these states. It was believed (and still is in certain cultures) that the dreamlike images elicited in the twilight state allowed the dreamer to foretell events, instruct as to healing procedures, and give important information." The 18th century mystic Emmanual Swedenborg wrote in detail about his own theta experiences and described ways of inducing them. The chemist Friedrich Kekule vividly described his state of "reverie" in which he suddenly saw a mental image of atoms forming a chain, and of snakes biting their

tails, which led to his discovery that organic compounds occur in closed rings - described as "the most brilliant piece of prediction to be found in the whole range of organic chemistry." There are countless stories of such moments of inspiration and creativity occurring when the thinker is nodding off to sleep, or wandering lonely as a cloud, gazing into the fire. All of them speak of the drowsiness, the relaxation, the vivid imagery appearing unexpectedly, that mark them as examples of the theta state. MAPPING THE BRAIN PATHS TO TRANSCENDENCE Meanwhile, other researchers have been using sophisticated EEGs with 20 or more electrodes, which permit them to monitor the activity of the entire cortex simultaneously, and present it visually in the form of colored "brain maps." These investigators, including F. Holmes Atwater, of the Monroe Institute, Dr. Ed Wilson of the Colorado Association for Psychophysiologic Research, and Dr. Julian Isaacs, have been able to observe the brain maps of numerous individuals as they move from ordinary waking consciousness into peak experience or transcendent brain states. They have found that in progressing toward transcendence, the brain goes through or produces several distinctive whole-brain patterns. RESTING STATE ALPHA. Normal waking consciousness, these researchers have found, is characterized by dominant beta activity, along with a lot of alpha activity in the rear part of the cortex. This back of the head alpha is called "restingstate-alpha." This alpha activity seems to be an "anchor," serving as a stabilizing force, linking us with our "normal" and familiar modes of mental processing. It's like the alpha observed in the early stages of Zen meditation. THE DISSOCIATIVE STATE. However, when subjects enter expanded states of consciousness, they lose awareness of the physical world, and reach a point at which, as Atwater describes it, "when non-physical phenomena constitute the whole field of perception; when there is no impression of being 'normally' in the physical body; when the physical body is asleep or fully entranced." This is what Atwater calls the Dissociative State. In the Dissociative State, resting-state-alpha disappears, and is replaced by high amplitude theta and delta activity, centered at the top of the head (the median of the central cortex). Interestingly this high amplitude theta and delta activity is synchronous. This dissociative state seems to be essentially what earlier researchers, such as the Greens, have been describing as the Theta state, and is equivalent to the state reached by experienced Zen meditators as they sink downward past alpha. It also seems to offer access to what has been called the unconscious mind, or the personal unconscious. THE TRANSCENDENT STATE. Beyond the dissociative state is the state Atwater calls transcendence. In this state, individuals move beyond their own ego, beyond the personal unconscious mind, into a peak state of universal awareness. As Atwater observes, "Experiences in this state are many times ineffable and cannot be explained or described in words. Experiences in this realm are more than passive diversions. Their creative power can change the very nature of the participants' reality." As they observe the transition from dissociation to transcendence on their EEG brain mappers, these researchers such as Atwater have found something very odd occurs. First, the high amplitude and synchronous theta and delta activity of the dissociative state continues. However, it is accompanied by bursts of very high beta (or gamma) activity in the temporal regions of the brain (in the area of the temples). INDUCING TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCES AND UFO ABDUCTIONS These findings become even more intriguing - and lead to even wilder speculations - in light of the amazing findings of Dr. Michael Persinger of Laurentian University. He was fascinated by evidence that people who had experiences of being abducted by UFOs, and a variety of other sorts of extraordinary or transcendent experiences, were influenced by changes in the earth's magnetic field. He began placing electromagnets at the temples of subjects and pulsing them at various frequencies. To his amazement, he found that his subjects had transcendent or extraordinary experiences. Even when subjects knew they were seated in a laboratory, with pulsed electromagnetic fields at their temples, they would emerge with realistic reports of being abducted by UFOs, having out of body experiences, communicating with God and so on. Apparently, high frequency, high amplitude activation of the temporal regions of the brain is linked with extraordinary experiences.

WHOLE BRAIN POWER All the unusual abilities that some people are able to manifest ... are associated with changes in the EEG pattern toward a more bilaterally symmetrical and integrated form... My research has led me to believe that the 'higher mind,' on the neuropsychological level, was what Carl Jung called transcendent function, and that it was manifested by the integration of left- and right-hemisphere function. - C. Maxwell Cade The Awakened Mind SYNCHRONY: MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY OF INFORMATION TRANSPORT One of the ways scientists investigated peak brain states was to bring skilled meditators into the laboratory, paste electrodes all over their skull, give them a button to press to signal when they were "there," and record the activity on an EEG. They found that when meditators were in their peak state, the brain wave activity throughout the whole brain fell into a state they called "synchrony." Now whole brain wave synchrony is a very specific state. It does not mean simply that the whole brain produces dominant waves of the same frequency, such as 10 Hz alpha. If you visualize brain waves as a series of peaks and valleys, then synchrony occurs when brainwaves reach their peak at the same time. When brain waves are "in sync," their power increases (think of two waves joining together: they produce a larger wave). So, when researchers noted that meditators produced whole brain synchrony, what they saw was also an enormous increase in power or amplitude throughout the whole brain. What are the effects of synchrony? One of the leading researchers into brain wave synchrony, Dr. Lester Fehmi, of the Princeton Biofeedback Research Institute, points out that "synchrony represents the maximum efficiency of information transport through the whole brain." This means that brain wave synchrony produces a sharp increase in the effects of various brain wave states. Fehmi notes that "phase synchrony ... is observed to enhance the magnitude and occurrence of the subjective phenomena associated with alpha and theta" and of beta as well. Thus, for example, the phenomena associated with theta, such as vivid imagery, access to memory, spontaneous creative insights, and integrative experiences, all are enhanced in "magnitude and occurrence" by whole brain synchrony. Some of the researchers and clinicians who have been using EEG "crossover point" training now believe that part of the extraordinary transformational powers of moving through that critical point where alpha is superceded by theta are a result of brain wave synchrony. William Beckwith observes that "The production of synchronized, coherent electromagnetic energy by the human brain at a given frequency leads to a 'laserlike' condition increasing the amplitude and strength of the brain waves." He notes that "as clients learn to increase their alpha amplitude and produce theta waves without losing consciousness, a critical point is reached when theta amplitude begins to exceed alpha amplitude. Cross-lateral brainwave synchronization also increases, creating a more coherent system. At this point, there are profound alterations in client mood and behavior," including "the seemingly miraculous resolution of complex psychological problems... There is a sudden re-ordering of the entire personality in ways that cannot be readily explained by other models." BRAINWAVE SYMMETRY AND EMOTIONS In addition to synchrony, there is now evidence that whole-brain symmetry (i.e. the relative balance of EEG activity between the right and left hemisphere) is an important key to peak brain functioning. The clear link between left side of the face activity and sadness and right side of the face activity and happiness has recently been scientifically documented. In some of the studies the researchers simply asked the subjects to vigorously contract either the right or left sides of their face. They found strong evidence (in over 90% of the subjects) that contorting one side of the face produces emotions, with the left side of the face producing sadness and negative emotions, right side producing positive emotions. But why does facial asymmetry affect emotions? Several groups of scientists working independently have found that "EEG asymmetry in anterior regions of the brain" can predict and diagnose emotional states and emotional styles. That is, people with more activity in the left frontal cortex than in the right tend to have a more cheerful and positive temperament - they are self- confident, outgoing, interested in people and external events, resilient, optimistic and happy. On the other hand, people whose EEG shows more activity in the right frontal cortex than in the left tend to be more sad and negative in their outlook - they see the world as more stressful and threatening, are more suspicious of people, and feel far more fear, disgust, anxiety, self-blame and hopelessness than the left-activated group. In one study, researchers found that these brainwave patterns could predict "affective responses to emotion elicitors," i.e. how the subjects would react to film clips that were preselected to elicit positive or negative emotions (the positive film clips were of a puppy at play, or an amusing gorilla taking a bath; the negative clips showed gory surgery scenes). Those with more right-frontal activity showed far more powerful negative emotions, such as fear and disgust, when viewing the surgical scenes than did those with more left-frontal activity. On the other hand, those with more left-frontal activity derived far more pleasure and delight from the positive films than did the gloomy right-frontal subjects. In

