Hey,
Yesterday a friend of mine payed me a visit to experiment with EEG and how it reads brainwaves.
I wanted to do the experiment with my friend when he’s in an altered state of consciousness, so I proceeded and hypnotized him and put him into a relax and trance like state.
The next thing was to hook the device and start interpreting the readings.
- Me: Close your eyes, then open them
- NFB (NeuroFeedBack device): Direct rise of Alpha waves when eyes closed, Alpha disappears when eyes are open again
- Me: I want you to remember what you used to play at age of 5
- NFB: We can see rise in Theta and Alpha and some Delta. It is so clear how the subject requested a recall from his subconscious mind (this explains the Theta waves).
- Me: Tell me what you did 3 hours ago
- NFB: High level of beta, little alpha, and subject reports annoyance and inability to remember details. We can see the absence of Theta and alpha which explains why the subject cannot recall.
- Me: Close and roll your eyes as if looking at your forehead
- NFB: Alpha rising and going down, mostly trying to stay up.
- Me: Lie down and sleep
- NFB: After some time, the subject showed increase theta, moderate Alpha and low beta and delta
After some tests like that, I hooked the device to the PC and launched BioExplorer and loaded the FlashPacman design. This design takes one channel input and a bandpass filter to detect alpha activity. If the activity is present a YES will occur while a NO will occur in its absence.
Now the Pacman character will move and eat the dots as long as the desired brainwave is reached and maintained. It was very fun to control alpha waves while eyes open!
It was a nice experiment where I learned and saw how the brainwaves play a role in the functioning of the brain.