other words, things that might produce delight and euphoria in some people will leave others cold, unmoved, or even suspicious; and things that some folks find only mildly unpleasant will fill others with enormous revulsion, disgust and horror. And, astonishingly, these responses can be predicted, simply by observing their brainwave patterns! THE CRY-BABY BIOMARKER & DEPRESSION IN THE BRAIN There is also evidence that these brainwave asymmetries may be linked to depression. The researchers tested the EEGs of a group of normal subjects who had never been treated for depression, and a group of subjects who had been previously depressed and later successfully treated for depression. They found that the previously depressed subjects had far less left-frontal activity, and far more right-frontal activity, than those who had never been depressed. A recent brainmapping study of depressive patients by C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D. at the Shealy Institute in Springfield, Missouri, revealed that 100 percent of the patients had abnormal brainwave activity, with the most common finding being "Asymmetry of the two hemispheres with right hemisphere dominance." Another study revealed that patients who had just been diagnosed with depression and were about to begin treatment had less left- frontal activity than non-depressed subjects. "You find similar brain patterns in people who are depressed, or who have recovered from depression, and in normal people who are prone to bad moods," said one of the researchers, Dr. John Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "We suspect that people with this brain activity pattern are at high risk for depression." There is even evidence that these brainwave patterns and emotional "styles" may be hereditary or genetically-influenced. Davidson has studied the behavior and the EEG patterns of 10- month old infants during a brief period (one minute) of separation from their mothers, and found that "those infants who cried in response to maternal separation showed greater right- frontal activation during the preceding baseline period compared with infants who did not cry." Observed Davidson, "Every single infant who cried had more right frontal activation. Every one who did not had more activity on the left." He concluded that "Frontal activation asymmetry may be a state-independent marker for individual differences in threshold of reactivity to stressful events and vulnerability to particular emotions." TURNING UP THE JUICE IN THE JOLLY LOBE The next step, of course, is to move from simply observing the existing brainwave patterns and using them for diagnosis to actively developing strategies and techniques for altering the patterns. As Dr. Davidson pointed out, "If you learn to regulate your negative feelings better, it may turn out that you have also learned to turn up the activity in your left frontal lobe." FINDING THE POINT OF BALANCE All of this research casts new light on the well known differences between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. In most people, the left hemisphere is superior in processing verbal material while the right hemisphere shows superiority in handling visual/spatial information. Studies by neuroscientist David Shannahoff-Khalsa of Salk Institute for Biological Sciences indicate that hemispheric dominance is constantly shifting back and forth from right to left hemispheres, with average cycles of 90 to 120 minutes. Other scientists have reached similar conclusions by testing subjects at regular intervals on verbal (lefthemisphere) and spatial (right hemisphere) tasks. They found that when verbal ability was high, spatial ability was low, and vice versa. This discovery, Shanhnahoff-Khalsa points out, "suggests we can exert more control over our day-to-day mental functioning. For example, certain cognitive functions, such as language skills, mathematics and other rational processes that are thought to be primarily localized in the left hemisphere" might be boosted by "forcibly altering" our cerebral dominance. And in the same way we might "accentuate the creativity that is thought to be characteristic of right-hemisphere dominance," through similar forcible altering. However, one key finding that has emerged from these studies of shifts in hemispheric dominance is that each time dominance shifts from one hemisphere to the other there is a point at which dominance is equally balanced between both hemispheres. And, the researchers have found, it is at this point, and during this short period of time, when the brain is at its most fertile and creative. The truth is that two brains are better than one. While each hemisphere seems to have its specific beneficial capacities, each has its downside as well. The right hemisphere has been linked with visual/spatial skills, emotional and musical sensitivities, and intuitive, timeless, imagistic thought, but also with depression, suspicion, sadness, hostility, paranoia and negative emotions. The left hemisphere has been linked with verbal skills, orientation in time, rational, logical, analytical thinking, happiness and positive emotions. But mere analytical thought, without intuitive, emotional, imagistic, time-free insights, is rigid and uncreative. There is a reason why we have two hemispheres: they are both necessary and complementary, and they function best when they are functioning together, synergistically. This is an obvious point of much of the research we have looked at so far. EEG studies of meditators clearly demonstrated that peak states were characterized by increased

synchrony and symmetry between the hemispheres. Neuroscientist Jerre Levy, of the University of Chicago, a leading authority in the field of hemispheric lateralization research, believes that, "Normal brains are built to be challenged. They operate at optimal levels only when cognitive processing requirements are of sufficient complexity to activate both hemispheres. Great men and women of history did not merely have superior intellectual capacities within each hemisphere. They had phenomenal levels of emotional commitments, motivation, attentional capacity - all of which reflected the highly integrated brain in action." It's evident that a "highly integrated brain," a brain in which both hemispheres are functioning in symmetry, synchrony, harmony and unity, is a key to peak states and peak human performance. But throughout history, humans have found that it's not easy to intentionally bring both hemispheres to bear simultaneously. Much of our lives we spend swinging back and forth between left dominant states and right dominant states. This is where EEG feedback presents revolutionary possibilities. For research has shown that users can quickly learn alter hemispheric asymmetry and imbalance and produce more symmetrical, balanced brainwave patterns. And, the evidence suggests, by doing so they can assist in producing the peak performance states associated with whole- brain integration. LINKING EEG FEEDBACK WITH LIGHT ENTRAINMENT Tuning into Stored Traumas. In Megabrain Report Vol. 1, No. 2 (1990) I discussed the enormous potentials of "an entirely new generation of devices that combine sound and light stimulation with biofeedback capabilities... [which] enable the machine to read the user's dominant brainwave activity, and then provide the optimal frequency of sound and light to entrain brainwave activity toward the 'target' frequency." But even in my wildest speculations I could never have predicted the extraordinary results some clinicians are now attaining using such an EEG-LS feedback loop. Psychotherapist Len Ochs, Ph.D., had long experience of using EEG and other types of biofeedback. He had studied with interest the succes of Peniston and Kulkosky with the alpha/theta training. While exploring the Peniston Protocol in his own therapy practice, Ochs also became intrigued with the potential benefits of linking EEG feedback with LS machines, so that the frequency of the light flashes was directly linked to the brainwave activity of the client. It made sense that by entraining brainwaves downward toward a theta "target frequency" he could speed up the lengthy feedback training procedure used by Peniston and Kulkosky. Ochs began using EEG-LS stimulation, which he first called EEG Entrainment Feedback (EEF), and found that as clients moved downward or upward into certain frequency ranges - which were different for each client - many of them would begin to experience discomfort, anxiety or nausea. He found that those who were most hypersensitive were the ones who had the most symptoms. They were, he concluded, hypersensitive at certain frequencies. Ochs used the LS to help gently entrain the clients' brainwaves into the uncomfortable frequency range. He found that as they willingly relaxed and entered that frequency range, they underwent sudden releases of traumatic material. What was even more exciting was that these sudden releases had powerful, life- transforming effects. In the process, their symptoms disappeared, and they became desensitized to the lights. It was as if the therapeutic effects of months or even years of traditional "talk" psychotherapy had been compressed into minutes. The Brainwave Rollercoaster. In his explorations of EEF, Ochs experimented with designing the computer program that linked the EEG with the LS to alternately speed up brainwaves and then slow them down, reversing direction every minute or two, and producing a sort of rollercoaster effect. He found that when he did this many clients experienced an even more rapid release of symptoms and problems. It appeared that as clients learned to move through troublesome frequencies, they released progressively more and more of the stored traumatic material. In effect, Ochs concluded, the process was not really entraining brainwaves, but constantly disentraining brainwaves, constantly nudging or pulling dominant brainwave activity out of its habitual "grooves" and responses. In doing this, it seemed to have the effect of "limbering up" the brain, increasing its flexibility, its capacity to move freely up and down through various frequency ranges. He concluded that EDF was working by optimizing EEG. My own experiences with Ochs's EEG-LS link, which he now calls EEG Disentrainment Feedback (EDF), and my discussions with others who have experienced it, have convinced me that this linking of brainwaves with light stimulation produces a profound brain- altering effect quite different from either EEG feedback of LS stimulation alone. BOOSTING BRAINPOWER WITH EEG Out of all the EEG feedback research, one intriguing fact has emerged: EEG biofeedback training clearly increases human brain power, including increases in IQ and in other types of intelligence and achievements. These increases seem to result not only from the altered brainwave states that are the result of EEG biofeedback training, but also from actual physiological brain growth in response to the challenge and stimulation of learning to use the mind tools - i.e. the "enriched environment" effect. Among those who have found increased IQ in response to biofeedback training are professors Harold Russell, Ph.D. and John Carter, Ph.D. of the University of Houston. They have concluded: "Learning to self-regulate one's ongoing EEG frequency and amplitude activity is a complex and time consuming task. It requires a highly focused

concentration on and the awareness of the brain's activity and the repetition of the patterns of mental activity that produce the desired frequency and amplitude... When the task of control of EEG activity is adequately learned and sufficiently practiced, the functioning of the human brain improves measurably, e.g.... scores on standardized tests of achievements or intelligence increase by 12 to 20 points." In other words, there seems to be something inherently brain- expanding about learning to manipulate your brainwaves. One valuable but inexpensive technique for manipulating your brainwaves is reading. I have no doubts that there is something inherently brain-expanding about reading. This issue of Megabrain Report contains a compendium of articles from many of the leading figures in EEG feedback, dealing with all of the issues touched on above. I cannot guarantee that reading them will increase your IQ by 12 to 20 points, but I can guarantee with total confidence that they will expand your mind. Read on.

EDITORIAL: PEAK PERFORMANCE BRAIN WAVES

by Michael Hutchison

A neuroscientist used to be like a man in a Goodyear blimp floating over a bowl game: he could hear the crowd roar, and that was about it. But now we're down in the stands. It's not too long before we'll be able to tell why one man gets a hot dog and one man gets a beer." - Floyd Bloom, neuroanatomist Scripps Clinic The Brain Revolution has been one of the most momentous events in human history. Perhaps its most exciting development has been that for the first time, as Floyd Bloom observes, humans have been able to get right down into the arena of the human brain and observe the action as it happens - and then look at it again in slow-motion on the instant replay. With the development of computerized brain monitoring devices of incredible sensitivity, scientists have been able to observe what goes on in our brains during virtually every life experience - pain, ecstasy, depression, love, having a flash of insight, seeing stripes, remembering, forgetting, eating, sleeping, having sex. Most remarkably, scientists have discovered that by watching the activity of our own brains, we can quickly learn how to change our brains, and in doing so change what we are experiencing. The implications are enormous. If we can change our own brain states at will, then surely we can learn to shift out of unwanted or unhealthy states or experiences into desired states and experiences. Just as we can change channels on our TVs, we may be able to intentionally switch out of states such as pain, depression, anxiety and anger and switch into pleasure, love, well-being, insight and clarity. While there are numerous new tools for observing the brain, ranging from MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography), and SPECT (single photon emission computerized tomography), to SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device), perhaps the most exciting work in the last few years has been done using the EEG (electroencephalogram) in the biofeedback or neurofeedback mode - by enabling subjects to observe and thereby to learn to change the electrical activity of their own brains. What these EEG researchers have found, as one writes elsewhere in this issue of Megabrain Report, summarizing his 25 years of research, is that, remarkably, "Brain waves relate to everything." Using EEG feedback, researchers, clinicians and their subjects have, among other things, been able to train the brain to "heal" itself from alcoholism and drug addiction, learning disorders and brain traumas, depression and anxiety. Subjects in some EEG studies have experienced average IQ increases of 20 to 30 points. Some researchers have found certain patterns of brain activity that seem linked to extraordinary or peak brain states, such as transcendence, illumination, flow, awakening. And, using EEG feedback systems as well as other mind technology, they have found that subjects can learn to enter these peak states. With such a wealth of breakthrough work being done with EEG and EEG feedback, we have decided to devote this issue of Megabrain Report to exploring this field. In the pages that follow are articles by some of the leading researchers, clinicians and theoreticians of EEG brain training, as well as discussions of the most exciting research being done around the world, and reviews of the latest EEG equipment. However, as we discussed the articles with the various contributors, and as the articles appeared, it became clear that there was simply too much information, too many good articles, too many connections to be made between the work of different contributors, to fit into a single issue, even if we expanded it far beyond our "maximum" of 48 pages. And so our EEG Special has expanded into two jumbo issues, both jam packed with fresh, mind-stretching and original material. When we invited scientists to contribute, we asked them to write about developments and discoveries in EEG feedback and research that they felt were most important. So it has been fascinating, as the articles have come in, to see how each of these scientists, working largely independently, has focused on the same few recurrent themes. Dr. James Hardt and Dr. Les Fehmi both provide moving and heartfelt descriptions of how their first-hand experiences of personal transformation through EEG feedback in the 1960s have added an almost spiritual sense of urgency and committment to their work. Most of the contributors clearly agree that the extraordinary recent developments in EEG are founded on the pioneering EEG feedback work in the 60s and 70s by Joe Kamiya, Elmer Green, Barry Sterman, Joel Lubar, Tom Budzynski, Jim Hardt, and Les

Fehmi, among others. They also seem to share a common perception that the vast potential for human development hinted at by the EEG feedback research of the tumultuous 60s was disturbing to the medical, scientific and cultural mainstream, and as a result was suppressed, derided or actively discouraged for almost 20 years - what we can now call the Nixon-Reagan Era. As a result, virtually all of them seem to share a sense of personal satisfaction in the recent emergence of EEG feedback as a "hot" field. Perhaps the heat of the recent EEG explosion is a natural result of the years of discouragement. Hardt, Fehmi, Dr. Jon Cowan, Dr. Len Ochs, Dr. Siegfried Othmer, Dr. Thomas Budzynski, Dr. Julian Isaacs and Anna Wise all write with evident excitement and optimism about the extraordinary power of EEG feedback training of specific types or at certain frequencies to produce unprecedented and at times seemingly miraculous healings, resolutions of formerly intractable psychological problems (including addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, brain trauma, depression and anxiety), and sudden re-orderings of personality. While they may all offer speculations, theories and conjectures, using fuzzy words like consciousness, unconscious, subconscious, transformation, "witness" consciousness, "inputting" information, brainwave "training," attention and attention deficit, they all are aware of the tentative nature of their conclusions. All of them seem to share the view that "we ain't seen nothing yet" - that we have only begun to begin to understand a bit about the workings of brain wave feedback, that the workings of the brain remain the greatest and most fascinating mystery of our age. Each of these scientists look at essentially the same phenomena - high amplitude alpha, whole brain synchrony, alpha-theta training, "good" and "bad" theta, beta training - through slightly differing lenses, pose the same questions in differing words, and offer answers or tentative conclusions that, while in differing words, are in remarkable agreement, harmony or accord. Budzynski, Hardt, Fehmi, Isaacs, Ochs and F. Holmes Atwater all discuss the importance of new technology and offer insights into what types of technology work and what don't, where to place the electrodes and how to interpret the raw data. Virtually all of them emphasize the importance of the right treatment protocol to attain desired results, and offer invaluable descriptions and insights into various protocols, ranging from alpha/theta training for addictions to beta training for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Most of the articles in this special EEG issue of MEGABRAIN REPORT and the one which will follow it come right from the cutting edge of current EEG research, and will be thought provoking and stimulating (and in some cases startling) to scientists, therapists and other health professionals. Much of the information they contain is fresh, eye-opening, and is presented here for the first time. It is also, we believe, extremely practical. It is our hope that this special issue may serve as a catalyst and a stimulus to therapists, educators, counselors, researchers, and other professionals, alerting them to the revolutionary potentials for enhancing human performance and well-being through EEG feedback, and providing the basic practical information needed to take the first steps toward incorporating the EEG feedback into their practice. But of course many of us are fascinated by this work and by brainwaves (both other peoples' and our own) not as professionals, but as individuals who want to learn more about ways we can become stronger, healthier and happier and take greater control over our emotions, states of consciousness, and our lives. And so, we have worked with the contributors to be sure these articles are written in language that is clear, jargon-free, down to earth and accessible to non-scientists. And, as an introduction for non-professionals, we first present "The Brainwave Investigation," a short summary of the historical background and some of the central issues and discoveries of EEG feedback, and brief sketches of the work of many of the leading EEG explorers, whose articles consitute the rest of this extraordinary issue and the one which follows.

ALPHA-THETA BRAINWAVE BIOFEEDBACK:

The Many Possible Theoretical Reasons for Its Success by Jonathan D. Cowan

Abstract A new neurotherapy, employing alpha-theta brainwave biofeedback preceded by imagery of desired personal changes, has been reported to produce profound personality and mood changes in substance abusers and other patients. This has raised questions about the theoretical mechanism(s) underlying the clinical improvements: Why should the new therapy be beneficial? What is the relationship of these brain rhythms to substance abuse? This paper includes an annotated list of a number of possible theoretical reasons for these clinical gains, as well as a discussion of recent experimental evidence linking these brain rhythms to alcohol and other drug abuse. KEYWORDS: EEG, biofeedback, substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, alpha rhythm The rediscovery of brainwave biofeedback, particularly in its new application as alpha-theta training, has left many practitioners and researchers puzzled about its reputed power. Just a few years ago, the training of the EEG was restricted to a few diehards who knew its potential. The recent explosion of interest in this field, spearheaded by the work of Drs. Eugene Peniston and Paul Kulkosky (1989, 1990, 1991), has produced a rapidly expanding group of practitioners claiming remarkable results in treating a number of disorders: chemical dependence, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, multiple personality, panic, and eating disorders, to name a few. In a recent article in the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback's newsmagazine, Biofeedback, Dr. J. Peter Rosenfeld (1992) raised the question of "the conceptual foundation of brainwave training effects", as well as other issues. To restate his questions more clearly: 1. Why should alpha-theta brainwave biofeedback have a positive effect on alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse? 2. What is the relationship of the alpha and theta rhythms to substance abuse? Although I can see the remarkable success of this therapy in my own clinical work, from a scientific perspective, I can also understand why Dr. Rosenfeld and others are justifiably puzzled. I am also keenly aware that others postpone thinking about these issues at all, waiting for a larger number of controlled outcome studies. Although it is clear that additional clinical trials are very necessary, further consideration of Dr. Rosenfeld's questions will add to our understanding and thereby refine these studies. I have been thinking about these questions since I first read Peniston and Kulkosky's paper in May, 1989, and visited Dr. Peniston that September. Since then, I have had a number of illuminating discussions about this with many others in the field, including Dr. Lester Fehmi, Dr. Joe Kamiya, Dr. Scott Lukas, and Dr. Peniston. The ideas and references that they suggested have helped me to understand that there are a large number of possible reasons for the success of this therapy. While it is clearly too early to decide about the relative importance of these reasons, I feel that it is important to put forward an annotated list of possible explanations, in the hope that it will stimulate dialogue, research, and improved therapeutic approaches. I would certainly welcome comments and discussion from others. This new neurotherapy-known as either alpha-theta training, Imagery and Attention Control Training, or (perhaps too vaguely) as neurofeedback, EEG or brainwave biofeedback-actually goes back quite a long time. The use of imagery and biofeedback involving both the alpha and theta states was first explored in the late 1960s by Dr. Elmer Green and his colleagues at the Menninger Foundation, who termed it "programming the unconscious" (Green & Green, 1986). Conversations with Dr. Green revealed that he had modified an approach to changing life patterns that he had excerpted from the ancient Yoga sutras: Hold the image of change firmly in mind as you quiet down both physiology and thought processes, and then release it without attachment. Dr. Green has discussed this approach at many Menninger Foundation courses on brainwave biofeedback, including one that Dr. Peniston attended.

The essentials of alpha-theta training have been covered in detail by Dr. Len Ochs (Ochs, 1992). As originally performed by Dr. Peniston, the nucleus of the training consisted of 6-8 sessions of thermal biofeedback and autogenic training, followed by 30 sessions of evoked images (of personal change) and alpha- theta EEG biofeedback. The sessions were typically performed twice a day, five days a week, on Veterans Administration Hospital inpatients. The training in hand warming, which was taken to a criterion of 94 degrees, was used to create an experience of mastery, as well as a state of relaxation that evidence suggests will also produce an enhancement of the patient's theta rhythm. Dr. Peniston used a standardized set of imagery instructions, which he varied slightly for different diagnoses (alcoholism, drug, abuse, posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, etc.). He then told the patient to "sink down" into a state just above sleep, keeping his mind quiet and his body still, while listening to the biofeedback tones. The two tones were triggered if the occipital (O1) alpha or theta amplitudes went above a preset threshold. Alpha and theta were trained simultaneously, not sequentially, as Ochs (1992) stated. The simultaneous training, in combination with the instructions, results in the production of alpha rhythms that are primarily at the lower end of the alpha frequency range. A trainee will typically spend several minutes producing predominantly low alpha rhythms, before this drops out and somewhat increased theta amplitudes supervene. From there, the course of the 30 minute biofeedback experience is highly variable, as are the subjective reports. As Dr. Ochs indicated, each clinician who has employed this protocol has added his or her own variations. Some of them are described in the accompanying article. Despite this inconsistency, the results of the therapy have been remarkably positive and robust among patients who have completed the recommended number of sessions. Some of the evidence for its effectiveness was put forward at a symposium at the recent AAPB meeting in Colorado Springs. An informal meeting of practitioners at the same conference produced reports of about 80% short-term effectiveness with over 300 patients in the wide variety of conditions listed above. Dr. Peniston's efforts accounted for about 180 of these patients, whose success has been followed up for 2-4 years. The network of therapists that I have talked with about this particular technique reports a similar pattern in a much larger number of patients. There is also a partial overlap with other successful methods of EEG biofeedback therapy with a much longer track record, including the numerous practitioners trained over the years by Dr. Lester Fehmi, Dr. Thomas Budzynski, the Menninger Foundation, and several others. On balance, I should also point out that there are real practical difficulties in providing enough encouragement for patients to complete this therapy in an outpatient setting, as Dr. Ochs discussed in great detail. However, there are modifications and additions to the therapy that produce major gains in the first few sessions and thereby improve compliance. To start the list of reasons where the therapy begins, with thermal biofeedback, is to review territory familiar to most biofeedback clinicians. Clearly, thermal biofeedback, coupled with autogenic phrases, can be very relaxing, thereby relieving stress that the trainee has accumulated. Teaching the student how to achieve this relaxed state does create a perception of self- mastery over stress, which can be healing in itself. It is probable that if the 6-8 sessions of this training were extended by 30 more, additional gains in relaxation and mastery would be forthcoming. Would these gains be sufficient to account for the effectiveness of Peniston's approach? This is a researchable question. To confound the issue, these reasons for success should also apply to learning control of the low alpha and theta brain rhythms, but perhaps the latter task produces an even more profound experience of relaxation and mastery. In an Association devoted to biofeedback and psychophysiology, it is easy to overlook the importance of the imagery instructions given prior to the EEG biofeedback in each session. In private conversations, Dr. Peniston has consistently emphasized the importance of evoking these images of personal change. The imagery instructions used here provi de mental rehearsal of new intentions and images of positive alternatives to unwanted responses, such as drinking alcohol. The instructions are repeated without variation in each of the 30 sessions. This degree of massed practice and rehearsal may be very valuable in healing, in and of itself. From the viewpoint of learning and memory, the repetition of intentional images or visualizations is quite different from a series of guided imagery experiences. It is much more likely to reinforce learning and produce the overlearning of the particular response that is important in creating personal change. In fact, finding ways to evoke the same images several times in each session may be very useful in decreasing the number of sessions necessary for successful alpha- theta therapy. Adapting some of the characteristics of effective visualization discussed by Dr. Patricia Norris (1989) to this therapy should also increase its effectiveness. To achieve this, I make sure that each of my students is deeply involved in writing his or her own script to evoke imagery. These images of personal change are experienced in a relaxed state, followed closely by the affect induced by alpha-theta biofeedback, which is usually very pleasant. This forms an association between the images and pleasant affect which is repeated 30 times throughout the course of therapy; the well- learned association between the two should make the new intentions and behaviors seem more desirable. The

power of alpha-theta training may be partly due to inputting images and suggestions in such a way that they bypass the conscious mind, thereby benefiting from the lack of interference from adult disbelief and disempowerment. Before setting forth the rest of the reasons associated with the feedback of the alpha and theta rhythms, it is important to clearly establish the distinction between brain rhythms and brain states. The underlying configuration of psychological, neurological and biochemical activity, which may shift from moment to moment, is the brain state, state of consciousness, or, more precisely, state-context (Kiefer and Cowan, 1979). I prefer our terminology because it emphasizes the fact that elements of context, particularly cognitive patterns, also influence the neural background on which experiences are encoded and stored in the brain. The impairments of retrieval produced by changes in state and cognitive context are both consequences of the shift in neuronal background in effect at storage and retrieval, and are therefore nearly impossible to separate. I believe the term state-context dependent retrieval is a more accurate description of the phenomenon than the original term, state-dependent learning. The EEG is but one of a number of multiple converging indicators of state-context, as Dr. Joe Kamiya is fond of pointing out. The multiple rhythms of the EEG are often overlaid on one another at the same time; the amplitudes, frequencies, and phase relationships of these rhythms presumably have some connections to the underlying brain state-context. However, comments such as those indicating that a student is "in the theta state" when he is practicing the augmentation of his theta rhythm grossly oversimplify a highly complex reality. There are a number of problems with this all too convenient approach: 1. The theta rhythm itself is not a unitary phenomenon. Undoubtedly, there are important distinctions relating to the meaning of different frequencies, waveforms, and electrode sites, especially if pathological EEGs are also considered. There probably are multiple underlying state contexts which characteristically produce large amounts of theta activity at a particular electrode site. These state-contexts have evolved differently in each person, shaped by many factors in the individual's developmental history. More on this later. One should not confuse the rhythm that the therapist is attempting to train with the pattern of rhythms that the student is producing at the moment. This is particularly troublesome if he is being trained by turning on a sound when he is above an arbitrary threshold, which the therapist can change at whim. Without looking at the whole pattern, it is impossible to assign a meaning to producing a certain percentage of theta above threshold. It is often difficult even if you can see the whole pattern.

2.

3.

It is probably more accurate to state that EEG rhythms roughly reflect one or several dimensions of the focusing and deployment of the student's attention, ranging from the relatively narrow focus associated with some predominantly beta rhythms to the more open or even diffuse attention, divided among multiple objects, characteristic of low alpha dominance (Fritz & Fehmi, 1982). By training the student to produce more or less of these brain rhythms, we are actually doing something far more complex: Teaching him to perceive and control a number of different transitions among his own unique state-contexts, which differ among themselves in the amounts of each of these rhythms that they produce. We are training the student to activate certain of these state-contexts by instructing him to emphasize certain rhythms. In some cases, we are also teaching him new state- contexts, and their distinction from other previously learned ones. One possible reason for the success of this therapy is that we are training the student to better control many of his transitions between his unique state-contexts, by teaching him how to control the way he focuses and deploys his attention. Certain types of state-contexts may only be activated if attention is focused and deployed among possible objects in a characteristic manner, one associated with the predominance of certain brain rhythms. For example, it may be easier to activate or stabilize a state-context in which one is narrowly focussing on anxious thoughts and feelings, as well as the associated events and memories, if the predominant brainwave rhythm is beta. Parenthetically, there may be a more direct way of measuring the student's ability to produce appropriate transitions between brain rhythms. One problem with current approaches is that we rarely train complete control, in that we omit teaching them how to turn off these rhythms. Dr. Kamiya did this in his early work with alpha training, in which he alternated between two minutes of alpha enhancement and two minutes of suppression. With our current technological richesse, it would be a simple matter to devise a program that measured how quickly an individual could make transitions back and forth between predominant rhythms. By quantifying this latency, we may be able to develop a training outcome measure with greater validity. By training the student to produce quick transitions between brain rhythms, we may also be able to train them to

improve their ability to transit between some of their underlying state-contexts-those that typically produce the changes in brain rhythm and the consequent biofeedback. Dr. Martin Wuttke's article (1992) sets forth a related reason for the success of alpha-theta therapy-the development of the "witness" consciousness through training these transitions. "With training you eventually develop the ability to consciously observe and witness internal and external stimuli, without judging or thinking...This skill brings with it a new volition in regard to cognitive processing." (1992, p. 21) This increased ability to choose between experiencing a state-context containing unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and associated memories, or a more pleasant one, can clearly improve anyone's mental health. During and after this therapy, patients regularly report increased control of their state-contexts. Patients also report a greater ability to "let go" of unwanted thoughts and feelings. In view of the alpha rhythm training, this is not at all surprising. For many years, Dr. Lester Fehmi has been teaching clients and therapists to use low alpha, in combination with certain images, to open the focus of their attention and include more of the sensory/perceptual field surrounding each experienced event (Fritz & Fehmi, 1982). Dr. Karl Pribram has uncovered a number of systems within the brain which allow it to vary between a narrow focus on one aspect of experience and dividing attention more equally among multiple, narrow bandwidth input channels (Pribram, 1971). By broadening the focus of attention to include many sensory input channels, it becomes more difficult to narrowly focus on one repetitive "tape" or "conversation" or a "vicious cycle" involving unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and memories, each intensifying the other. If the attentional focus is diffuse, as it is in many state-contexts characterized by large low alpha output, these thoughts can be "let go" more easily, since they represent only a small portion of the totality of experience at the moment. If they recur, or other unpleasant thoughts come up, it is easier to watch them dissolve again without attachment. By developing the ability to allow the "witness" to control this Open Focus of attention, the student can learn to experience and accept all events equally without attachment, transcending pleasure and displeasure (Fritz & Fehmi, 1982) [For more on this technique see the interview with Dr. Fehmi elsewhere in this issue-Ed.] Is there something unique about state-contexts with predominant theta rhythms that can account for some of the treatment's effectiveness? There is a fact that may have immense implications here: As we mature, our average brainwave frequencies get faster. During the important formative period from one to six years old, the predominant brain rhythms fall in the theta range, but the waveforms of the posterior dominant rhythm look more like alpha spindles (Duffy, Iyer, & Surwillo, 1989). Older children's frequencies are in the alpha range until puberty, when the faster adult pattern supervenes (Kooi, Tucker & Marshall, 1978). The implications of this shift are fascinating, especially when combined with the principle of state (or statecontext) dependent learning and retrieval. The highly emotional experiences of early childhood, and the (often mistaken) decisions which stem from them, are learned and stored as modifications of the slower background frequencies that were activated at the time. These initial associations between the cortex and the limbic system- the emotional brain-are formed in individualized state-contexts characterized by cortical theta rhythms, and strongly consolidated in memory by the actions of neurohormones (such as epinephrine and vasopressin) released during emotional experiences. Over the years, as brainwave rhythms move to faster and faster frequencies, access to these original memories is gradually lost due to the state-context change and state-context dependent retrieval. Newer experiences which are connected to the original ones by cognitive or emotional similarities are stored in association with them, but at faster frequencies, generally easier to retrieve at a later time. The part of this matrix of associated memories which is hidden from consciousness by state dependence can be considered to be the subconscious. A subset of these subconscious memories-particularly those related to sexuality and aggression-are further modified and obscured by psychodynamic memory processes to form the unconscious, in the sense used by Freud and his followers. However, Green and Green's (1986) use of the word "unconscious" appears to be closer to the broader subconscious I am describing, with an emphasis on the clear links to the control of psychophysiological functions. During the alpha-theta therapy, the subconscious becomes more accessible to alteration or "programming" (as Dr. Green puts it) by new images, as well as the release of old images. As I suggested in a remark at the end of the alpha-theta EEG biofeedback seminar at the 1990 AAPB meeting in Washington, the images generated by the student are being stored in a variety of state-contexts, each characterized by predominant slow EEG frequencies. In each session, after the images are evoked, they remain in short term memory as the student "sinks down" into a series of these state-contexts. It is likely that in this unusual attempt to relax deeply without falling asleep, the student reactivates a number of state-contexts that have been largely dormant since childhood, since his adult experience with state- contexts of deep relaxation is typically very limited. He will permanently store the new images in each state-context that he reactivates. Although each new memory increment may be weak, over the 30 sessions the student will generalize these repeated

images from his adult state-contexts to a number of those initially learned in childhood at predominantly lower frequencies. Each training session may reactivate a different selection of state- contexts, and the consolidation of memory in them will be probabilistic and cumulative. This is one of the few ways in which adults can store new information in the subconscious-in state-contexts dominated by theta and low alpha rhythms, with their well learned but state dependent connections to the limbic system and early emotional memories. Hypnosis and NLP may offer other approaches. If this therapy does offer a powerful method to reprogram the subconscious, by overlaying images of new intentions and positive alternatives, this is clearly a reason for its success. The release of old images-that is, the integration of subconscious, possibly repressed material into conscious awareness during this therapy-may form the basis of another reason for the success of the alphatheta training. As Wuttke (1992, p. 21) states "A goal of psychotherapy is the integration of repressed material into conscious awareness. This self- integrative process occurs quite often during brainwave training sessions as the individual maintains a semi-conscious awareness (referred to as reverie). . . . The result is a natural integration of repressed material, usually through symbolic mini- dreams." This integration may have a basis in the brainwave changes seen in alpha-theta training, according to an upcoming paper by Dr. Peniston. He reports that repressed, abreactive material is most likely to surface when the student learns to slow down the predominant alpha frequency to the point where it is below eight cycles per second, technically within the theta range. At these frequencies, the posterior dominant rhythm resembles that of childhood. The emergence of subconscious memories, stored during childhood and reinforced by other highly emotional experiences which reactivate the associations between the limbic system and cortical theta rhythms, becomes more understandable as an effect of state-context dependent retrieval. Dr. Peniston also noted a large amount of synchrony between electrode sites during these abreactive episodes. Brainwave synchrony indicates that the portions of the cerebral cortex sensed by the electrodes in question are firing in phase with one another. The origin of this coordinated cerebral rhythmic activity is now thought to be in the reticular nucleus of the thalamus (Steriade et al., 1990), a network of neurons that surrounds the centrally located thalamus like an eggshell. Although many of the more widespread, synchronous rhythms do appear at times when the cerebral cortex is arguably doing nothing more than idling (e.g., the alpha rhythms of relaxed wakefulness, the delta rhythms of deep sleep), other information supports the idea that some synchronized rhythms (and even some forms of idling) coincide with profoundly altered state-contexts that may produce integration and healing. There are several studies that indicate that longterm meditators show increased amplitudes and synchrony (and decreased frequency) of their low alpha rhythms, particularly in the frontal lobes. For over 18 years, Dr. Lester Fehmi has used a five channel EEG biofeedback instrument that trains people to increase both the amplitude and synchrony of the selected brain rhythms. His approach, which combines this training with the images of Open Focus, has become accepted as a treatment for a wide variety of conditions, including chronic pain and anxiety. Dr. Fehmi, Dr. Jean Millay and others have reported that brainwave synchrony between individuals results in increased rapport and reports of remarkably similar experiences. Others, such as Dr. Edgar Wilson, have found synchrony between healer and patient at the time of peak effectiveness. I have suggested a mechanism for this type of synchrony-induced information transfer (See "Mind as the Projection and Reception of Electroholomorphic Fields by the Brain," in Megabrain Report, Vol. 2, No. 2 [1994], pp. 23-30, and Cowan, 1991). I mention all of this in support of the suggestion that the development of synchrony during alpha-theta brainwave training may be an important reason for its success on neurophysiological, psychological and transcendental levels. Once individuals have been thoroughly trained using this protocol for alcohol or other drug abuse, if they transgress by using these substances again, they have a good chance of developing the "bone sick flu". This unexplained illness, which has frequently been described as "the worst flu I have ever had in my life" (Peniston, personal communication) may constitute a reason for therapeutic success with some patients. Rather then getting high from his drug of choice, the user experiences bone, joint, and muscle aches, as well as fever and malaise, for about two days before the symptoms resolve spontaneously. It should be noted that Peniston was using this method with success long before he uncovered this reaction and therapists became obligated to inform their patients, thereby establishing an expectation which reinforces abstinence. There have been some speculations involving the possible role of the hippocampus. I strongly doubt that the hippocampal theta rhythm has anything to do with alpha-theta training, since Winson (1985, pg. 185), who has done a considerable amount of work in the area, states "In all probability there is no such rhythm in any primate". It is true, however, that the hippocampus is desynchronized at many times when large portions of the cortex are in synchrony. The significance of this finding for the alpha- theta training has not yet been clarified. I am also cautious about suggesting that the reasons for effectiveness are primarily based at the neurochemical or endocrine level. Although it is fashionable to seek explanations that attempt to root

neuropsychological phenomena in supposedly deeper bedrock, I find that I must agree with Dr. Siegfried Othmer, a physicist who has turned his attention to EEG biofeedback, in wryly terming this type of reductionist approach "physics envy". While there is no doubt that any therapy which produces changes in the central nervous system as profound as this one does will produce many secondary changes in neurochemistry, to jump to the conclusion that any one (or even a few) of these changes cause the transformation of the individual that we see clinically is to put the cart in front of the horse. This situation is quite different from that involved in administering a drug, where it is thought that the drug must bind to a receptor, thereby leading to changes at the biochemical level that cause its psychological effects. With our current state of knowledge, there is simply no reason to assume that any one change in biochemistry or endocrinology is the primary event, eventually causing all the other changes. Although Peniston and Kulkosky (1989) did find that this training prevented a rise in beta-endorphin levels that was seen in the control group just before release, they admitted that this change could very well be due to the increased stress experienced by the control group in anticipation of their release from the hospital. Presumably, the brainwave training helped the experimental group to minimize this stress. Recent studies by Dr. Scott Lukas and Dr. Jack Mendelson have cast considerable light on the second question, concerning the relationships of these alpha and theta rhythms to substance abuse. They provide support for the assertion that the euphoria produced by many drugs is associated with increases in the output of low alpha waves. One study (Lukas & Mendelson, 1988) demonstrated that the euphoria and the alpha wave output of normal subjects drinking alcohol both peaked almost simultaneously, about a half hour after starting a fifteen minute drinking period. The blood levels of ACTH and corticosteroids also peaked at about the same time. In contrast, the blood alcohol concentrations continued to rise over the next half hour or more. In this and other studies, they have found a consistent relationship between momentary experiences of euphoria and very short term increases in alpha wave output due to alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine (Lukas, 1991). These findings reminded me that during my tenure at the National Institute on Drug Abuse Addiction Research Center, I had learned about the concept of "negative euphoria" put forth by Dr. Clifton K. Himmelsbach, the first Director, over 50 years ago. He hypothesized that many addicts used drugs not to feel good, but to forget that they felt badly. I performed a study which showed that alcohol could help normals to forget their feelings, whether positive or negative (Cowan, 1983), and demonstrated that this was a specific effect. This data supports the hypothesis that the euphoria produced by alcohol and perhaps some other drugs of abuse could be largely a negative one-that by helping individuals to achieve a particular low alpha state, the drugs may also help them to "let go" or forget a variety of unwanted, intrusive thoughts and feelings. The alpha-theta training may very well be teaching these drug-dependent individuals, who are usually troubled by a variety of unfavorable feelings and attitudes (particularly towards themselves), how to naturally achieve this escape, when it is beneficial to do so, by producing a state-context with an increased, and perhaps more synchronous, low alpha rhythm. Learning to enhance the theta rhythm may lead them to produce state-contexts of even deeper serenity and peace. There is a lot to think about here. There are few answers, but perhaps these hypothesized mechanisms will help in framing better questions. The immense promise of the alpha-theta technique and its many variants deserve a great deal of further attention both from researchers, intent on demonstrating its effectiveness and answering some of these questions, and from clinicians interested in refining this highly beneficial approach to personal change. References ?? Cowan, J. (1983). Testing the Escape Hypotheses: Alcohol Helps Users to Forget Their Feelings. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171: 40-48. ?? (1991, June). The Projection and Reception of Electroholomorphic Fields by the Brain. Presented at the meeting of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine, Boulder, CO. ?? (1994) "Mind as the Projection and Reception of Electroholomorphic Fields by the Brain," Megabrain Report, Vol. 2, No. 2: 23-30. ?? Duffy, F.H., Iyer, V.G. & Surwillo, W.W. (1989). Clinical Elec- troencephalography and Topographic Brain Mapping: Technology and Practice. New York: Springer-Verlag. ?? Fritz, G. & Fehmi, L. (1982). The Open Focus Handbook: The Self- Regulation of Attention in Biofeedback Training and Everyday Activities. Princeton, NJ: Biofeedback Computers. ?? Green, E., & Green, A. (1986). "Biofeedback and States of Consciousness". In B.B. Wolman & M. Ullman (Eds.), Handbook of States of Consciousness (pp. 553-589), New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ?? Kiefer, C.K. & Cowan, J. (1979). "State/Context Dependence and Theories of Ritual." Journal of Psychological Anthropology 2:53-83.

?? Kooi, K.A., Tucker, R.P., & Marshall, R.E. (1978). Fundamentals of Electro-encephalography (Second Edition). Hagerstown, MD: Harper and Row, p. 62. ?? Lukas, S. & Mendelson, J. (1988). "Electroencephalographic Activity and Plasma ACTH during Ethanol-Induced Euphoria." Biological Psychiatry 23:141-148. ?? Lukas, S.E. (1991)."Brain Electrical Activity as a Tool for Studying Drugs of Abuse." Advances in Substance Abuse 4:1-88. n ?? Norris, P.A. (1989). "Clinical Psychoneuroimmunology: Strategies for Self- Regulation of Immune System Responding." In J.V. Basmajian (Ed.). Biofeedback Principles and Practice for Clinicians (Third Edition). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. ?? Ochs, L. (1992). "EEG Treatment of Addictions." Biofeedback, Vol. 20, Number 1, pp. 8-16. ?? Peniston, E.G. & Kulkosky, P.J. (1989). "Alpha-Theta Brainwave Training and Beta-Endorphin Levels in Alcoholics." Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 13:271-279, 1989. ?? (1990). "Alcoholic Personality and Alpha- Theta Brainwave Training." Medical Psychotherapy: An International Journal 3:37-55. ?? (1991). "Alpha-Theta Brainwave Neuro- Feedback for Vietnam Veterans with Combat-Related PostTraumatic Stress Disorder." Medical Psychotherapy: An International Journal 4:47-60. ?? Pribram, K. (1971). Languages of the Brain. New York: Brandon House, pp. 321-348. ?? Rosenfeld, J.P. (1992). "'EEG' Treatment of Addictions: Commentary on Ochs, Peniston, and Kulkosky." Biofeedback, Vol. 20, Number 2, pp. 12-17. ?? Steriade, M., Gloor, P., Llinas, R.R., Lopes de Silva, F.H., & Mesulam, M.M. (1990). "Basic Mechanisms of Cerebral Rhythmic Activities." Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 76:481-508. ?? Winson, J. (1985). Brain and Psyche: The Biology of the Unconscious. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday. ?? Wuttke, M. (1992). "Addiction, Awakening, and EEG Biofeedback." Biofeedback, Vol. 20, Number 2, 18-22. Jonathan D. Cowan Attention Control Training, Inc., 4010 Dupont Circle, Suite 517 Louisville, Kentucky, 40207

EEG BIOFEEDBACK TRAINING: THE OLD AND THE NEW

by Siegfried Othmer, Ph.D. The Historical Background

During the sixties, Joe Kamiya explored his earlier finding that EEG activity could be altered deliberately by means of feedback of EEG information to the subject. Alpha wave activity was trained while the subject's eyes were closed. In this manner, a more relaxed state could be facilitated and different experiential states explored. In the late sixties, M. Barry Sterman of the UCLA School of Medicine was doing sleep studies on cats, and finding that a certain rhythmic activity, at 14 Hz, was present in both the sleeping and waking state. He was successful in training that activity as well, with manifest consequences for sleep in these cats. Fortuitously, at that time NASA approached Sterman about a problem they were having with their rocket fuel: it appeared to be inducing seizures in their personnel out on the test range. Would he be willing to test the rocket fuel? He was. The rocket fuel did indeed induce seizures in cats, but there was a wide variation is seizure threshold. As it turned out, those cats which had undergone the brainwave training had a significantly higher seizure threshold than the others. Apparently, brainwave training could change behavior! This little experiment launched a lengthy period of research in which it was rigorously demonstrated that seizure incidence, intensity, and duration, could be reduced in humans with EEG training in the same spectral band, about 12-15Hz. Human brains did not usually show a 14-Hz rhythm (called sensorimotor rhythm, or SMR, for its appearance at sensorimotor cortex) in the waking state. However, some controlling mechanism appears to operate in that frequency range. In the meantime, "alpha training" using EEG biofeedback became popular in the culture of the sixties and seventies - which of course rendered it unfit for serious study by most university researchers. In that climate, Sterman was careful to distinguish his own work with SMR training from the "popular" version of EEG biofeedback. The work was sound; it was replicated by a number of other groups; but the technique remained obscure. The training took a long time in most subjects; the training was provided by Ph.D.'s, so it was expensive; and Sterman depended in his clinical work on referrals from neurologists. Hence, the training was received mostly by very severe cases of seizure disorder. Hardly front-page stuff. During the course of this work, it was observed that hyperactivity in epileptics also seemed to subside with the SMR training. One of Sterman's associates, Joel Lubar, pursued the matter further with rigorous studies. Over the years it was established that the technique could be helpful not only with hyperactivity but also with attention deficit disorder in the absence of hyperactivity, as well as with learning disabilities. Things grew from there: We are now finding in our own clinical work that the technique can be helpful with a much broader range of conditions. Just as the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) work grew out of epilepsy studies, these insights and findings accrue incrementally. ADHD can, for example, be looked upon as an underarousal condition. This may seem paradoxical; however, it is consistent with the fact that stimulant or anti-depressant medication helps the condition. One may ask: Can EEG training help other conditions which respond to anti-depressant medication, in particular pure depression? Clinical evidence suggests that this is indeed the case, although this finding has not been subjected to controlled study. The Larger Context Since EEG training is effective in treating epilepsy, and epilepsy mostly results from cases of head injury, one may also ask: Does EEG training help other symptoms of head injury besides seizures - symptoms such as cognitive deficits, chronic pain, visual disturbances, extreme fatigue, mood swings, irritability, and sleep disturbances? The answer is that it does. Profound recoveries have been induced with EEG training in persons who have been stable for years after head injury, where further spontaneous recovery would not have been expected. A third area where improvements have been observed with EEG training is in sleep disorders. Insomnia, sleep onset problems, bedwetting, night terrors, and even sleep apnea have responded to the training in clinical settings. With these new findings, and aided by new computerized instrumentation and a proliferation of centers where the training is offered, EEG training in the 12-19 Hz (or low beta) frequency range is experiencing a

growth in clinical application. The alpha training remained (until recently) under a cloud of its unfulfilled early promise and "indiscriminate popularization". In the past three years, however, alpha training has been shown to be very effective as part of a multi-faceted program for severe alcoholics, so it is experiencing a renaissance as well. Ironically, this is also in the context of remediation and rehabilitation of dysfunction. What are the larger implications of these new findings? First of all, a connection suggests itself among the various conditions which ostensibly respond to this training. Firstly, attention deficit disorder is correlated with sleep problems such as bedwetting and night terrors. More than half of all seizures occur at night, suggesting an intimate connection of seizures with disordered sleep. There is a high correlation of attention deficit disorder with birth trauma, a kind of head injury. And many of the deficits resulting from head injury in the mature person look like attention deficit disorder. Also, depression is a common symptom resulting from head injury. Finally, other underarousal conditions, such as depression and chronic fatigue syndrome, also manifest in sleep disorders and cognitive deficits such as we see in ADHD. Perhaps a common neurological substrate or pathway underlies the attention problems, sleep problems, depression, and head injury deficits which respond to the training. If so, it must be very basic to be common to such a variety of observables. A Discussion of Mechanisms In our work, we distinguish between training at higher frequencies (15-18Hz, which we refer to as "beta") and at lower frequencies (12-15Hz, or "SMR" training) within the overall beta range of frequencies. These have vastly different effects. In beta training we appear to be dealing with conditions of underarousal, either induced by trauma of some kind, or of genetic origin. In SMR or high alpha training, we appear to be dealing with conditions of overarousal, of anxiety, of hypervigilance, of heightened stress susceptibility. Taken together, the training appears to help normalize physiological arousal, i.e. to restore normal modulation and control of arousal level. The increase in seizure threshold with training suggests that the training confers increasing stability in the face of cortical hyperexcitability. The training appears to enhance self-regulation of fundamental arousal mechanisms where these are deficient. Physiological arousal is under the management of the brain stem, which also regulates the sleep-wake cycle and modulates the pain response. The regulation of cortical function is mediated by the thalamus which, among other things, modulates inputs to the sensorimotor cortex where our (beta) training conventionally takes place. A distribution of frequencies within the low beta range of 12-19 Hz appears to be operative in regulating a variety of cortical functions. Training those specific frequency bands can then be used to elicit certain effects. Among these are regulation of sleep cycles, improved cognitive function, modulation of attention, and increased stability of mood. As suggested above, if one modality has such diverse effects, it must be true that a very central and basic function such as arousal control is being affected by the training. If brainstem function and arousal level are being trained, certain predictions would follow. In particular, we might expect effects on pain mechanisms. We have observed a profound effect on headache syndromes and chronic pain. Another piece of corroborative evidence is the finding that the human brain is peculiarly sensitive to whiplash injury. Even a minor car accident, involving no loss of consciousness but involving whiplash, can leave lingering deficits of the type mentioned above. In whiplash it is the brainstem that is being impacted, yet cortical function suffers! Likewise in birth injury it is frequently the spinal cord and brain stem which take the brunt. A final straw in the wind is that PET (positron emission tomography) studies show the thalamus and the sensorimotor cortex to be in a stage of rapid growth and organization, their most vulnerable period, right at the time of birth. A mutually consistent view is that the EEG is the "window in" to the functioning of the cortex, as it is regulated by subcortical structures such as the brainstem/midbrain, which structures are vulnerable to injury. The EEG training renormalizes this regulatory mechanism. Many of the above findings of efficacy of EEG training are only clinical, and remain to be confirmed in systematic research. Because of the usual disdain of the neurological community for behavioral management techniques, however, these exciting possibilities find no resonance within medical research. Partly, this is because behavioral techniques really belong to the field of psychology, not medicine. And partly it is because finding a physiological basis for the above conditions has been so elusive. Objective findings supporting the major head injury symptoms listed above are often lacking. MRI and CAT scans are frequently negative. As was recently pointed out even in Newsweek, however, such tests are not even able to distinguish a live brain from a dead one. Perhaps they should not be expected to discriminate functional deficits. Tests which measure function rather than morphology, such as quantitative EEG, PET scans, and evoked response measurements, do show up such deficits. Putting it crudely, I believe we have a small, elusive "hardware error" leading to prominent and obtrusive "software errors" in the human brain. The EEG training appears to be able to reinforce the control codes in

our "fuzzy-logic" brain and thus remediate functional deficits. Two recent findings promise to shift attention to the claims of EEG biofeedback. The first is the report by Alan Zametkin of the NIMH that the brains of hyperactive adults show lowered glucose uptake in the sensorimotor and frontal regions. That is, there is a discernible functional distinction and it is consistent with underarousal. Secondly, we have the recent report by Lewis Baxter of UCLA that behavior therapy for obsessive-compulsive behavior results in activity level changes in the caudate nucleus similar to those elicited by medication for this condition. Finally, we have the recent confirmation by Chris Mann of what had already been well-established, namely that the EEG statistics of ADHD children are significantly different from those of normals, and in line with the underarousal hypothesis. These results may begin to draw the attention of a reluctant medical community to this promising new field. One key reason for the lack of interest by the medical research community is that the current focus in neurophysiology is on neurotransmitter mechanisms and interactions at the molecular level. The phenomenology we are concerned with cannot yet be described in those terms. ADHD may involve observable differences in serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine function, but these may be effects rather than causes. To understand "disorder", we must look at how the brain maintains "order". We must look at the brain as a control and feedback mechanism. A functioning serotonin system is a necessary but insufficient condition for maintenance of "order". An Emerging Synthesis When one considers how the brain must organize sequential processing activity, or how it must recognize a particular visual image, splayed across the visual cortex, as belonging together, we realize that an incredible amount of parallel processing must occur, and nearly simultaneous or synchronous communication between different parts of the brain. It is belaboring the obvious to say that timing, and the coherence of timed events over a larger interval, are important for the completion of sequential processing tasks. Various parts of the brain must be successively alerted to play their role in the completion of the task. This is called activation. This is the business of the brain stem, of the midbrain, and of the thalamus in particular. And this process is out to lunch in the head-injured, the depressed, the over-anxious, the sleep-deprived, and the ADHD child or adult. Sterman long ago postulated that the mechanism being affected by EEG training is that by which the thalamus regulates and stabilizes the intrinsically hyperexcitable cortex. This mechanism is presumed to act rhythmically in the 12-19 Hz domain. The thalamus has both specific and non-specific nuclei. The specific nuclei project to localized regions of the brain, whereas the nonspecific ones project to broad regions of the cortex. By varying the training frequency within the band, and by varying electrode location, we are able to elicit highly specific effects, in addition to the general benefit of training activation. In this we are guided by what neuropsychologists and neuroanatomists have learned with respect to localization of function. The specific effects confirm that we are able to train both the specific and the nonspecific thalamic nuclei. They also prove that we are not simply dealing with placebo effects. NIMH stopped funding the epilepsy research in 1985, arguing that the field had been plumbed. In fact, the field had just begun. One of the most promising findings in this decade of the brain is how amenable the brain is to effecting change in its own function, if only it is given appropriate cues. One of these days all this will be considered obvious. Why shouldn't the brain be able to adapt to new information about itself? It is called learning. That's what our brain does well. Just as in agriculture a slow transition is taking place from the pesticide war against nature to using more biological means of control, we will emerge from a singular focus on pharmacotherapy and surgery to recognizing the brain's own potential for healing. We know it exists. Probably many startling recoveries now routinely ascribed to the placebo effect are in fact examples of the power of self-healing. We all know of the phenomenon of "spontaneous remission" of tumors. This term pre-dates the scientific era. In fact, of course, tumors do not disappear in the absence of agency. We have allowed this term to survive to this day because we have not been interested in the mechanisms underlying spontaneous remission. Somehow the body, or more specifically the brain, precipitated the aggression against the tumor. It is anothe example of self-healing. What the brain is known to be capable of randomly, we may be able to elicit systematically. Some Concrete Examples Science in general, and in particular medical science, is not impressed by individual case histories, which are routinely dismissed as "anecdotal data". However, they can nevertheless be useful in the present context to calibrate the reader's expectations of what this new technique may be used to accomplish. They are also useful scientifically, by forcing our attention on new phenomena which have simply not yet been studied extensively, but point the way to the future. The astonishing 29-foot long jump by Bob Beamon in the Mexico

City Olympics was a singular event, but it could not be dismissed in terms of what it said about human potential. Traumatic Brain Injury In the case of major head injuries, significant spontaneous recovery has never been reported in the literature more than a couple of years post-injury. After such an interval, significant recovery would be as exceptional and noteworthy as an amputee starting to regrow a limb. The following are some representative case histories: A professional woman in her thirties was referred for EEG biofeedback training more than four years post-injury, an automobile accident in which she suffered whiplash. At the time she came for training, she was unable to live independently. She had to be brought to the office because she could neither find the way nor remember her appointments. She could no longer read, and even the simple act of boiling water at home could get her into trouble. She was extremely fatigued, and was not sleeping well. She was emotionally volatile, and suffered from frequent crying spells. All therapies to help her had terminated long before she came to EEG biofeedback training. At the third training session, she reported sleeping better. At session five, she reported having more energy. By session 11, she was reading newspaper ads. At session 15, she declared: "I am becoming the woman I was before". By session 30, she was able to read her whole legal file at one sitting. At session 47 she reported "feeling 100% human again for the first time." The training continued on to session 80. Subsequently, she reentered professional life and was remarried. A second case involved a woman in her thirties who was three years post-injury, a car accident in which she had suffered whiplash, and was unconscious for a period of time. Her spine was fractured. When she came for EEG biofeedback training she was still totally disabled due to a variety of problems: chronic pain behind one eye; vision problems (central area grey, periphery fuzzy); dragging left leg; slurred speech; diminished memory function. She had continuous digestive complaints; headaches; dyslexia; and mental confusion. All therapies had been terminated except that she was still visiting her chiropractor, who referred her for biofeedback. The digestive problems she reported were 75% improved by the fourth session, and completely eliminated by the eighth. Sleep was reported improved by session ten. By the time of completion of training at session 24, the pain behind the eye had been remediated, and her vision significantly improved. Her speech was no longer slurred; she was no longer dragging her foot; and there was no more uncontrolled crying. She was able to return promptly to a full-time occupation. A third case involved a man in his fifties. After an automobile accident he was brought into the hospital DOA. His family was summoned. A family member observed the body to move under the blanket on the gurney, and drew attention to it. "Oh, bodies do that" she was told. The movements continued, and the medical staff thereupon resumed attempts to resuscitate the man. After weeks in coma, he subsequently made a major recovery, and came to us years later after his condition had stabilized. With the training, his mood became more elevated, and his memory gradually returned. He had studied some seven languages in his youth, and this language ability was gradually recovered. He also improved in terms of balance and gait. Members of his head injury support group pronounced him "a changed man". Stroke A woman in her fifties came to us for EEG training 19 months post-stroke, and after all other therapies had been terminated. She was having difficulty with concentration, with speech, and with word retrieval. There was some loss in fine motor control, and symptoms of depression. She came from out of town and could only obtain six training sessions during her stay. Nevertheless, it was reported upon her return home that she resumed writing correspon dence; that she was again playing the piano; and that she was much more verbal, once again bossing everyone around in her household. Her original vitality had returned. Another case: A man came to us some three years post-stroke, having suffered extensive damage to left-side speech and motor areas. His speech consisted of only partial words - often the wrong ones - and some consonants were still lacking. He was on a cane, and had limited use of his right hand. He was depressed and withdrawn. All therapies had ended with the exception of speech therapy, which was just about to end. The training effected first a remediation of the depression. He became much more active and interested in the life of his family. His speech therapist observed a sudden burst of improvement in speech (within two weeks of start of training for the speech deficit). By session 27 he was speaking again in simple but complete sentences. By session 46 he had given up his cane; by session 60 he was using his right hand again to shake hands. By session 90 he trusted himself to go skiing again, and was picking up newspapers to read. Speech is still halting and slow; but he is fully engaged again in the life of the family.

Drug Baby A three-year-old girl was referred to one of our offices for reasons of behavioral dyscontrol. She had screaming episodes lasting for hours. These were so common that it was impossible to find foster care placement for the girl. She was hospitalized at the time of the training. Within three sessions, the crying episodes were reduced to three minutes, and after ten sessions the case worker pronounced that the girl was functioning like a normal three-year-old. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome A five-year old adopted boy was starting to develop severe behavior problems at home. Fetal alcohol syndrome was then diagnosed. The child so fractured the family life that the mother thought her only option was to "put the child back into the system". The boy was totally resistant to doing the training. "I don't have a brain", he announced. Nevertheless, after a few training sessions, the boy mellowed. His anger diminished, and it became possible to reason with him. After 32 training sessions total, he was winning "student of the week" awards at his school. His intrinsic charm was now showing. Mildly Mentally Retarded Boy An adopted boy with an IQ score of 70 underwent EEG training with another practitioner. He was retested a year later, and his IQ score was 112, an increase of 42. By itself, this result may appear startling. However, it is quite consistent with our own findings of increases in IQ test scores of more than thirty points when the children start at values less than 90. The training clearly facilitates the organization of mental functioning so that the child can exhibit his native intelligence. The results are so striking that they must compel us to revisit the whole issue of whom we are calling mentally retarded. Attention Deficit Disorder; Conduct Disorder A twelve-year-old boy was referred to us for EEG training because of conduct problems. He had been kicked out of seven schools, the last a school for severely emotionally disturbed children. He was being homeschooled at the time. He had suffered a birth injury, and a subsequent head injury at two years. He had significant sleep problems when he came to us. After the first EEG session, he stopped talking in his sleep at night. After session nine, he reported that he did not get in as much trouble. He completed training at 29 sessions. Within a few months, he returned to regular public school. No one would call him emotionally disturbed any more. Also, his IQ score increased 34 points (WISC-R), and he improved four grade levels in reading, and more than two in spelling, according to the Wide Range Achievement Test. Severely Emotionally Disturbed Boy An eleven-year-old boy at a group foster home had a history of aggression, oppositional behavior, and ADHD. He was also suicidal. He had math and language disabilities. He was reluctant to undertake the training, and rarely did more than twenty-minute sessions. After twenty such sessions, he made a breakthrough. He came to the next session enthusiastic about the training, declaring that he was a "new man". He was calmer, and much more cooperative. His aberrant behavior subsided. He was no longer suicidal. The staff psychologist said she had never seen a more dramatic change in a person in ten years of psychotherapy. After ten more sessions to consolidate his gains, the boy was released from the group home back to his closest living relative, an aunt. Depression A woman in her forties came to us with a long history of depression, of eating disorders, of chronic pain, and bruxism (teeth-grinding). As part of the intake session, she took the TOVA test, which measures attentional variables. She was in the 5th percentile in terms of reaction time, and in terms of inattention and variability in response time. After only twenty training sessions, her TOVA scores were all better than her age-appropriate norms, a simply staggering improvement. We rejoiced. She was wistful. "You are taking my disability away", she said. "I've lived with that all of my life." Change, though positive, can be somewhat frightening because of the uncertainty it brings. She is in the continuing care of her psychotherapist to manage these changes. Dementia

An elderly man came to us diagnosed with "diffuse cortical atrophy". He had been a highly verbal, intellectual man - Rhodes scholar, company president, and public official. Now he was falling silent because he was losing himself in paragraphs and sentences, and he found that was too embarrassing for him. After nine training sessions in one week, his disorderly EEG was normalized (reduced in amplitude) by a factor of three. He became more verbal, and more animated. His wife said, "You have given me my husband back." He came for booster sessions a year later. Subsequently he suffered an ischemic attack, leaving him with symptoms of disorientation and paranoia. These symptoms persisted for some months until he could come back to the training, at which time they were promptly remediated. As the organic deterioration continued its relentless course, he eventually needed the booster sessions more frequently. Ultimately, he benefited from the training for more than five years, until he succumbed to progressive supranuclear palsy. Bruxism (teeth grinding) A woman came to us after having had a $10,000 dental restoration for bruxism. She was a hyperactive adult with poor body awareness. She undertook the training for more than thirty sessions. By session six, she became aware of clenching her teeth during the day. By session twenty, the cessation of night-time bruxing behavior was indicated by remediation of the pain associated with it. Training continued to thirty sessions to consolidate the gains. Anxiety and Panic Attacks A woman came to us with a history of frequent panic attacks, migraine headaches, poor sleep patterns, and fatigue. She could not handle the stress of a job. Training in the SMR band helped her to relax; then training in the beta band (15-18Hz) helped her mental functioning (concentration, focus). Followup after 32 training sessions showed that she still felt somewhat anxious, but her panic attacks had been completely eliminated. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy A seventeen-year-old boy was trained for temporal lobe epilepsy, for which he was medicated with Tegretol and Dilantin. He was doing poorly academically, and was exhibiting many signs of psychological disturbance and instability. He was emotionally volatile, even explosive. He was depressed and angry. He exhibited selfmutilating behavior and suicidal ideation. This behavior pattern had been observed for nine years prior to the onset of EEG training. After the training was initiated, the boy became friendly and talkative. His academic performance began to soar. The volatile emotions subsided. The suicidal thoughts vanished. He began to set long-term goals for himself: getting into college, choosing a curriculum. He was able to eliminate the need for Dilantin entirely, and to significantly reduce his dose of Tegretol. After a year of intensive training at two sessions per week, he succeeded in getting into college on the basis of his obvious change in performance, which made his prior record unrepresentative. By the end of the first year, he was near the top of his class in his chosen field of computer science. The biofeedback gave him a sense of control over his epilepsy, and over his brain. He began to take charge of his own training. He came to know his own brain very well. He could predict what the EEG instrument would show on a given day based on what he knew about himself. Eventually, he came to need the instrument less and less. He also learned other skills (breathing, yoga, meditation) which many other persons with seizure disorder have found to be helpful as well in managing their seizure threshold. We have now managed over 1000 persons in EEG training in our own office, and our techniques are now in use with well over fifty other professionals who are getting similar results. Summary and an Intimation of the Future The results described above portend many new developments in terms of taking advantage of the ability of the brain to remediate itself. We are surely just at the beginning of discovering how this new tool of EEG training can be best applied in a particular individual. The boundary of our knowledge horizon is increasing rapidly, like ripples on a pond, raising more questions than we have so far answered. The results bespeak a general property of the human brain, which is LEARNING. All parts of the brain are intrinsically responsive to information. That is the essential function of a nervous system. It is similarly obvious that the brain routinely responds to information about itself. The new findings indicate that it can also

respond to information about itself which is provided externally, by biofeedback. The implications of this appear quite boundless at this point. We see the impact of this training particularly strongly in the most severe conditions with which brains are afflicted: epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and the dementia of the aged. We see it impacting also on the largest issues confronting the field of mental health: depression and anxiety disorders. We see it helping with some of our society's most vexing problems: irrational violence, criminal behavior, and addictive behavior. And we see it dealing with so many of the learning problems which lead to unproductive lives. The efficacy of the training for some of the most disturbing behaviors we see in our fellow man (irrational aggressive behavior; sociopathy) implies that these behaviors are brain-based. They do not come from a deficient force of "will". In fact, the more extreme the behavior, the more likely it is that we are dealing with a neurological impairment. Fortunately, these impairments don't appear to be hard-wired. In the last year we have seen a surge of interest by mental health professionals in this technique. We will soon see it available in many different settings. The impact of our emerging ability to train the brain is incalculable for our society. Clearly, this will have to be part of any national health plan which meaningfully addresses the problems people actually have. EEG biofeedback could lead to significant reduction in health care costs, as we address the underlying problems rather than the physical symptoms they give rise to. The frontier of health is, in large part, the frontier of the brain.